Indie Dev Finds That Linux Users Generate More, Better Bug Reports (pcgamer.com) 58
An indie developer has found an interesting observation: Though only 5.8% of his game's buyers were playing on Linux, they generated over 38% of the bug reports. Not because the Linux platform was buggier, either. Only 3 of the roughly 400 bug reports submitted by Linux users were platform specific, that is, would only happen on Linux. PC Gamer reports: The developer, posting as Koderski for developer Kodera Software on Reddit, makes indie game [Delta] V: Rings of Saturn -- that's Delta V, or DV, for the non-rocket-science-literate. [...] Koderski says he's sold a little over 12,000 copies of his game, and about 700 of those were bought by Linux players. "I got 1040 bug reports in total, out of which roughly 400 are made by Linux players," says Koderski's post. "That's one report per 11.5 users on average, and one report per 1.75 Linux players. That's right, an average Linux player will get you 650% more bug reports." Koderski's numbers are a limited sample size drawn from one person's experience, but tell a compelling story.
Koderski also says that very few of those bugs were specific to Linux, being clear that "This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone." The bug reports themselves were also pretty high quality, he said, including software and OS versions, logs, and steps for replication. Multiple commenters on the post chalked this up to the kind of people who use Linux: Software professionals, IT employees, and engineers who would already be familiar with official bug reporting processes. It's a strong theory as to why this might be, though the sheer passion that the gaming on Linux community has for anyone who supports their favorite hobby may be another.
Koderski also says that very few of those bugs were specific to Linux, being clear that "This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone." The bug reports themselves were also pretty high quality, he said, including software and OS versions, logs, and steps for replication. Multiple commenters on the post chalked this up to the kind of people who use Linux: Software professionals, IT employees, and engineers who would already be familiar with official bug reporting processes. It's a strong theory as to why this might be, though the sheer passion that the gaming on Linux community has for anyone who supports their favorite hobby may be another.
Cause and effect (Score:3, Insightful)
Because you have to be an engineer or hard core tinkerer just to get gaming up and running on Linux. If Linux gaming happened to be easier, the numbers would even out (total users, AND quality of submissions)
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Linux got a lot easier when search engines got better. Now you can paste an error message and nine times out of ten get some forum post or wiki on how to fix the problem.
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one liner scripts with zero explanation, sometimes in multiple script languages
read the manual
two or more "try some other package/distro/version"
Alternatively, its a one post thread where the exact error and config is posted as the problem, with zero replies.
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Ah, I think I understand then. I start by reading the manual, if I'm unsure what manual I'm supposed to be reading then I search. Then I ask. Finally I filter out responses from people who are clearly dumber than they realize.
I've had a fair bit of luck from the wikis for Gentoo and Arch. It's kind of necessary to have up-to-date resources because even though I've been using Linux since '95, the applications and frameworks for it changes so fast that even experienced people will need to RTFM once in a while
Disagree somewhat (Score:2)
Search engines have gotten worse when it comes to searching for Linux solutions. Back in the late 90s, I could type in a vague computer related search term, such as "filesystem corrupt", and get almost exclusively Linux-based hits. There would even be X-windows hits if you searched for "windows" problems. Back then only real nerds were on the internet. But everyone started using the internet, and all the top hits became M$ Windows based. :( Now I have to be very specific on search terms, using quotes
Re: Disagree somewhat (Score:2)
Now, you type "ext4 filesystem corrupt".
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That first part is a total load of crap.
Is it? Clearly you've not got a Nvidia card. Did an install of Linux Mint a few weeks ago, installed the OEM driver using Mint's driver manager just fine but then after a couple of restarts the driver wasn't loading and it would default to software rendering with no HDMI audio along with a message the driver hadn't been installed which of course it had and the driver manager also showed it had. It was then back to going into a text editor and having to edit the /etc/modules file to get it to load the nvidia
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Sorry to hear about your experience. Windows users have weird problems with system configurations every now and then, too.
My experience was much different. I also use Nvidia cards, and had no problems on Kubuntu. I've been on Kubuntu for a few years, having been on a few different distros. I've found that as long as I keep the Nvidia drivers up-to-date, I don't have any serious problems. With Steam and Proton, the landscape has completely changed as far as gaming is concerned. I've been playing Satis
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Because you have to be an engineer or hard core tinkerer just to get gaming up and running on Linux.
Most people use Linux for a reason. That reason is often that Linux is a good development platform while doing development on Windows is similar to poking yourself in the eyeball with an icepick. So Linux users tend to be more techie. Techies understand what information is useful in a bug report.
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Linux is a good development platform for writing Linux software. It's an okay platform (not better than others, I'd say) for web development which isn't Linux specific. It's a shitty platform for Windows development, which is a very common development target.
Re: Cause and effect (Score:3)
Oh boy, where do I start. Let's see.
Linux is a good development platform for writing Linux software.
Check.
It's an okay platform (not better than others, I'd say) for web development which isn't Linux specific.
Are you aware that most Linux distributions come with a preinstalled Apache, PHP, MySQL, Python, ... and that Linux is where all these were born in the first place? Podman/Docker? Kubernetes? SSH? I don't know what you mean by "wrb development", but if it's not exactly " Photoshopping a new logo for a website", then almost everything else - backend to frontend - is native on linux 1st, and on any other platform just a port. Or a question of an "Enterpriae license".
Re: Cause and effect (Score:2)
And that visual debugger falls utterly apart in multithreaded development.
Re: Cause and effect (Score:2)
I wouldn't know, I don't use debuggers most of the time. Kind of never properly learned how to, and by the time I should have, I developed other ways of debugging (cleaner code, mire logging, smaller units etc).
Now, debuggers feel to me like I'm wasting time, because all the energy I invest into understanding a piece of code in a debugger ia gone by the time the next bug strikes. With cleaner code and better logging, that energy at least goes somewhere useful.
But friends who uaemmse Visual Studio and GDB sa
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Now please, explain to me how you'd build and test a KDE or Gnome application on Windows, in return?
Windows Subsystem for Linux which in some cases is actually able to run Linux software faster than native, or Hyper-V and a virtual machine. Hyper-V already has a ready to go Ubuntu 20.x downloadable VM.
Re: Cause and effect (Score:2)
Windows Subsystem for Linux
That's not Windows, it's Linux. Pretty much like using Linux in a Windows-hosted VM wouldn't be Windows, either.
It's also only been available for few months, maybe a year. Same as VisualStudio is now available on Linux and bringing over to Linux *the* one advantage Windows had to offer. (In the case of VS, it's aldo not "Linux" in the sense that it's not the typical ingredient that makes Linux a great dev OS.)
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Re: Cause and effect (Score:2)
I remember reading about it, but I didn't know when it left beta.
VisualStudio Code has been around for probably just as long (I remember having installed the community Flatpak last year in October, so someone obviously had plenty of time to tinker with it long enough to build a "community").
But again, that's not the main point. Just like Mono, Wine, or Cygwin isn't the point, either.
The point is that none of those have been part of the mindset, the typical philosophy, of that respective platform, to genuine
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Now please, explain to me how you'd build and test a KDE or Gnome application on Windows, in return?
how is it possible to test a windows app on linux?
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Bug for bug (Score:2)
How is it possible to test for accidental reliance on things Wine doesn't emulate well, things that work as intended in Wine and break in genuine Windows?
Re: Cause and effect (Score:2)
People would say "wine", but I'm not a big fan of that. What I usually do is test/build on Linux for Linux and run platform-agnostic unit tests there. That's easily 90% of my tests.
The point is: there is a library for essentially everything, and which has a Windows port also (gtk/gdk, wxWidgets, Qt to name a few). And all the GitOps stuff is there for the taking - gut itself, CI/CD, Conan etc. You will be able to create windows binaries, and will able to do everything but the actual running in an automated
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And macOS development is like dropping a 1 ton dumbbell on your head and then try to do your work while the weight is crushing you.
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That reason is often that Linux is a good development platform while doing development on Windows is similar to poking yourself in the eyeball with an icepick.
With a few relatively minor differences, Docker, maven, git, npm, Java, Eclipse, $database, VSCode, and gVim look and work the same regardless of what platform you are on. Having to download and double click on "Install Docker Desktop" every couple of years when setting up a new laptop instead of typing "yum install" is not exactly poking myself in the eye with an icepick.
I'm fairly OS agnostic for development environments at this point because I spend 90% of my time in a bash shell or a tool which is cros
No? (Score:2)
1. Install Steam from software manager.
2. Log into Steam.
3. Play games.
This is really hard, I admit.
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Pretty much exactly my experience. Unfortunately, Linux support in Steam is pretty sparse, but I was also able to get some games running in Wine through Crossover that didn't have direct Linux support.
I was very disappointed though that my Quest 2 wouldn't work with SteamVR though. My HTC Cosmos would have worked, but it was nearly inseparable from my son by that point.
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Nope. installing an ubuntu based distro is super easy. Easier than a win 10. Downloading and installing steam is easy too. You don't need to be knowledgeable to use Linux. i am an end user and did not need to learn much.
Hmm.... (Score:2, Troll)
Linux Users Generate More, Better Bug Reports.
Practice makes perfect I suppose.
And another possibility (Score:3)
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Perfect Linux user: Managed to read all the way to the end of this [catb.org]
Ok, now that was a good document. Thanks!
I wonder if the section on "Not Reacting Like A Loser" couldn't be more widely applied though (Yes, I'm thinking of todays' perennially outraged):
"When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the experience, claim to have been verbally assaulted, demand apologies, scream, hold your breath, threaten lawsuits, complain to people's employers, leave the toilet seat up, etc. Instead, here's what you do:
Get over it. It's normal. In fact, it's healthy and ap
Indie dev discovers linux users often other devs (Score:2)
Shocking.
Truly.
This really bugs me (Score:1)
The more bugs you have, the more bugs you report.
commumumunity (Score:2)
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I would guess Linux users are more used to bug reports being acted on. It's part of the whole FOSS way of doing things.
I've even sent two bug reports to the NetHack devteam over the years. I got quick responses, and the bugs eventually got fixed. Experiences like that make me more likely to report bugs in the future.
Re: commumumunity (Score:2)
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The only place worse for bug reports/troubleshooting seems to be Android. My goodness, people seem barely able to even type, much less express themselves.
Well, to be fair, it is quite hard to type on a screen keyboard.
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strace and debuggers (Score:2)
Standard on the platform.
Makes hunting bugs easier even with binary blobs.
Re:strace and debuggers (Score:5, Insightful)
And different attitude..
Bug reports on Linux based applications tend to go to a public bug tracker where there is a discussion and feedback from the developers. Bug reports on commercial software tend to go into a black hole and you never hear anything back from them..
Re: strace and debuggers (Score:2)
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Bug reports on commercial software tend to go into a black hole and you never hear anything back from them..
Boy, ain't that the truth! I think it has to do with lawyers. In the commercial world, the company wants to avoid admitting they have a problem because they don't want people suing them for failing to deliver a perfect product. You paid good money for this product, it should be perfect, right?
In the Free/Open Source world, you likely didn't pay jack for the software to begin with and the authors disclaim all liability, so there is no reason to deny or keep secret the existence of any bugs. It just is what i
Re: strace and debuggers (Score:2)
because they don't want people suing them for failing to deliver a perfect product
FWIW I was standing on the other side of this table once, where I was responsible for a commercial cross-platform product. Some poor soul of a user sent us a $LANGUAGE translation for us to include along (.po/.mo files). Turns out their country has a large-ish user base.
That was as cool as it gets, and I really, really wanted to include it. It's difficult: including 3rd party content you want to distribute as your own is more tricky when nkt everything is in a F/OSS license. Plus the software had some bad
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Bug reports on commercial software tend to go into a black hole and you never hear anything back from them..
Boy, ain't that the truth!
It's also the truth for Linux as well. I've seen plenty of bug reports for a distro update labelled show stopper and advice not to release and then the distro has been released still with the showstopping bug in place.
Done with bug reports. (Score:3)
I'm done with bug reports.
It can take hours to put one together. Time is valuable. I'm a dev, I appreciate a bug report, but usually bug reports require putting together a simple test case, stating and restating the obvious, even coding a project that replicates the bug. Screw that. This takes hours and hours and is ungratefully received, usually they are not acknowledged.
My days of submitting bug reports are over.
Re: Done with bug reports. (Score:2)
id Software's qtestx86 for Linux. (Score:2)
I remember when Linux port was the first OS to be released for the public. And then, MacOS X. Finally, Windows.
That's why I hate my work Macbook (Score:1)
naturally (Score:2)
I'm sure if you look beyond games (Score:2)
Simple reason (Score:2)
Linux community: still mostly computer geeks (Score:1)
This is kind of bad news, although not unexpected.
This report shows what we all know, that everyday computer users of other OSes are less programming-savvy. And those folks don't pick Linux as their OS.
Yes, there's more of a shared tradition of bug reporting in Linux- but wouldn't Linux be more successful if more of these everyday users were using it?
Ok, "success" can be measured in many ways, simmer down. :)
Not surprising (Score:2)