Lately I have seen people complaining about bugs on Ubuntu saying they need to be fixed and fixed now. Well, yes I do see this as maybe people just venting frustration, but that is not nesserly going to help. Even if you do not have a really high technical skill level, (like myself) you should still help test a patch or test a updated ppa to see if it works instead of complaining about it. Its like people want something done, but do not want to do it themselves. Maybe they can report it and make known the bug. Complaining is not really going to help either you, or other people.
Instead you should say, “I found this bug, what can I do to help fix it.” saying ‘Look there! Its not working, Fix this now!!!” is not going to really help your bug get fixed. That is the tendency with open source software sometimes to released as soon as its written. It is a good way to get things into the hands of users who need it as soon as possible.
Maybe it is just the way a person is. They want other people to fix their problem. After all, Ubuntu is free. Its not as if you bought a defective product. Not to say Ubuntu is not quality, because truly it is. As we push towards 11.10 that is what is on all testers minds. Just think about if you see a bug or file a bug that affects you or is something you think you might be able to help fix. Not that we all need to be or can write patches, but sometimes we should do all we can, even if that is not getting really mad when things take a while.
What if we aren’t coders? Should Ubuntu users have to learn to code themselves and send patches upstream to get bugs fixed, even if they ask in the nicest, most polite and humble manner?
Easy, there are many bugs that do not require code fixes and patches and also testing patches is just as great a way of helping.
In light of reading your comments, I have come to a conclusion: there is a bug in your spelling and proofreading. So in the spirit of the blog post, here is a patch to correct them. I have fixed it to the best of my ability, however there may be some bugs that I didn’t catch.
patch:
1c1
Complaining about bugs, but not helping to fix them.
3c3
Lately I have seen people complaining about bugs in Ubuntu saying they need to be fixed and fixed now. Well, yes I do see this as maybe people just venting frustration, but that is not necessarily going to help. Even if you do not have a really high technical skill level, you should still help test a patch or test an updated PPA to see if it works instead of complaining about it. It’s like people want something done, but do not want to do it themselves. This is not really going to help either you, or other people.
5c5
Instead you should say, “I found this bug, what can I do to help fix it.” Saying “Look there! Its not working, fix this now!!!” is not really going to help your bug get fixed. It is the tendency sometimes for open source software to be released as soon as its written. It is a good way to get things into the hands of users who need it as soon as possible.
7c7
Maybe it is just the way a person is. They want other people to fix their problem. After all, Ubuntu is free. It’s not as if you bought a defective product. Not to say Ubuntu is not quality, because truly it is. As we push towards 11.10 that is what is on all tester’s minds. Just think about it if you see a bug or file a bug that affects you: is it something you think you might be able to help fix?
I have spotted a bug, and will help you fix it!
You can’t spell!
coMplaning about bugs …. there’s an ‘m’ in it.
In future have enough respect for your audience to bother to spell-check.
Damn, Dave Dortmund beat me to it.
Looks like WordPress stripped parts of the patch out. In any case the resultant post *is* a fixed version of your post. No thanks necessary, just doing my bit.
HAHA!!! Thats funny. No. I just feel that sometimes people can if they have the ability to, help out wherever needed. I am not a programmer FYI.
Well said Philip. And it’s a good point that there is a LOT that can be done short of actually programming to help in solve bugs. Learn how to turn on any debug type output the program may have. Google on your error messages to see if others have already studied them. Test different versions to find when the problem first occurred. Try to very precisely describe when and how the problem reproduces itself.
Or, organize and summarize the information that has been gathered to date. Or itemize the current status of a bug (often bugs change over time as portions of them get fixed). Or simply confirm it still affects the current version.
There are tons of bugs out there, and relatively few people with developer-level technical skills to work on them. Those people will tend to focus their energies on the bugs that are the easiest to solve, or that are the most clearly defined, or that they can reproduce themselves. Strive to make your bug meet one or more of those parameters, and you’ll increase the likelihood your issue will get solved.
For bugs in individual applications, when it’s mostly clear what’s wrong, I think a bug reporter can do a good job of narrowing down the bug and figuring out what it’s wrong. The same isn’t true for driver or system problems, where things suddenly stop working without warning and you can’t tell what going on (unless someone experienced tells you what areas to look at and what commands to run)
Ever since I bought a new computer, I’ve been having a terrible experience with bug reporting. I would file a bug with logs automatically attached, try my best with the description, then the bug would be marked as confirmed and… be ignored. I recently received a comment on a bug I reported almost a year ago from someone who is also experiencing it — this was the first real comment on the bug! I have ~5 driver bugs that range from the system hanging to hardware not working that I’d be glad to give more information on, but it seems no one’s paying attention. Twice now my reports were closed or denied with automatic messages saying “the development cycle has ended” or “we are only doing stable updates”.
The whole vibe I’m getting is “We don’t want bug reports. Patches welcome”. In the early days of open source many projects followed that attitude. It may be effective for creating good software – but I’d say that it’s equally effective at deterring the average user from ever using it. I don’t claim to be familiar enough with the details of the bug squad to be capable of offering a good solution. The only thing I can say is this: telling people to fix their own bugs will not make Ubuntu more user-friendly. Asking a bug reporter for more information is better than ignoring the bug, and even better is when ubuntu-bug takes care of the system info and logs so all the user has to do is describe their problem and be around to answer questions and test fixes.
There are many reasons for someone not be able to help fixing bugs, such reasons do not diminish an user capacity/value to complain about something which is not properly working, as long he does so in a politely manner and seeking to improve the situation.
End-users reporting bugs in Ubuntu is a lost case, bug reporting turned mostly into a collaboration/workflow tool for Ubuntu developers.
I heartily agree with Nikita. I don’t enjoy reporting bugs in Ubuntu any more, because I feel unwanted.
Forgot this sentence which was on my mind, please note that people only take the time to complain when they care about something. When they don’t care they simply ignore.
Thank you, Phillip. You are correct that people are not being polite when screaming to have a particular bug fixed. There is no concept that with thousands of bugs a week being reported, a single bug may not be the most important one to get fixed. Reporting a bug, waiting patiently, not insisting *this* bug get fixed immediately, testing a fix when asked are all very important parts of being a user willing to help make Ubuntu the best it can be.
Those of us who have and do triage bugs have seen more than our share of bugs that are reported and forgotten. When a reporter is asked for more information, or clarification, or even to test if the bug has been fixed, lack of response certainly doesn’t help. Neither do the reporters who enter a line of “FIX THIS BUG NOW” .
Thank you for understanding what I was trying to imply with this post.
As much as I agree with the intent of this post, I really disagree with how you said it.
There are plenty of people who are totally non-technical who are unable to contribute in any meaningful way besides saying “I found this, you should fix it”
Look, as annoying as it can get, at least they’re reporting their bugs
True, Maybe with Ubuntu we need to make reporting easier so the skill level is not as high meaning more users can post bugs to make sure their system is better.
I like how people responded to your argument that they should help by helping but adding a witty retort on the end of it.
Every bug I’ve every filed in Ubuntu and wanted to help out with (and I’ve been a user since Warty) has either been marked Invalid because it’s already released and would break something like translations or didn’t get triaged until the next version was released, meaning that I was no longer running the buggy version and couldn’t supply more info as required, getting the bug closed. In fact, it sometimes seems that Launchpad is just weeded regularly, meaning lowering the bug count by any means.
This is especially bad during Alphas — nothing I’ve ever filed even got looked at until long after gold, meaning that 8.04 released without a working photo application on 64 bit. O_o
That should be a blocker. Ubuntu doesn’t change release schedules anymore, though, so there is no such thing as a blocker.
If you add that experience to Canonical’s new top-down “develop in secret and release when we want testing” approach, you end up with users who don’t file bugs.
So, someone who contributes to the community in other ways has no part complaining about the technical aspects? Really? Do you grow all your own food? Did you build your computer from raw silicon?
Specialization allows folks to be more efficient. Don’t force everyone to learn to do bugwork in order to participate.
“Patches welcome” is not an encouraging statement from a potential Community Council member. I will be ranking you last in my ballot, and encouraging every one else I talk to to do the same. Come back when you’ve matured a little more.
You are welcome to rank me in any spot you think I deserve. If you also have any questions about me you might not just know me from the one post I have made here, you are free to email me and I will answer any question you have. I think i may have not come like I was hoping to, too some people here, unless we have very different opinions of open source software and life in general.
Im just saying its better to help then complain, that is all.
To anyone who is upset or mad at this blog post, i can discuss it at philipballew@gmail.com
I think you don’t understand how a distribution works.
How many of these bugs are actually Ubuntu bugs? How many of them are upstream bugs? Look at Launchpad, it’s an excellent bug tracker, and it manages very well when a bug must be fixed somewhere else. And it’s because it MUST be fixed somewhere else.
I don’t know if adding more manpower would improve Ubuntu releases (it probably would, through upstream collaboration), but once the release is out… there are lots of bugs that can’t be properly fixed until the next release.
I’m tracking 18 bugs myself (I reported some of them), 13 of them are “confirmed”, and just 1 (ONE) of them had a fix committed.
Will these bugs be fixed? I don’t think so (ie. I’m not using 9.10 any more, so I don’t know). They will be fixed upstream (hopefully), and the next Ubuntu release will have the fix. It’s not matter of people complaining and not acting, it’s just that upstream projects are very often a complex stack with dependencies that keeps going forward after the Ubuntu release, and it’s not trivial (if possible) to backport the fixes.
This is not an Ubuntu problem, other distributions have the same issue, and to be honest I don’t think your post will change anything.
Yeah, I was just sharing my opinion I guess
I know how one works though.