Glyphobet writes "I've largely stopped reporting bugs to Ubuntu because of the condescending and dismissive attitude from their developers. Until Ubuntu's bug management culture starts to change, people like me, who can actually help make Ubuntu better, will be less and less likely to contribute."
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2007-04-13
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So a guy has a couple of bug reporting issues. Well, him and his friend. The way he states it, he makes it out to be the way the handle all issues - but I've had the opposite experience with fairly quick and helpful responses.
I do think he has a point that there was a lack of communication regarding the one f-spot bug, but he should have brought it up on a mailing list where there is a larger number of ears in order to address it. Sometimes just creating a bug entry isn't enough - they get 100s of these day, if not 1000s. Groups of people read mailing lists. Individuals check bugs.
Edited 2008-01-18 10:55 UTC
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"But i think this is simply a lack of developers doing bugfixing, and not a negative attitude."
Doesn't that show a negative attitude? That's their job. Even if they are volunteer, they took the responsibility to do work on Ubuntu, so they should do it. It's that simple. If they don't want to do it, they should move aside so somebody else can do it.
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It is not their job. As volunteers they offer something freely and that part is the part they like working on. They have no moral obligation whatsoever to actually work on bugs.. as volunteers. None.
Member since:2006-02-10
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In that case I volunteer to sit around and do nothing in particular?
They have no moral obligation to volunteer in the first place; once they join the team, they do have to do their part and iron out bugs. Or leave any time they want.
Edited 2008-01-18 13:08 UTC
Member since:2005-08-11
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"It is not their job. As volunteers they offer something freely and that part is the part they like working on. They have no moral obligation whatsoever to actually work on bugs.. as volunteers. None."
Uh, when you volunteer to do something, you are saying "I will do this task" so when you take responisbility for something, even if it is volunteer, you do it, or you get out of the way.
Member since:2005-06-29
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This is not new. Most open-source projects are know for discarting enhancement suggestions, and minor bugs. People complain open-source software is not polished, is more difficult to use, is designed a way that doesn't always make sense.
I have taken much of my time using open-source software and reporting suggestions to revamp the applications. All of these suggestions have been either:
1. Left as "NEW" even after years
2. Marked as "WONTFIX" with a rude comment underneath
When you have reported more than a hundred, if not hundreds of feature requests, enhancements, and minor bugs and none of them have been adressed, you just stop involving yourself in testing. This is not just Ubuntu, but also software like GIMP, KDE, Seamonkey, OpenOffice.org which are also notorious for this kind of negative attitude.
Oddly the aforementioned applications aren't the most polished.
Edited 2008-01-18 12:30 UTC
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hahh... you must be Mike Cox in disguise.
The last I checked, Windows had 44 critical security vulnerabilities that have not been resolved.
I've complained about this, and also made feature requests to Microsoft regarding removal of DRM from Vista.
Microsoft hasn't fixed these bugs, or removed the DRM from Vista.
Using your logic - Windows sucks.
RE[4]: Not sure why this is on OSNews
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I'm pretty interested in this list of 44 vulns... can you point them out?
About the DRM... I'm sorry that it bothers you. If you really care, just don't run DRMed media, and nothing will happen. The alternative to the current state of affairs is that folks will start writing their own DRM software and destabilize your machine by doing unsafe operations (like the well-known Sony product, or another funny program that was using the Debug Registers for DRM purposes).
Member since:2005-11-14
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Try using the bucket tool inside a lasso selection. Fireworks did this, Photoshop does this...GIMP can't. It fills outside the selection.
When I tracked down the appropriate bug list and filed it, the answer I got from the maintainer was that the bucket fill code was "too optimized" (read: indecipherable) to adapt to anything except its current behavior (using the document's own bounding box to restrict fill). The prospect of sitting down with the code to understand its workings or rewrite it altogether was off the table.
Hell, GIMP's own native file format is only documented inside the application's source code the last time I checked.
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Which doesn't change the fact that he was directly told that the bug WILL NOT get fixed in 7.10 (regarding aumix).
Also why the hell should he go on a mailing list? There's this bug reporting function in Launchpad. Why use two different approaches for the same thing? Shouldn't they be equally important?
(Yeah, I know that I'll get modded down by a specific group of fanboys for this...)
Member since:2006-03-29
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I guess you never were modded down that much. 
I completely agree with you, though. As someone posted above you either do what you said you will or don't hinder other people in doing "your" part. And apparently kinda ignoring people that even make patches is a very bad approach.
Regarding some bugs I had the feeling Ubuntu ships disposable-distributions. That is maybe a disadvantage of so many releases.
Member since:2007-09-01
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Well I don't think it's right but at work as a box tester (where I get paid and everyone around me also does), I have to remind people over email about submitted bugs and if I don't they complain about it because I didn't constantly remind them about the bug.
It's like no one reads the bug report, we have board meetings to discuss them and every week I have to remind the developers what the bug is about and during that meeting they'd tell me to email them about it (what I do is copy paste the bug description, they seem to be happy with that).
So I have been told one too many times that it is my job as a tester to make sure people work on the bug.
Perhaps it's not ideal, but that's what needs to be done to get the job done...
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Well he details more than a couple of issues, and frankly my experience has been very similar. The refusal to even look into certain common issues until users install debugging packages is a bit over the top in my opinion, especially when it comes to upgrade bugs where as the article says, reproducing the bug would require wiping one's PC and re-installing. If several people confirm the same bug then the developers should look into it whether or not the reporter can provide debugging information.
My personal issue with Ubuntu is how willing they are to ship a new release with major bugs. They seem to be far more concerned about their 6 month release schedule than shipping a solid product. IMHO they really need a shorter development period and a longer bug fixing period for each release.
I like Ubuntu, I use it for all my desktops and laptops, and for my home server (Debian for production servers), but I'm finding it increasingly frustrating when release after release ships with showstopper bugs. I almost always have a botched upgrade on at least one of my machines each time I upgrade to a new version.
Member since:2005-09-27
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That attitude is huge in the OSS community. There is an unwillingness to make products better they way users want it. They expect the users to change all study 4 years of computer science before they even take their idea into consideration... Anything less they are too stupid to bring up anything (although they themselves my not have Computer Science Degrees). As a programmer myself I know it is easy to get lost in your code and making it do what you envisioned and when someone else brings up the fact they hate it, it hurts, but you need to bite the bullet and rethink the process. OSS systems are often very configurable. Having a user change their configuration to get a seemingly unrelated application to work is a bug on the software side not on the user side. The software should be able to handle the different configurations.
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I do think he has a point that there was a lack of communication regarding the one f-spot bug, but he should have brought it up on a mailing list where there is a larger number of ears in order to address it. Sometimes just creating a bug entry isn't enough - they get 100s of these day, if not 1000s. Groups of people read mailing lists. Individuals check bugs.
yes an No, reporting the Bug in bugzilla an on the mailing list should be all it takes to get the Bug addressed but the Devs should still always look in bugzilla no matter what IMO
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2005-08-18
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Wow, more whining on a blog. What a surprise. Whine whine whine. Me me me. Why don't *I* get any attention with *my* problems.
Seriously, these are bugs that affect ONE person. One person out of all the Ubuntu users have had these problems. I wouldn't lose any sleep over that either if I was at Ubuntu.
aumix isn't even officially supported. It's like complaining to MS that Quicktime doesn't work.
Next up; News at Eleven: Not everyone get along.
Just because someone mentioned Ubuntu (on good light or bad) doesn't mean it's interesting news.
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At any rate, quibbling over what is essentially anecdotal evidence is of limited value. Most distros use some sort of formal bug tracking system, so it should be possible for someone who wanted to wade through it all to publish a meta-analysis of how well each distro does in resolving issues. Yes, it would be exceedingly messy, and the results would be fuzzy. (I'm not volunteering!) But surely anything is better than following random people's blog postings.
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aumix isn't even officially supported
Of course, only 1/10 of available packages are officially supported. That takes a lot out of the Ubuntu magic, doesn't it?
Of the distros I have used, I've had the best "customer" experience regarding bug fixing with Debian. Prompt and efficient. These people are experts and there are about 1000 of them. Ubuntu has much less people and those that handle universe are learning on the job.
This doesn't mean Ubuntu is very bad at bug fixing, it means Debian is really good at it.
Btw I am not using Debian or Ubuntu any more (too overengineered for my taste). I'm using and like Arch which ironically is worse at bug fixing than either :-P
Edited 2008-01-18 12:56 UTC
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Debian was responsible for OpenOffice crashing every time you tried to open a digitally signed document because they used a deprecated encryption option in the compile. This went on for something like two years with a myriad of complaints (in both Ubuntu and Debian mailing lists, Launchpad, etc.). The Ubuntu maintainer essentially pointed his finger at Debian instead of recompiling it with the correct (working) option. Before anyone asks, the change in compile options referred to key storage, so it would not have affected file encryption compatibility.
"If I don't use it, it isn't broken" is not a viable perspective.
Member since:2005-07-06
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Uh...there are several replies of the "I also have this problem" nature to the aumix bug.
And it's a rather 'standard' application on Linux. As the bug reporter notes, it's the most commonly used and straightforward way to script changes to mixer values, and several apps actually assume its presence (and functioning state) for that purpose.
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2005-06-30
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A problem with open source is that a lot of developers only cares about functionality that they use themselves. With unpaid contributers, this is understandable since they donate their own time. And we can't complain about how people use their own time :-)
Perhaps they could introduce some sort of karma system, where each bug you fix adds to your score. The number of points could be a combination of severity, age and complexity.
A trivial bug doesn't give many points when it is reported, but will accumulate extra points for each month it is not fixed.
This might give them added incentive to also do the boring jobs. When the bugs are not interesting, perhaps the extra recognition will help?
Edited 2008-01-18 11:16 UTC
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Come on, this has NOTHING to do with open source. Same thing happen with closed source software. No company is going to spend resources fixing obscure bugs that affect a tiny fraction of their users.
What is this? Kindergarten?
"Hmmm..sit at home working on a boring bug I dont care about so I can get same "karma" points that is about as usefull in RL as Beenz or do something I really like?"
I seriously doubt the people with the required skills would care about some abstract karma points.
Edited 2008-01-18 11:22 UTC
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Yeah pretty much. Sadly, enough most people, especially some of the basement dwelling youth that are starting to get into open sourced programming, do have that kindergarten mentality.
Actually there are a surprising amount of people who work on open source programs with the single-minded purpose of getting that "Look at what I did." feeling when they fix a bug or write and release a useful program to the world. That's kind of how the whole thing started, bragging rights on who could program better.
Edited 2008-01-18 14:05 UTC
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No it doesn't. It proves that it works for experts-exchange which is a tech advise site.
That's very different from a bug tracker and getting people to spend serious amount of time solving problems they dont like or care about.
The amount of time you spend giving the same advise for the unmpteenth time is considerably less than the time you'll have to spend researching and fixing bugs.
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Read up on Windows' patch database before making glib comments like that. There are patches inside XP to guarantee that DOS versions of SimCity still run because customers complained about it.
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When did I mention Windows or even Microsoft. They're not the only closed-source companies, you know. No need to get all defensive.
If you think commercial entities spend time and resources on fixing tiny bugs that affects virtually noone I have a bridge to sell you.
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http://ianmurdock.com/2007/01/14/on-the-importance-of-backward-comp...
You're funny when you're dead wrong.
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sweet system... lol
Ouch... that is a factor that needs to be considered in any system like this.
Any ideas on how to work around that factor?
--bornagainpenguin
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sweet system... lol
Ouch... that is a factor that needs to be considered in any system like this.
Any ideas on how to work around that factor?
--bornagainpenguin "
Don't implement it in the first place. Rewarding people for fixing bugs is open to too many social engineering hacks. Not enough bugs to fix? Make them yourself.
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Perhaps they could introduce some sort of karma system, where each bug you fix adds to your score. The number of points could be a combination of severity, age and complexity.
A trivial bug doesn't give many points when it is reported, but will accumulate extra points for each month it is not fixed.
This might give them added incentive to also do the boring jobs. When the bugs are not interesting, perhaps the extra recognition will help?
a lot do get paid for there work, but look at rpm5.org Jeff doesnt get paid for his work on rpm5
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PPC users of Ubuntu are unbelievably aware of this problem. Vector math acceleration libraries that used to take into account G3s without AltiVec now default to only supporting AltiVec. That means the Gnash plugin and other multimedia apps which use it no longer work since Edgy.
Feisty PPC's kernel can't competently recognize IDE hardware because the maintainers basically forgot to continue supporting certain modules that were present in Edgy.
Both of these cases have been bombarded with Launchpad requests for fixes and the maintainers have ignored them straight through testing releases all the way to final releases. If you're lucky, someone will reply that if it bothers you so much, go fix the code yourself.
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2006-01-04
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Annoying yes, but what choice do the Ubuntu devs have in this case?
With the LTS release, they're trying to make a distro that's considered reliable and stable enough to be used in corporate situations. Linux gets a considerable amount of criticism for it's constant-flux nature, and is a significant reason it's not used in a lot of corporations.
Consider Windows XP: there are bugs and annoyances that have been there since it was first released, but admins, users and developers have grown to know the bugs and therefore avoid the situations that trigger them, or in some cases rely on them. The last thing a company wants is a standard bugfix update released to smash any software they might have that is depending on buggy behavior. Occasionally it's necessary for critical bugs and security bugs, or severe regressions, but such updates are dealt with caution.
Canonical have decided in that for LTS releases, only critical bugs should be fixed and have set out guidelines for what constitutes a critical bug, and the process developers should go through when fixing them. The Ubuntu developers are following the guideline. This is a good thing. It is possible that in this particular case, aumix should be fixed, but rather than breaking the guideline, perhaps people should try to consider how these cases should be dealt with in a consistent manner and change the guideline as required.
One of the posters to the bug report said
I know it sounds absurd, but you have to see where they're coming from. Perhaps they should include an optional "unstable-fixes" repository or something.
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2005-07-06
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My experience is exactly like the one described. You report a bug or confirm an already reported one. Then nothing happens while more and more people confirms the bug. And eventually the bug is confirmed but is never fixed. Then, six or eight months later, you install the new version and it might have been fixed or not.
I'm starting to be tired of that "Don't touch absolutely nothing between releases" attitude of Ubuntu and actually I'm exploring other distributions. I've installed OpenSuse on my desktop PC and if all goes well, I'll replace Ubuntu on my laptop as well.
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2006-07-30
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Judging from my own, very limited experience the Ubuntu folks are friendly.
I reported a bug of Totem (at least that's what I thought at the time).
For about one month nothing happend and I thought "Allright, my bug report was probably too stupid to even bother with..."
Then I got a whole bunch of emails asking me about specifics. Eventually I could reduce the problem to "Totem freezes when I use it to play a directory that contains one or more mp3s and a text file".
Then I was asked to check if the problem went away when I used xine instead of gstreamer. It did. So the bug was transferred to gstreamer.
Next they wanted a stack trace and were very helpful in explaining what exactly I needed to do to obtain one.
I should mention here that nobody could reproduce the bug although it happened on my system every time I tried. Nevertheless, they seemed to care about my report.
After I had done the stack trace they occasionally asked me to update the package or install a new version of Ubuntu. The bug didn't go away and after some time I was tired of doing the same test over and over and stopped responding. Eventually the bug was closed.
That's not what I had hoped for but still, everybody was friendly and helpful. Maybe I just fscked up my install somehow although I don't recall doing anything unusual...
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2006-09-19
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The team that puts Ubuntu releases together is quite small and usually very busy with the next planned release. Therefore some bugs get fixed, some don't. Hell, you cannot even expect that some major bugs like the broken nautilus-python-bindings get fixed.
If you want something more stable, get Debian.
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2005-11-29
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One time I reported a bug... year or two ago maybe...
I had installed ubuntu alongside FreeBSD... which seemed like something that should be simple and without problem... except grub was installed overtop of my previous bootloader and ignored the fact that I had FreeBSD installed...
"Not the end of the world" I thought, as I spend 30 mins reading about grub config and trying to change it to give myself a choice.. All was well until some months later I did an ubuntu update which must have resulted in a grub update -- which nuked my changes and made my FreeBSD partition unavailable to boot again.
I reported this as a bug due to the anti-social nature of what was happening.... eventually I got a reply along the lines of "you did your config wrong you should do this" bla bla bla, which is fine... appreciated.
Although I was disappointed that it seemed this was being written off as my fault and no attempt was going to be made to fix it... it's pretty lame if you install an OS thinking it's dual-boot safe and it mangles stuff up so you can't access your other OS. This in my opinion is a bug, and I shouldn't have to muck around with grub config to fix something like this.
I'm not going to fight with stuff like this.. I just quit using ubuntu in a dual boot environment...
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You can't expect an installation to leave everything intact, but I've experienced this more than a few times with the *buntus after an update. The evms thing is a classic thing that tends to destroy systems, even though you're not actually using evms!
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I don't know how exactly you had your grub configured but I know all my recent Ubuntu installs have menu.lst which is configured to be automatically updated with new kernel installs and the like. This menu.lst has a bunch of "commented" variables actual end up being used for regenerating a configuration and there are also specific places marked as safe and unsafe for editing. If you didn't try to adapt your configuration around this then it isn't really unfair to say that it destroyed your changes. They provide a way for you to work around the auto-configuration updater (which is needed if they want to provide a seemless kernel update which doesn't require manual grub reconfiguration by the end user).
My dual boot Ubuntu installs have usually detected other installs and put those into the correct places in the customized menu.lst configuration, I would say it's a valid complaint if the installer did not detect your other installs but the updating scripts overwriting your completely custom menu.lst I would not say is a valid bug.
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2006-01-17
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Developers are very often too lazy to explain why a bug was closed. Very often it's a problem that the upstream is aware about and have plans to fix it - or can't do anything about it ATM. In other cases, when it's fixed, a deve