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."
Post a Comment
Member since:
2007-04-13
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
Member since:2006-04-04
Member since:2005-08-11
"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.
Member since:2005-10-06
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
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
"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
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
Member since:2005-07-02
Member since:2006-09-29
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
Member since:2006-01-02
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
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.
Member since:2006-11-08
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
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
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...
Member since:2006-09-10
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
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.
Member since:2005-07-07
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
Member since:
2005-08-18
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.
Member since:2006-07-15
Member since:2006-06-03
Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:2005-07-24
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.
Member since:2006-06-03
Member since:2006-02-10
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
Member since:2005-11-14
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
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.
Member since:
2005-06-30
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
Member since:2005-08-18
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
Member since:2006-01-10
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
Member since:2006-06-03
Member since:2005-08-18
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.
Member since:2005-11-14
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.
Member since:2005-08-18
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.
Member since:2005-11-14
http://ianmurdock.com/2007/01/14/on-the-importance-of-backward-comp...
You're funny when you're dead wrong.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-03-23
Member since:2005-08-07
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
Member since:2007-10-26
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.
Member since:2005-07-07
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
Member since:
2006-12-19
Member since:
2007-07-25
Member since:2005-11-14
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.
Member since:
2006-01-04
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.
Member since:
2005-07-06
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.
Member since:
2006-07-30
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...
Member since:
2006-09-19
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.
Member since:
2005-11-29
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...
Member since:2005-07-06
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!
Member since:2007-04-03
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.
Member since:
2006-01-17
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 developer.
Sometimes it's a part of larger changes and mantainers don't have patience to write what really was the issue.
Member since:
2007-03-30
I am on the mailing list of a severe bug that prevents Ubuntu from updating to 7.10. It was reported the night 7.10 came out and still hasn't been addressed. It took two months and tens of confirmations (or maybe it is up to 100+ now) just for someone to be assigned to the bug.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Member since:
2006-07-16
If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: Ubuntu devs are too busy worrying about their precious next release and all the snazzy new features it'll contain to worry about the current or (heaven forbid) past releases. They simply seem not to care. Or, the ones that do are too mired down in red tape (or their own egos) to get around to fixing the problem. Oh, occasionally they'll throw us a bone and kick a few bug fixes into backports or the current release, but otherwise your only hope is to wait for the next big one and pray that one has the bug fix you need (and not too many new bugs.) Or, you could compile your own packages but then why not just run pure Debian?
On related topic, the Ubuntu community is much like the proverbial little girl who had the little curl. When it's good, it's very good but when it's bad it's horrid. Ubuntu folks need to stop ripping to shreds everyone who criticizes their precious OS. Stop attacking people in forums, blogs and tech site comment boards for constructive criticism. If that energy were funneled into fixing problems, Ubuntu would be a damn perfect OS.
Edited 2008-01-18 13:34 UTC
Member since:2007-10-08
Yep. If only they chose to support their LTS better I'd be still using dapper, pity that.
But remember the precious is always calling them, wanting them, my.....precious.
Member since:
2006-01-03
It seems to me that Ubuntu devs are more interested in providing the latest version of everything in sacrifice of a proper QA or bug tracking. The existence of the back-ported repositories confirms this trend of the Ubuntu orientation.
Here is a severe bug reported since end of Nov 07
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/1...
At end, this bug was also related to the fact that nfsv4 + kerberos is broken in the current kernel version and yet no official patch has been provided. This bug is presented in the two kernel versions that have appeared in Gutsy, so using a back version of the kernel did not work.
Broking nfsv4 + kerberos = unable to deploy Ubuntu in our secure network = IT guys not supporting Ubuntu 7.10 = Ubuntu 7.10 banned from list of recommended distributions.
I have an Gutsy 7.10 box that has to access the network servers via Samba shares (instead of nfsv4 mount points), you can laugh about the irony.
Open Suse 10.2, Fedora 8 and previous versions of Ubuntu do not have this problem.
I agree with previous comments of people saying that in general the Ubuntu devs are mostly polite. It just seems that they're overwhelmed by the amount of work and it translates in a very slow response.
Either Ubuntu starts telling the people the risks of using their distribution ("you never know what is going to be broken next time you do a [sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade] "), either they start to put an extra effort in bug tracking.
Member since:
2006-01-10
If people would report bugs for 'unsupported' packages in Ubuntu to the Debian maintainers (which are usually the same people, and more than likely the very same packages) maybe it'd be fixed more than through Launchpad. I've sent in several bug reports, both through Debian and through Launchpad. I think some of the ones (like the nvidia-settings fiasco) are still not fixed. In Debian, nvidia-settings is a separate package. Under Ubuntu it is, but it conflicts with nvidia-glx. Ubuntu Gutsy and Debian Sid both have the same version of nvidia-settings as well (20070502).
I reported this bug over a year ago. They basically said it wasn't an issue.
Anymore, I just use Debian Sid. Granted there are a few things that are touch and go occasionally, but for the most part, it runs solid. I would suggest for people who want the latest software, can set up their system themselves, prefer more control and choice, but still want to use the great apt/dpkg system, just use Debian Testing. It's generally only 10 days behind Unstable, so that any critical bugs can be sorted. It's a moving target, and is pretty rock solid.
Really at this point the only three things that Ubuntu has over Debian are;
1) The latest Gnome. Every release (why it's every 6 months) is coincided to provide the latest version of Gnome. This is what drew me (and I'm sure many others) initially to it from Debian.
2) Fantastic forum support. Debian now has several user forums, but still the official way to communicate with developers (much like Ubuntu) is the mailing lists. Mailing lists for Debian have been around forever, but for the average (or new) user, a forum is a much nicer way to talk to people and get help. The Debian forums are no where near as huge as the Ubuntu ones.
3) Quick and easy set up. Ubuntu is very good at a quick, full desktop right out of the box. Of course some see this as a disadvantage that they can't really optimize or choose what packages are installed. Debian has this just cornered, since you can literally start with just the bare minimum, and build your environment anyway that you'd like. (of course to be fair, you can do the same with the Alternative install of Ubuntu, but in my opinion, if you're going to do that, you may as well just use Debian anyhow. Ubuntu is great for desktops.)
Debian Testing even usually has newer software than the latest release of Ubuntu. Since Ubuntu usually takes a Sid dump after it makes a release, then synchronizes the packages for a few months, then does a freeze. That leaves a few more months for Testing to have more up to date software.
Ubuntu was literally created out of the frustration that Mark Shuttleworth had with Debian's release schedule. I don't really blame the Debian project for releasing the way they do. When Debian makes a release it's like the earth has quaked and good things have spewed forth into the universe. When Ubuntu makes a release these days, it's more like "Yay, let's play with the new GNOME. Well ok, that was kind of boring, with little new excitement. Oops, that bug wasn't fixed, and here are a few new ones."
I'm not saying Ubuntu is bad. But I'm just not the type of person to stand still as far as trying out new software. I just love to every day run Synaptic to see what is new in the repository and to see if I have any updates. Yeah, I know, I'm a sick man. But I've tried out and found out a more useful programs that way than I could count.
Member since:
2006-01-17
Of all the bug reports that I filled, none got fixed of even officially answered. Some have huge number of posts (like the one about extreme slow Gnome startup in Gutsy) but all you can find there is exotic ways to get around the problem, submitted by the users, that often don't work anyway.
I also am tempted to stop reporting bugs to Ubuntu.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-01-17
Member since:
2006-08-21