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I wonder what percentage of the Linux users making these reports are already professional IT people in some capacity. I’m not convinced that it’s “the open source way” causing this to happen, but instead suspect it’s “the experienced engineer way”.
While maybe not professional IT people but Linux users are quite known to be passionate about finding solutions. It’s quite recent that you can have a hands off experience with Linux, it was always a tinkerer’s OS before.
I remember in high school having friends who were going crazy at the chance to be the one who could solve an OS issue, like an IT medal of honor.
You could argue that these two are very closely related things.
That’s exactly what I am arguing. If you have a Venn diagram of IT professionals and Linux users, I’m sure the overlap would be a lot greater than that of IT pros and Windows users. It follows that a Linux userbase is where you’d see a disproportionate number of people filing exceptional bug reports.
You reminded me about this crazy stuff where people with objdump made game 35% faster.
Holy shit, lol. I’ll read that more closely later. My head’s not in a space to appreciate assembly instructions right now. Somehow I’m not surprised it was Factorio people either.
They are so enlightened in optimizing processes, that they optimized factory optimization simulator.
IT professional here, can confirm, Linux is superior and my choice of os.
… despite my work being mostly Windows Server.
Also: IT professionals usually have some experience and/or start out with Help Desk (hell), where you quickly learn what is and is not a good issue report.
This is pretty US centric thinking. Linux doesn’t have licensing. That means it’s used extensively in other countries, especially poorer ones. Some countries entire governments use it. It’s pretty huge in India too. Africa. Places where common folk, not IT professionals, use it but either have rough or no Internet and aren’t communicating in English, especially not GitHub.
A majority of the users being professionals doesn’t mean your hypothetical kids in Ghana aren’t using it, or that Indian developers aren’t filing good bug reports. You’re accusing me of advocating a problematic worldview you’ve created for me.
Wow, a bit touchy. I didn’t indicate that your world view was problematic. Just US centric. Was not in any way implying some morals to the debate.
Simply stating facts that not all, arguably not even a majority are IT professionals, except perhaps in the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you know any Linux users that aren’t IT professionals? If I know any, it’s because they’re the children of IT professionals
I’ve been using GNU+Linux since 9th grade because that’s when I got a computer. My parents have absolutely nothing to do with computers. What got me there was simple lack of understanding. I barely knew what OS was, but I needed to get one. And soon after, I misunderstood Windows as another distribution, so I went with Linux Mint.
I just had good luck.
Since daycare. My dad had to do with computers.
I’m an actuarie and a Linux user at home. At work I’m forced to use excel but I do everything I can on python.
So your job is problem solving, you write code in Python, and you’re a Linux user? My friend, you’re one job change away from being a data scientist.
Actuaries probably get paid more than data scientists. But that’s based on a sample of one: my brother is an actuary and I’m a software dev who works with a data scientist.
I think Microsoft recently introduced Python support in Excel, so maybe you can combine both.
It’s tied up with their azure cloud service and I kinda combine both already with pandas.read_excel() and DataFrame.to_excel().
As far as I know, the only thing that the new python integration helps with is that users don’t have to install Python or have to know how to use pip to install packages like pandas, because Python doesn’t run locally. It is neat how you can visualize data and show it inline with the Excel document though. My industry is very regulated, so we won’t be able to use it since the data you pass to Python goes to Azure for processing
They did
I ran across this in another thread yesterday. Sounds like you might think it’s as cool as I do!
Myself. I’m just a hobbyist.
Teeeechnically I’m hobbyist too now.
Me ! I’m a more recent Ubuntu user . But used it alittle in highschool over 10 years ago . Both my parents can’t even use a computer . But I had a really good tech teacher who handed out Ubuntu CDs to who ever wanted one and helped me learn to program .
I’ve been running Linux in one way or another since ~2007, a good 6 years before even considering working in software development. So I guess it was the other way around for me haha. Parents couldn’t be further from the field.
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Pilot turned woodworker here. Been using Linux for 10 years. Granted, my father was an IT guy…who’s career had nothing to do with Linux, he’s a Windows Server/AS400 guy.
A quantum physics professor, also I’m only a hobbyist.
I know 2 of them. Both are my grandparents.
I am not an IT professional and neither is my dad. I discovered linux through virtual machines on the cloud that you can connect through vnc and fell in love with the commandline.
Yes, I do.
Not an IT guy, just a dude that got tired of the Windows blue screen of death back in the day and discovered Linux many years ago as an alternative. I can’t code to save my life, but I know enough to use GitHub to report bugs I encounter. It can be time consuming and tedious but when I help alert others that know how to fix the problem I’ve helped in a way that gives me a little bit of pride that I always cherish knowing I’m giving back to the community.
The kind of people that would play a game called Delta V are probably engineers or people that like technical stuff.
It probably also helps the report rise to the level of “exceptional” if the reporter understands anything about the backend. If you don’t know what your even looking at its hard to explain tech specifics in detail about it.
I am not tech savvy and I had to report a bug at work for a website/program I have to use. My report was basically “X isn’t working [picture of x not working]”. Microsoft started asking me about my license number and something called RLS…I don’t know any of that. I don’t even know where to find that. I can barely Google that. I took 7 page clicks and 10 minutes just to submit the bug in the first place… My bug reports are shit because I dont know what Im looking at, an IT person probably would have included most of the info they were asking for in the original report.
If that means “row-level security” like I think it does and you’re reporting a bug as an end user, it’s ridiculous they’d even expect you to know that. It’s not fun but when you’re a programmer talking to a user, you need to ask the right questions to get at what you need to know, basically by inference, or by getting steps to reproduce the error yourself. That was not the right question. They fucked up, not you.
Thank you, this comment made me feel a lot better that I maybe wasn’t just being flat out incompetent right out the gate. Their questions made me feel pretty stupid and I appreciate your suggesting that its somethings I might just not have been exposed too before as my job is very not tech centric.
As a developer, all I ask for is a description of what happened, what you expected, and details on your configuration (OS, browser, hardware). It would be even more awesome if you could provide a set of steps to reproduce it, but that’s not necessary.
But honestly, a bad error report is usually more useful than no error report. I’ll probably disregard it if it doesn’t have much info, but if I see a lot of similar reports, I can glean info from them to get an idea of what went wrong. But if you have the above, that can mean the difference between a fix being done really soon or me needing to wait for more info.
Software engieneering has engieneering in it, so… But also linux exposes a lot of useful stuff by default or really easy to enable.
Probably both culture and that people who use linux are literate part of humanity. Or have one in close proximity.
This matches at least my personal behaviour. I’m a programmer myself, so if a game or application has a bug I’ll instantly start thinking about what could’ve caused it and what data would be useful. It’s advantageous for me because the bug may be fixed, and (hopefully) advantageous to the Dev because they get the information they need to fix it. It doesn’t always work though. At one point I sent an entire stack trace and all kinds of debug info to an app developer. I got the response that they’d look into it, but nothing ever comes of it. I’d accept it if they just admitted that it’s not worth their time, but somehow that’s also too hard to say.
Can you get a PE license in software engineering? Serious question
Edit: PE = professional engineer.
In most parts of the United States the title “engineer” or “professional engineer” is a title with legal requirements & responsibilities in the same way calling yourself a medical doctor or lawyer would be. Folks with the credentials to be a professional engineer are tested & licensed by the state to practice engineering, similar to the way the bar or medical board would vet lawyers & doctors.
The dude certifying the structural plans for the bridge you drive over every day is in this category. Same with other categories of critical engineering from the fields of chemical, electrical, mechanical, civil, environmental, etc.
That said, TIL software “engineers” aren’t part of this group. Maybe they should be
Sorry, what’s a “PE”?
A credentialed professional engineer.
I thoght about another kind of PE.
Reminds about scene from cartoon(EqG to be exact) where character that often perceived as light-headed or just dumb is asked while solving problem on a blackboard and replies “Advanced physics? I thought they really ruined PE”.
No. That’s an exam for computer hardware engineering, not software.
There used to be a software engineering PE exam, but it was discontinued in 2018 due to lack of interest.
(I regret not taking it when I had the chance.)
A computer engineer is something else entirely. Basically, they often work with electrical engineers to write low level drivers or something, and rarely do much in user space. Software engineers are the opposite.
I would argue that software architects are closer to engineering.
I’d argue that open source projects attract experienced engineers and give them a reason to report bugs
Thats pretty much my argument when people say “There are more bugs on Linux than Windows! Linux bad!”.
No, there are not more, there are more found. There are just as many (or more) on Windows, but never found or properly reported. Which is a bad thing.
There are more bugs reported. That makes all the difference.
People used to closed source everything are trained to eat shit and find a workaround.
Hi, Micro$oft Community Advisor Alicia here!
I’m sorry to hear that your software occasionally crashes. Trying some of these steps may help you:
- Go to Windows Update and search for the latest drivers
- Run ‘sfc /scannow’ in command prompt
- Reinstall Windows
Please mark my post as “Answer” if this helped you solve your problem! Thank you!
Jfc every goddamn time I need to fix something on my work laptop this is the exact (and only) response I find
I told them I couldn’t get the Microsoft store to open and they told me to open the Microsoft store, what a bunch of morons. Ended up just reinstalling even though it was probably just a library issue.
Duh, you just have to get the Microsoft Store app from the Microsoft Store app!
This is a good point and one I think explains this phenomenon well.
Linux users are more willing to report bugs because they actually get fixed. Especially when the bug report is extremely detailed.
Some time ago all the tech “news” headlines where “Linux is less secure than Windows, look at all the CVEs open !”, well yes Linux has tones more CVE reported because anyone can audit the code, bugs are discovered and reported, people are informed and can put mitigations in place, unlike with Windows…
Also, statistically, a lot of Linux users are more technically minded and capable of identifying and reporting issues. This will naturally lead to higher reporting numbers, skewing stats.
Linux users are participants. We choose purposely this OS, proactively download, install and configure it on our computers, we chose it because it’s FOSS, and we are happy to report bugs because we have the hope it will eventually get fixed for our own benefit. We all know that Linux strives because we are few (or not so few) to care about our OS and any help counts even if it’s just reporting a bug. This mindset extends to the whole FOSS ecosystem and even some proprietary SW like games ! Because we want those games to run well on Linux and therefore report bugs to developers. And this is why I love Linux and FOSS so much. It’s wonderful :)
The other thing is companies care about CVEs as they use Linux to run their critical infrastructures.
I am sure companies care about CVEs in Windows and other proprietary SW as well. They can only wish they get found, disclosed and fixed.
Of course they do, but their are not big in number and market share. Maybe « Almost all world wide deployed critical infrastructures runs on Linux » is a better statement.
Exactly. It goes the same way in development too. People who say XYZ lang is better than Rust because “you get so many compile errors” suffer from the same misconception: Just because the errors aren’t immediately obvious doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
I always always write strong feedback and extensive bug reporting for games. Doesn’t matter the platform. However, my daily is Linux and my daytime job is director for cloud eng and ops which is all linux distros. We write and manage massive nix fleets. Shit my career started writing and doing linux kernel work. It really made me appreciate good feedback and extensive reports on bugs.
BTW I use templeOS
Based and holy pilled
How are you posting with no network stack?
Power of Christ compels my packets
The packets are actually data hidden in unleavened bread.
Doublybased and extraholypilled
That doesn’t surprise me.
Linux users are biased towards higher technical expertise, and they have a different mindset - most of the software that we use is the result of collaborative projects, and we’re often encouraged to help the devs out. And while the collaborative situation might not be true for game development, the mindset leaks out.
And this is one of the reasons why we should continue buying indie games and supporting indie devs!
I’ve never once touched the logs button until I used linux. Over my time asking for help with anything wrong on my machine I’ve been asked to provide logs, replication steps, what went wrong and what’s supposed to happen. This has trained me to be a good reporter and sometimes these issues help me fix them myself. Thank you Linux community for providing these skills. This isn’t gaming industry specific but even with things like protonvpn, vmware, virtualbox, and stuff on Arch I use.
Part of it too is that logging on Windows is just dogshit. No one uses event viewer so it’s not like the end user even knows where to look for logs, and most of the shit in there is like"lol computer crashed and idk why go fuck yourself"
TIL
Some games have such community, that it treats life as this game. For example community of certain factory optimization simulator was so enlightened, that optimized it and made 30% faster.
What a provocative anecdote!
… Or not provocative
But if too many Linux users now have a lot of games to play the development of all softwares will grind to a halt.
My only problem with reporting bugs in a game, despite knowing how to report a bug and playing a lotta games, is that I don’t always have the knowledge a thing happening is a bug and not the intended design. It’s not like I, as a regular every day player, have insight into what was supposed to happen that would indicate a bug.
Obviously a bug like my guy doesn’t jump despite pressing the jump button is pretty easy to recognize. But how am I to know the damage calculation is fucked up when I’m not told what the formula is supposed to be?
That is still extremely valuable feedback.
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
If it looks like a duck, swims like a dog and barks like a dog but I am still telling you it is a plain old duck, there is a miscommunication between me as a game developer and you as the player.
Is something surprisingly different than elsewhere in the game? If so, it’s probably a bug.
I remember when Elite Dangerous was still in beta, there was a bug where System Authority Vessels would label you a criminal upon attacking verified out-of-system bounties on the victim and attack you. So many players thought that was intended, like there was a “corrupt cop” system in the game until it was actually fixed. 🤦♂️
I really liked the idea that could be a possibility; unfortunately the fact that firing back at the “corrupt” cops just increased your bounty, which is what showed me that it wasn’t intended.
Despite being just 5% of the population…
linux desktop users are up to 6 or more percent i believe.
I think part of this that I’m not seeing talked about, and perhaps confused for “more tech savvy users”, is just the user hostility of Windows.
9 times out of 10 when a Linux app or game crashes I get a verbose error and more often than not one that I can simply copy and paste.
9 times out of 10 when Windows, or much of windows software, crashes it gives some random number or code and in a window I can’t even copy and paste out of.
My skill level doesn’t change. Linux just isn’t user hostile in nature making it easy to search for fixes and report issues. Where as on windows I can’t summon the care or effort to manually transcribe the error so I can then do something with it.
Acksually most Windows error dialogs can be selected and by pressing Ctrl+C will copy the error displayed which you can then paste into Google.
Not sure what windows apps you’re using but in my 20+ years IT that has absolutely, in most situations, not been the case.
If the interactive session is still up, just screenshot it and OCR the image. Takes a few seconds, but it’s still easy. Win+S, select the area, paste into OneNote, right-click copy text.
Not sure what windows apps you’re using but in my 20+ years IT that, in most situations, has been the case.
Clearly I am clevererer than you
I would report so many more bugs if there was a way to do so easily, in app, without having to create an account somewhere or signup to some website or specific forum. Give me a one-click “report bug” box and I’ll do it. BG3 did this well.
BG3 did everything well, no surprises there
Bc linux users are not only more tech literate on average, but also have more of a sense of community and shared responsibility. Yeah, if we get annoyed by something, we know we’re not the only ones, and if we can’t fix it ourselves, we tell the ppl who can. You don’t just assume it will always be broken, or assume a future update will magically fix it.
Real nice unique looking game too. Gameplay is good but the look and feel you can tell was a lot of effort and thought and love. Definitely glad I made the purchase especially after seeing this post. Cool dev
Probably those 3 downvotes are from people who did not read past headline
No it’s the 3 guys who reported a platform specific bugs on unsupported platform :D
actual BSoD on my win11 yesterday. a… bar?
You don’t need logs because in Windows 95 they made a tool that always 100% diagnoses and fixes the issue and it runs every time dispite never actually returning a fix or error code.But wait there’s more here’s a hex code to some memory allocation rather than creating a reference library in human so you can search forums where the only advice is reformat or don’t worry guys I fixed it.
But you are not allowed to look at the actual run time logs as we’re a polished environment.
Windows 95;
bought my first Gateway PC when Windows 95 came out. Lockups every day drove me to Slackware install from a dozen floppy set I d/l’d. Mac OS 8.*/9 was no better. OS-10 brought apple back from the dead. wanted to buy stock, was/am poor
