Installation • Re: Bug report complexity may rule out reporting.ap

Hello,

The post essentially had nothing to do with installation or Swap partitions; it was just a comment about the apparently highly complex and lengthy process involved in reporting a bug.

I assume that proper bug reporting is very important for the Debian project and it is the first step of a cooperative effort among Debian developers, maintainers, upstream authors and users.

Reporting a so-called "bug" requires the submitter to understand what he/she is actually dealing with (a real software malfunction caused by the software itself and not, for example, by the user or by a hardware malfunction).

The bug report should allow anyone to reproduce and confirm the bug. That's why people who are interested in making Debian better and want to help other users sometimes try to confirm technical issues with other users before filing a bug report. Mailing lists, this/other forums and probably many other resources can be useful in this respect.

I understand that it can be difficult sometime for some people, especially those with limited technical skills.

I also understand that some people who install Debian are only interested in the final result, a computer with an operating system and its applications running smoothly. I can undestand that these people feel that technical issues are not their concern.

Maybe it's much easier that it looked but that's beside the point also; the post is about how it looks. It would ideally be under a category such as "Site feedback".

According to the Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide, this is how an installation report should be sent, if you are interested: Send us an installation report.

Considering an average Linux install will install 2400-2500 packages on your machine, and most packages have distinct support channels, I don't file bug reports anymore either. It's not worth the effort.

In general, I have found Debian developers and maintainers to be quite responsive and most of them do a good and appreciated service, considering that they volunteer for the project.

I still get occasional emails for unresolved bug reports that I filed ten to 15 years ago. Why? because the devs didn't know how to resolve them and just left them hanging open...and I'm not keen on having to create a new account to report on every package I use.

A bug unresolved for 15 years ... that's a feature of a program! Kidding aside, it probably depends on the nature of the reported event, the quality of the report (very important!), its scope, its severity, and the attitude or assessment of the upstream (non-Debian) developers to deal with the reported problem.

My 2c.

Statistics: Posted by Aki — 2024-12-13 14:33

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