Are bug reports a waste of time?

[ianw1974]

I'm interested on your feedback if you've ever logged bugs, and had solutions, or not had solutions, or solutions that work but are not ideal.

 

This is one in particular:

 

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8532

 

Has been ongoing for a while. Whilst it has a partial solution of disabling ACPI or certain functions like SLEEP or HIBERNATE to get the machine to shutdown, how long have you waited for a fix?

 

I've not heard anything for over a month now. It seems, unless I bug them daily or even more than this, I won't see an ideal solution. Even if I bug them daily or more, what's to say they will respond. Nobody has the last month or so.

 

How can you see Linux progressing to a stage where it's a threat to Windows, if nobody can even be bothered to fix such a simple bug? How many other bugs end up like this one? Or am I being too harsh? Because, Microsoft get's paid money, whereas Linux doesn't get paid money to fix a bug. To all other users, it would be just normal that it should be fixed - not having to hassle someone all the time to do it.

 

Imagine, you are a newbie to Linux and nobody can be bothered to fix your bug/problem. How long do you think it would take to return to Windows again when you don't see anyone actually doing anything to fix it?

 

Anyone who knows me here, knows I'm a hardened Linux user - therefore this bug doesn't bother me that much since I would rather use Linux than Windows. But it would be annoying for many others - at least the way I see it.

 

Thoughts.....

[{BBI}Nexus{BBI}]

Fair question, but this is all assuming someone is free or has the time to tend to this bug.

 

You've pointed out you more or less have to bug them to get something done, at the same time x amount of people are doing the same over other bugs! There somes a point where you have to prioritise.

 

If the purpose of GNU/Linux was solely to attract users then I agree many newbies would be put off. As far as I know GNU/Linux is offered as an alternative to what's currently available (foibles and all).

 

If things like being able to shutdown without disabling other functions is important enough then choose an op/sys that gives you that (not directed at you, I'm just saying in general). What seems like a simple, easily remedied problem is more than often a little bit more involved.

 

Having said all that, I don't see why there are bugs that are 'years' old and still unresolved? :unsure:

[neddie]

Obviously a lot depends on whether the source of the problem is immediately determinable or if it needs to be passed from team to team to work out where it is. Mileage may vary.

 

However I'm still waiting for a bugfix for Mandriva 2008, which prevents me from connecting to my camera. The bugzilla entry (not raised by me) has been sitting there since October 2007 (see here) and still isn't fixed in the 2008.1 alphas I tried. It's not serious enough to drive me to another OS but it will certainly drive me to another linux distro if it remains unfixed when 2007.1 goes out of support.

[ianw1974]

I am continually switching distros, but I did find better bug support from Fedora - even when it came to kernel-related stuff than actually going direct to the kernel team themselves. Two other bugs logged previously didn't get a reply whatsoever, and then suddenly disappeared.

 

However, this used to work perfectly fine in a 2.6.12.x kernel - and then just stopped working in later kernels. Weird huh! :)

[iphitus]

It really depends on the bug, and who it's assigned to, and to an extent, the project.

 

Filing a bug though, isnt a waste of time. At the least it provides a record of the issue. And in most cases, it can be followed up with a solution. Sometimes, it's not even a bug, but rather an error on the user's behalf, and things can be sorted out quickly.

 

One of the problems with Linux, is people tend to pick an itch, and scratch it. So various people will work on what they feel like. If they feel like coding tonight, thats what they'll do. If they feel like closing bugs, that'll happen. Some developers just don't like bug trackers, they'll avoid them as much as possible because they mean more work and at times, lengthy discussion to determine the problem. That's why intelligently researched bug reports tend to get fixed quicker, less work for the developer, whereas "X doesnt work!!!" will get ignored for a bit, or just receive "More info".

 

It depends on the project too. For Arch, the bug tracker is important, central, and a great deal of importance is given to dealing with the bugs there. The kernel though, generally runs off mailing lists. Try mailing to LKML and/or the relevant subsystem mailing list, you might get some more visibility.

 

But I know what it's like. I posted a bug to NetworkManager well over 6 months ago and it has yet to be so much as triaged. Or another dead simple one which i posted to Mandriva which has been open for a similarly long amount of time.

 

And I'm guilty too, I've got some bugs assigned to me which are a tad crusty, simply because I don't deem them important, or I'm not motivated to deal with them. Though I did make an effort to get rid of a lot of them the other week.

[dexter11]

Are bug reports a waste of time?

Briefly no. Because if nobody cares nothing will change. If you at least report it than it will be recorded at least. If you participate in the solution it will be more likely solved.

From the bugs reported to Mandriva I have everything from "solved in days" to "reported a year ago and still opened". Of course I would like them all solved within days but I know that open source projects are usually underfunded. They don't have enough developers. They do what they can and so do I.

[scarecrow]

At least for my main distro, ArchLinux, Flyspray (= the bug collector) is of paramount importance for the health of the distro. Even the silliest of reports gets scrutinized there, and treated accordingly.

The longest a REAL reported bug lasted at the 3,5+ years I'm using ArchLinux was no more than 12 days, and I was annoyed (considered it as a very lazy reaction...).

Of course bugs which are due to software faults do not get squashed that easily, and may take a long time to resolve. But reporting them is absolutely the only way to see Linux progressing.