Newbie question about debugging and troubleshooting

[Borden Rhodes]

Good afternoon, all,

Despite the reported robustness of Linux and GNU, things
break all the time on my Ubuntu Dapper box.  I want to help
the effort by reporting the errors, troubleshooting, and
possibly rewriting code, but I don't feel confident enough
to submit bug reports or troubleshoot.

Basically, I'm curious if there's a good reading list out
there for bug hunters and troubleshooters (as opposed to
hackers since that implies coding, which I'm not quite up to
yet).  In other words, if something goes wrong on my system,
how do I submit a useful bug report that hackers can trace,
reproduce, and ultimately fix? (as opposed to get all red in
the face and say "Subject: HELP PLZ!!!! Body:Foo doesn't
work!!! Ubuntu sux!!! Running 1.5GHz laptop.  Make it go
away now!!!!" which I see far too much of on most help
forums and many bug reports)

With thanks in advance,


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