Questions about Linux Mint and this list

[Peter Flynn]

On 20/07/2022 18:05, Little Girl wrote:
> Hey there,
> 
> Peter Flynn wrote:
> 
>> I could file a bug report, but no-one else seems ever to have
>> noticed or mentioned it, so I'm not sure it's that important.
> 
> If you're willing to, please do. 

If I can work out how to do so from a non-Ubuntu system, I will.

> Most of us tend to not bother to file bug reports because it's often
> a hassle to do so, so you're currently a gem in a big pile of rocks.
It's a hassle because it's a complex business: there are a lot of 
different angles, and you have to deter the casual user who can't go 
beyond "it doesn't work". Unfortunately, in the process, it sometimes 
asks for information which cannot logically exist. Try actually 
/reading/ the page at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

> It's also possible that a bug report does already exist, but with
> different wording than yours, so you haven't found it. 

Very likely, and that's where the skill of the triage leaders comes in. 
Unfortunately they tend to use a different vocabulary from the users, 
because they are by definition experts in the field and the user isn't. 
  Finding out what the user means can often be difficult.

> I'll bet that's what's behind many of the ".... bug is related to..."
> flags that end up on so many bug reports.

Sometimes. But sometimes it's due to a misunderstanding. My antique 
enhancement request for Thunderbird is coming up for 20 years old, and 
spent half that time discussing the wrong thing because someone misread 
what the term "bounce" was being applied to, and thought the request was 
for something quite different.

> I thought I'd also add that any Ubuntu release (including all of its
> derivatives) doesn't get nearly enough beta testers

I had hoped retirement would free up some time to help with this, but 
all that talk about "spare time" is just a load of hot air. Plus my 
hardware is probably too old to be of any use in testing.

> As a result, it's always a good idea to consider any non-beta release
> to be beta-like in its behavior for quite some time (and I'm talking
> months here and possibly longer) while the developers find out and
> work on what they would have liked to have known about sooner.

Which is why I'm still running Mint 20.1, despite Liam's comment that I 
"ought to be" on 20.3 :-) These are production systems, not testbeds.

> I'm currently sitting on two rather glorious bugs in Kubuntu 22.04
> LTS, but the developers probably had no way of knowing that many of
> us would experience those until we did.

My favourite was the installer bug in the question on user location — 
you know the one with the map of the world and the highlight where it 
thinks you are — suddenly it showed Dublin as being in CET zone, when 
it's actually with the UK and Portugal on GMT. I started to file a bug 
but realised others had already done so, and I was told that the prime 
developer was actually based in Dublin so it would be fixed "very fast". 
Right. The bug was still there over a year later (now fixed). Not the 
dev's fault, either; someone had messed with the timezone data and I 
don't think the culprit was ever identified.

Peter