Questions about Linux Mint and this list

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Peter Flynn wrote:
>Little Girl wrote:
 
>> 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.

Yeah. I came across a difficulty recently while filing a bug on a
system issue for which I didn't have a package name. I was rescued
by some nice person on IRC, but it would be nice if they offered us
the choice of "unknown" from now on rather than smacking us into a
brick wall when faced with such a question.

>Try actually /reading/ the page at
>https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Oh, heck no. That's horrendous. A girl could have nightmares
attempting such things.

>> 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.

Oh. That's really unfortunate. It's also impossible to fully protect
against, because the written word is even more easily misunderstood
than the spoken word and we humans are even good at getting that
wrong.

>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.

I think they don't mind tests that are done on older hardware.
There's a whole world of all kinds of hardware out there and you'd be
representing your corner of it. As long as the software can run on
your hardware, I'd figure it's valid. Not only that, but you'd be
providing desperately-needed variety to their testing landscape.

>> 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.

There are good arguments for both sides of that debate. I'm guilty of
often hanging onto operating systems for way too long, but there are
advantages to having the latest and greatest, especially when it
comes to security.

Also, the bugs that make themselves known after an official release
get lots of attention - not just from developers, but also from other
users. Even if it takes the developers a long time (sometimes never)
to fix them, other users will often come up with work-arounds.
There's far less support for outdated software, with most requests
for assistance simply being met with a recommendation to upgrade.

>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.

That sounds like another glorious bug. At least it happened during
the installation, though, so you'd have that moment to potentially
decide to go with something else.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.