Questions about Linux Mint and this list

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:09:32 -0400, Little Girl wrote:
>Peter Flynn wrote:
>>It's also good to run a potential bug past more experienced users 
>>first, to check that it really is a bug and not just a delusion.  
>
>Perhaps, but I'm more of a bull-in-a-china-shop when it comes to that
>and will dash off to file a bug report the moment an issue becomes an
>annoyance. Maybe I should try putting out some feelers first to see
>if others have experienced it or would consider it to be something of
>concern.

Hi,

the serious reply first.

It doesn't make sense to expect from all computer users to know without
any doubts that something is a bug and not a handling error or
not a grotesque feature or if it is a bug, to know what package is the
culprit for a bug and to expect from all computer users to rule out
that the issue isn't already reported to the Ubuntu bug tracker or
Ubuntu upstream's Debian tracker or the "real" upstream bug tracker,
before reporting it to the appropriate bug tracker which either is the
Ubuntu or the Debian or the software developers' bug tracker.

This is something that you partially can request from users of a
user-centric distro. If you expect this from users of a user-friendly
distro, than it actually means, that you aren't interested at all in
bug reports or...

...in Ubuntu's case I suspect that there is an interest in bug reports,
but Ubuntu experts are unworldly, not understanding what "normal"
skilled people are able to do.

As an example:

What next? If a user experiences a kernel panic, should the user build
an untainted kernel first and then start bisecting before reporting the
issue?

Why do I ask? Here we go: "This article has been written so that any
one at any skill level may go from start to finish successfully,
working through each section one at a time." -
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/KernelBisection

It's not expected that every user does it, but the thought that
everybody is able to do it is absolutely outlandish.

Liam, consider to ask your "technophobic mother" [1] to bisect a kernel.
It's possible for any one at any skill level, easy-peasy. It will
increase her self-confidence related to computer technology.

TLDR, the search option of my browser at least didn't find "taint", so
there is seemingly no need to ensure that the kernel isn't tainted.

At second the not quite so serious reply.

In the German idiom it's an elephant in a china shop. At a first glance
it doesn't make a difference which of those gracile animals we put into
the china shop, but it makes a big difference, if the second sentence is
about "some" feelers, since a bull has got "some" things on the head
that can be easily confused with feelers.

Here where we often see elephants in china shops, we say that we put
out feelers, too. Nobody does confuse one long nose with some feelers
and there's nothing on an elephant's head that can be confused with
feelers.

It's probably wiser for you to put out some whiskers instead of your
bull's horns.

Regards,
Ralf

[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2022-July/307914.html