[thrwyoilarticle]

On the other hand, a Windows user is trained not to report bugs, especially in games. There's rarely a channel for reporting things & simple bugs go unfixed unless the community can work out some hack to do it for themselves. Games are abandonware monoliths on day one.

Secondly, if a program crashes in Windows and you try to force kill it, you get blocked waiting for the 'report' to be sent do Microsoft. Users are trained to click off this, so the OS will finally do what you asked it to.

[wildrhythms]

Do you think this has something to do with how many Windows programs (not just games) handle errors and crashes? Even Windows still uses the "Error code: <bunch of meaningless numbers>" scheme. I can't even think of the last time I even attempted to get crash logs for a Windows program; however, on Linux I can usually find where logs got dumped and debug without as much of a headache.

[II2II]

... and if you search for that meaningless number and manage to find a proper support page, you are usually left with as much information as you started with. I don't understand why open source developers are so much better in this respect, but the diagnostics usually leave me feeling as though I could solve the problem even when I don't have the technical skills to do so. Being able to comb through the logs to pinpoint the problem is a major contributor in this respect.

(The only counter example I can think of at the moment is Samba, and guess what ... it interfaces with Microsoft products!)

[_fat_santa]

I've noticed this too, compare any forum thread for a AAA Windows game and a Linux game, the Windows game thread is going to look like a bunch of chickens running with their heads cut off wondering why the 0x00423 error is causing the game to crash. Head over to a Linux thread and it's a usually a much more productive conversation because the errors are just clearer.

[mr_toad]

And when you can find a bug reporting channel the issue gets answered by an ‘MVP’, usually with some sort of inapplicable canned response, and then closed as ‘fixed’, without actually addressing the problem.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> On the other hand, a Windows user is trained not to report bugs

Decades of dealing with open source projects hasn't been much better in my experience. I don't usually bother to submit bug reports because my experience is that they'll be ignored for a few years and then closed unceremoniously.

[II2II]

That depends. I've dealt with open source products where I've submitted a bug report, submitted a bit of code, had the developer say that the patch wouldn't work for a good reason, then push out a proper fix nearly immediately. On the other hand, I have heard many stories that reflect yours. I suspect the size of the user base is a major contributor. Popular projects have many people submitting "bugs" that are little more than low priority (to the developer) feature requests.