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by ok123456 1705 days ago
Wine's crash handler provides a lot more details and diagnostic information if you know what you're looking at. "Oh RAX was 0 and de-referenced. That looks like a trivial memory error in SomeComponent.dll+0x302223."

Other platforms are infantilized: "Oopsey doodle that crashed :(. Look for problem online? Oh no solution found. Sorry about that. Got it?"
1 comments
qayxc 1705 days ago
That's not platform specific at all. If your program spits out proper crash logs (which most games do), it's a matter of locating and examining the log file.

The "if you know what you're looking at"-part is pretty much nonsense as you're basically saying "if you are an experienced programmer with intimate knowledge of both the system and the hardware architecture".

This is not something a regular user should be expected to know. A good program should simply provide a proper feedback-channel and collect and send the appropriate information if the user choses to do so.

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ok123456 1705 days ago
>The "if you know what you're looking at"-part is pretty much nonsense as you're basically saying "if you are an experienced programmer with intimate knowledge of both the system and the hardware architecture".

Same thing.

> This is not something a regular user should be expected to know. A good program should simply provide a proper feedback-channel and collect and send the appropriate information if the user choses to do so.

Then why do all these bugs fall through the cracks on other platforms?

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qayxc 1705 days ago
> Then why do all these bugs fall through the cracks on other platforms?

Two main reasons:

1) Other platforms are primarily used by non-technical individuals who simply don't care about the OS and who more often than not are unable to tell the difference between bad software ergonomics, user error, and software bugs in the first place.

2) The Linux platform is built around the concept of OSS, where user participation and direct feedback are an essential part of the ecosystem. Most OSS has bug tracking and Wikis that describe how to report a bug and quick release cycles (e.g. fast feedback from the user's perspective). Linux users make a conscious decision to use Linux and some level of involvement in the OSS community is often part of that decision.

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ok123456 1705 days ago
It's not just the community mentality of the users. Just by raw numbers there are going to be more "technical users" running on other platforms because the number of Linux users is so vanishingly small.

Most of the people trying to game on Linux are "non-technical" with regards to being able to debug random errors in some random binary. You can only really assume they have enough skill to put an Ubuntu image on to a flash drive, boot it, and follow a few prompts.

The software tools are just better for locating, reporting, and communicating these errors are just better on Linux. Not treating your users like morons and giving users actual feedback about why something crashed instead of writing out crash reports to disk that never get sent anywhere is apparently a more effective way of tackling software defects.

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qayxc 1704 days ago
> Just by raw numbers there are going to be more "technical users" running on other platforms

Observation bias. The vast majority of desktop users in 2021 are found in a professional setting (offices, etc.). Those users don't use computers at home, whereas the vast majority of Linux users do.

> You can only really assume they have enough skill to put an Ubuntu image on to a flash drive, boot it, and follow a few prompts.

I'd like to see some statistics on that. Gaming has shifted to consoles and gaming on PC has been the domain of MS Windows for decades. Survey¹ says that >96% of users are on Windows and the few Linux gamers (~1%) are just as likely to run Arch as Ubuntu (0.26% vs 0.29%).

The choice of using Arch over Ubuntu is a strong indicator in- and of itself that the user made an informed decision (e.g. is tech savvy as opposed to "insert media and click 'next' a few times).

> Not treating your users like morons and giving users actual feedback about why something crashed [...]

As I mentioned that's not up to the OS but to the software in question. Also you're contradicting yourself here: on the one hand you argue that users aren't morons and have technical knowledge, while on the other hand you assume they're basically trained monkeys that can flash an image and follow prompts.

Which is it?

1. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

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