• BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
    1381·
    1 year ago

    I remember a gamedev complaining about this on Twitter but the outcome he came to was that he hated that Linux users submitted bug reports, stating the OS itself was broken and he refused to help any of them.

    • 0x0@social.rocketsfall.net
      59·
      1 year ago

      I remember threads like this from back when Valve was pushing Steam Machines. Won’t name names, but there were very successful developers throwing tantrums once the bug reports started to flood in. Many weren’t prepared to actually provide support and spent years regretting it (according to postmortems.) I managed to get a refund on one game after the developer’s Twitter rant went completely off the rails re: Linux being unfit for desktop. Weird that they were 100% fine with Linux when it meant getting my $15, $20, or $30. Makes you think!

    • leo85811nardo@lemmy.world
      33·
      1 year ago

      Good devs are good regardless of context, they may have their personal preferences but in the end welcome bug reports and feature requests, especially the helpful ones because it helps the project. Bad devs are dicks regardless of context as well, all they care about is review rate and other numbers appear in the scoreboard

    • buzziebee@lemmy.world
      51·
      1 year ago

      Yeah this article is a nice juxtaposition to that deranged rant. Hopefully if more game devs see it they’ll appreciate the Linux gaming community a bit more.

  • WatTyler@lemmy.sdf.org
    93·
    1 year ago

    Reflecting on my first year running solely Linux (as opposed to dual-booting), I think that this culture comes from the fact that, on Linux, problems can more often than not be solved. If not solved, then at least understood. When you want to change something on Windows, or something breaks, you have far less room to maneuver.

    When I was a Windows user, I’d barely ever submitted a bug report for anything, in spite of being very tech-literate. It felt hopeless, as my entire experience with the OS was that if a fix would come, it’d have to be done by someone else.

    Linux treating its users like adults, produces users who are more confident and more willing to contribute.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      19·
      1 year ago

      This is true. I also dont even know how to report actual Android bugs. On Windows its true, its simply a big “f you”

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        Android bugs go to the maintainers of that specific device or of the custom ROM installed on it.

        Using the unaltered version that was installed on the device when you bought it? Reports go to the manufacturer usually.

        Unless it’s a carrier branded version, like a Verizon or Tracfone provided phone, in which case bug reports go to them. But frankly, don’t bother, and for the love of all things holy spend a little more money and stop buying carrier branded phones.

        For custom ROMs, bug reports go to wherever the maintainers of that ROM ask bug reports be submitted. Usually Git, XDA forums, their website, or their Discord/Telegram channel. And fuck that last one, because hiding bug reports and other information in non-indexed places like Discord is making this more difficult for everyone.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
          1·
          1 year ago

          GrapheneOS, basically AOSP for the bugs of concern. So no, the reports would go upstream to Google I guess.

          Btw not everyone lives in the US ;D

    • 0xD@infosec.pub
      62·
      1 year ago

      You can do the exact same thing in Windows, just think of the SysInternals Suite and its power. It’s just that people on Linux expect problems, while the overwhelming majority of people on Windows/MacOS is using their device expecting it to work and if it doesn’t they go do something else or buy another device.

      Also this completely untrue notion that you cannot fix Windows or play around with its internals is very prevalent, to the point that it’s a meme, so people don’t even try.

      • Chais@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        1 year ago

        But I have to fight the stupid OS to give me useful information. I have to install 3^(rd) party stuff. By default you only get this useless error reporting tool. Even if you report an error your likely to never hear from anyone and the chance of the error being fixed is virtually nonexistent.

        On Linux the necessary information is usually readily available. The worst offender in my experience is Steam itself. You can get logs from games fairy easily. But if Steam misbehaves things can get more complicated.

    • Fedora@lemmy.haigner.me
      2·
      1 year ago

      Is it even possible to report bugs to Microsoft without paid support? I always come across that Windows community forum where every solution to a problem is to update drivers, run sfc /scannow, etc. I doubt anybody on that forum can relay problems to Microsoft staff.

      • icedterminal@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        The Feedback Hub was introduced to fix this gap in user reports for Windows. Microsoft does actively monitor this. They respond when necessary, merge topics, deny or approve bugs/suggestions, etc. For their software, such as Terminal or VS Code, you can use GitHub issues.

        Keep in mind, like most companies, Microsoft has guidelines on what employees can say when responding to any user feedback. This is why we typically see a lot of copy and paste. When it is more than that, wording is selective and you may not get more than one or two responses in total.

        I know of at least one employee on Reddit who participates every so often. https://www.reddit.com/user/jenmsft/

    • pixelscript@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      When it comes to closed-source software developed opaquely by for-profit corporations, particularly the huge, monolithic ones like Microsoft, I generally have the attitude that, if I do discover a problem:

      1. They won’t take my detailed report
      2. If they do take my report, it goes straight into a shredder bin (or a massive queue where low priority problems go to die, which may as well be the same thing)
      3. If they do read my report, then it’s likely something they already are aware of
      4. If they don’t know about it somehow, the issue is probably so low-priority and niche that it wouldn’t escape the backlog anyway

      Probably not nearly as bleak as I make it out. But when you can’t see the process, how can you tell?

      With open source projects, these things can all still happen, but at least the process is more transparent. You can see exactly where your issue is, and what’s been done to it so far, if anything. Other users can discover and vouch for your problem. And if the dev team takes pull requests, and you are willing, able, and permitted to contribute, you can make the fix yourself.

  • AzureDiamond@sh.itjust.works
    58·
    1 year ago

    Interesting take. I wonder if the amount of platform dependent bugs is generally that low for games. I’m a developer, but not a game developer. I would assume that platform dependent stuff comes into play a lot more, when using shiny new tech like direct storage, which is probably used more by AAA titles and less by indie games?

    • uis@lemmy.worldOP
      402·
      1 year ago

      You don’t get many platform-specific bugs if you use cross-platform libraries like SDL2 for OpenGL/Vulkan context creation and human interface.

    • Elderos@lemmings.world
      18·
      1 year ago

      I made games primarily for Windows which we also compiled for Linux. It is mostly input/output stuff, aka hardware issues. That is, audio issues, input issues, storage issues, dependency issues. Modern game engine mostly handle the rest. It wasn’t such a big deal to fix, but most gamedev lacked experience with Linux, and most projects are already over budget and late, so fixing Linux for an extra 2-5% of sales didn’t make much sense at small scale. Proton kind off fixed all of this tho.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
        7·
        1 year ago

        The difference is money. Vulkan is an incredibly terse spec compared to dx12. You’d think that would make it much more consistent to work with, but really, it’s all it can do to keep up with msft and IHVs who pour money into coaxing AAA devs to use dx12. Then, even when the app gets something wrong and causes issues for end users, the IHV just makes a special case in the driver to correct it, because having a big important dx12 title run correctly on their hw is important to sell units.

        Meanwhile, the same IHVs barely bother to support anything beyond the basic vulkan requirements, because it doesn’t gain them anything to do more. If a vulkan game experiences issues, IHVs don’t care because it won’t sell well anyway.

          • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
            3·
            1 year ago

            Yes, and the primary reason any of gaming on Linux is viable (steam deck, proton, etc) is due to Valve dumping money into it. AMD probably didn’t care about the miniscule number of chips they sold to Valve for the deck, valve just wanted a vendor who had the performance, and had decent Linux support.

            But Valve is the one eating all the vulkan costs that msft normally eats on the dx side. To be clear, it’s never out of the kindness of their hearts, it’s purely because a msft dominated gaming ecosystem on PC is steam’s biggest weakness. They don’t want steam on windows to reach the point of EGS on the apple store.

    • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
      131·
      1 year ago

      If you’re an engine developer, it’s a reasonably common problem.

      If you’re a game developer using a cross platform engine, it’s pretty uncommon, as the engine developer has already accounted for most of it.

      If you’re somewhere in the middle, it’s probably somewhere in the middle.

      It surprises me how many indie devs avoid some of the higher level / more popular engines for this reason alone. But I assume they just must enjoy that sort of stuff much more than I.

      • moon_matter@kbin.social
        7·
        1 year ago

        It surprises me how many indie devs avoid some of the higher level / more popular engines for this reason alone. But I assume they just must enjoy that sort of stuff much more than I.

        The problem with indie devs is purely a lack of knowledge and resources. They don’t feel comfortable testing and packaging binaries for distribution on Linux. A decent number of them are also self-taught and actually have almost no exposure to desktop Linux at all. So it’s actually a much higher hurdle than you think.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    33·
    1 year ago

    remember the other several occasions where developers hated actually getting feedback from these linux users cause they actually would have to fix their shit? but not many actually did

    cause i remember, they only care as far as money goes

  • hiddenSin@lemmy.world
    24·
    1 year ago

    Could we do crossposts? This one is in two of my communities. If it was a crosspost then it would be only one post. Less spam.

    • WindowsEnjoyer@sh.itjust.works
      7·
      1 year ago

      Arch Wiki is invaluable at this point.

      And I don’t mean just Arch Linux (BtwOS), I mean countless amount of sysadmins, platforms engineers, developers, SREs and so on that uses it.

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    5·
    1 year ago

    Great to see this perspective from a developer and it totally makes sense. I think the Firefox browser has encountered essentially the exact same thing. Linux support may be a strategic advantage for devs that embrace it.

    That does not mean that every developer will find the same thing though. Proton and Unity have many, many Linux specific ( or at least non-Windows ) bugs I am sure. It would be easy to bemoan these. It takes a different kind of mind-set to see working around these kinds of issues as valuable. Even rarer are devs that take the opportunity to address bugs in the underlying tech ( outside the game - eg. in Proton ).

    I suspect though that many non-Windows bugs are actually due to defects in the game. They are just not manifesting yet or in the same way. The fact that Linux exposes these is again an opportunity in the way the author of this post points out.

    In other words, cross-platform deployment is an opportunity for a stronger product. Access to an engaged community with strong communication skills and technical chops is a bonus.

    Hopefully more devs start to see the world this way. Great article.