Why does eveyone hate sending in reports?

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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You know, ever since I started computers I’ve always sent my error reports to the developer of the OS. Back in the days of DOS, hell even my days of Win ME, XP, and Vista. Because how else are they gonna know the problems if we don’t send in error reports.

But lately, with the advent of Windows 7, 8.1, 10, and even I’ve noticed in Linux especially, why does it seem most people hate the idea of sending in error reports?

I feel it’s the responsibility of anyone who is a proponent of any operating system, but especially Linux, that error reports are sent back in. And most decent Distros give you a handy little tool to do so.

I don’t understand it. I mean, everyone I assume who’s using Linux, wants Linux to succeed? Yet, the idea of sending in info about your error and the hardware it happened on, seems to be a HUGE faux paux in the Linux community. Especially with Canonical implementing the whole automatic information sending back thing.

Why wouldn’t you want the developers knowing how many machines the operating system is installed on, or the various configurations people are installing their operating system on?

Hell, I saw a video today from the Linux channel Switched to Linux, where he basically advocated turning OFF error reporting for security purposes. I mean, if you’re gonna be a proponent of the expansion of Linux, why in the hell would you advocate getting rid of the one means of letting the developers know how their operating system is doing on certain hardware, and curtailing their efforts to being able to make changes so their product, works better and more reliable on said hardware combination?

All I see out of all of this is that the developers get a chance to make Linux better, and more stable, so that more people would want to switch. Making Linux a more common system, and becoming what I’ve always heard Linux people talk about, superior to Microsoft Windows.

Am I missing something here? I really would like to understand. Because from my perspective, it’s looking like people just want Linux to be an elitist thing. And stay small, so they can lord themselves over other people cause they have something niche.

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i dont mind sending error reports when i can replicate the bug but if its a one off thing i just dont bother. and i dont use the built in tools either. i dont mind telling you what hardware i am using but i do have an issue with you scanning my machine and pulling god knows what else. ( its not that i dont trust error collection services but i dont trust what i cant see.) the level of user trust has been broken by Microsoft canonical and others. app developers i dont trust off jump ( level of trust for misuse and abuse is near zero)

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It because they usually don’t have a way to send just the error reports. For windows at least its other telemetry.

Whenever I get a crash in Firefox I usually send the reports.

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Not elitist at all - its purely an issue of controlling what leaves my PC for me.

If I am going to send something to a developer, I need to be able to review it on my own terms when I have the time to understand what’s going out.

It could end up in a public bug-report. It could end up in a DB that gets scraped later. I cannot predict. So, I don’t leak out info if I don’t have to.

All MSFT has done for my perception is prove my previously existing concern for allowing packets to leave without my explicit knowledge and consent.

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To protect my privacy, I don’t want to provide any information to anyone of any kind ever, and I go to a fair amount of trouble to avoid doing so. My computer, my choice.

That said, Canonical’s approach to telemetry is perfectly fine. It’s opt-out, but they go out of their way to inform their users about the choice and they can turn it off with a single clear switch.

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Because they want their time not bothered by systemD fucking up and crashing something internally that has nothing to do with userland, and want their cat gifs and my little pony prons untouched and undisturbed.

Seriously, its just that popups are annoying. Thats why automatic reporting and cron exists.

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I get that vibe from people, and I think it’s a privacy thing. Developers make a statement about what their reports contain, but some people don’t trust it.

That said, I always try to send error reports when I can.

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If you are going out of spec on Linux adding other repos and stuff and some distro is crashing well no point in sending IMO. And that’s 90% of the time how I use Linux.
Windows is cancer anyway if a multi billion company can’t fix it’s shit then they can go fuck off. It’s my daily and stuff is just borking itself weakly at this point…

However i do see potential in program/game crash reports and i personally fill and send them. Again on a supported unmodded OS/distro.

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Because MS doesn’t do QAQC anymore I don’t bother.

On Linux I will normally email my report or let them know in IRC.

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  1. Privacy. It takes effort to sanitize the outgoing info, or verify the automatic sanitization.
  2. Bugginess/crashes/delays. The bug reporting tools themselves often don’t work well and I run out of patience when I’m in the middle of something.

Otherwise I wouldn’t mind sending bug reports to help and/or make devs aware of issues.

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No offence OP but the thread is flawed, because it’s simply not even remotely accurate. At least not on linux systems (for the most part and l1t tech is actually a good example of showing that)

Now to the point, most users will find a way to report issues on linux. Will they also do that on ms & google systems? Probably not no. It’s known that in ms, apple & google environments most probably won’t want to deal with or report any kind of issues (if they even know how)

Let me elaborate a bit: Ubuntu users for example are known for helping out canonical and same goes with red hat etc. This is still kind of mainstream and there are enough users willing to support.

Go deeper than that, and the reports will most likely quiet off. There are also users that see reporting as a security issue and they should. Because most often, modern reporting contains so much information that it could baffle some as to the extent of information in a reported issue, at least that’s my take on it

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The reason I do not send in bug reports, is just how most bug reports work. You spend to much time find out where to send a bug report then you create an account, and so on and so on, till I give up.
MS OS 10 is just a very large steaming turd.
If these company’s want a bug report, make an icon in program or app, click on app the app finds all things like logs that the computer makes, click on the right log write down the problem, hit send, AND MOST OF ALL DO NOT STEAL ALL MY DATA.
Company’s want our bug reports, but they make me do all the work, then they reward me with 50 cookies and or all my data taken from my pc. This may not be what all company’s are doing, but after filling out a bug report, I should not feel the over whelming urge to give my pc a major cleaning inside outside and all around.
Make it easy, and let me provide the only info I want you to see, and I will send in bug reports.
There maybe some that do this, but because the most I see is just bad, I leave them all alone.

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Can you give an example of how to report a bug for Linux.
Give a step by step and how many places to click to submit a bug report for Ubuntu lets say.

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I can give you many, will i? No. Now it also depends, because enough people use the relevant forums to the distro they are using. Which seems to be the more effective route. Especially for the ASAP questions.

I wouldn’t know much about Ubuntu anymore. Can’t even remember the last time i’ve used it. Neither would i want to. The userbase of it is enough to keep both myself and whole lot of others away.

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Ubuntu has a good bug report page giving detail.
Do not us Ubuntu myself.

Here is there page
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs
Someone will have to report how well this program works from Ubuntu Launchpad

Have a day

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This topic needs a poll to see just how many people dislike sending in bug reports.

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I’m mostly talking about the pop up that you will get from windows, or mac, or linux, that says it detected a problem, or a program crashed and would you like to send a bug report.

I see MANY people just click the “x” and don’t. Every time I see that error window pop up, I usually send in the bug report. Because it could be helpful to someone in the dev team.

I agree, you see it alot more with Windows, but I have been getting to know some fellow Linux liking people in my area, and I have seen nearly ALL of them do the same thing. Or even turn off the bug reporting all together.

One would think that is a handy tool for the development teams of any OS. Yet, I see MANY people of various degrees of computer literacy do it.

Like I said again: I DO see more Windows people do it. But I’ve seen quite a bit of people online on YouTube, or in person do the same thing. i.e. just close the bug reporting.

I don’t see why. Back in the days of early Win 7, I got quite a few of them, and within weeks of submitting it got a response from Microsoft in the form of an update for my machine with a description of a fix for the problem I sent in. I think this even happened when I was running Vista, and maybe even XP.

I’ve even gotten updates to Win 10 that were the same thing. A patch, or fix for a problem I reported.

It just something I’ve been curious about.

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Well since it’s about linux. Have you tried clicking send? does it send and if it sends does it stop asking? That’s more of an issue than actually sending the report.

Nonetheless the reporting keeps asking again and again, for the same report or at least it did for firefox on linux, last time i tried. It kept going in circles whether or not an email was added to the report or if i pressed send or even picked the x in the upper right corner

Guess the reporting system overall could be enchanced in a number of ways, preferably adding a gui to it. Making it possible to report from desktop, that makes it’s way straight to developers. (they could add some filters for trolls etc.)

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If they allow me to read and edit the report I will send it every time. If I am not allowed to read the report I just asume that they are doing something that I will not like. They might be but they probably are not doing something wrong. I am just a fan of them being honest and most important is them being open about what is collected. Most of my problems end up being caused by me and fixed by reading the wiki or I use irc to get some help.

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It’d be a nice step up if there were standard formats for error reporting, e.g. sha1 of the binary and libraries, stack pointers, logs…

and a way to see what’s actually sent.