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Comment by faisal_ksa | Hacker News Reader

A game developer [1] once said that Linux "accounted for <0.1% of sales but >20% of auto reported crashes and support tickets." Unfortunately, this is the reality of Linux. It's very hard to support due to its fragmentation. It requires so much effort to work in a fast-changing environment that a few users even use. To make Linux easier to support, we need to make it as easy to develop as Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. We need a unified Linux platform with a friendlier developer experience. Something similar to Android (which has Linux kernel inside it).

[1]: https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760 Also, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18845205

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And another game developer [1]

> The report quality [from Linux users] is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a report? Feel sorry at best. You can’t really fix any bug unless you can replicate it, see it with your own eyes, peek inside and finally see that it’s fixed. And with bug reports from Linux players is just something else. You get all the software/os versions, all the logs, you get core dumps and you get replication steps. Sometimes I got with the player over discord and we quickly iterated a few versions with progressive fixes to isolate the problem. You just don’t get that kind of engagement from anyone else.

Notably, of those bug reports, fewer than 1% (only 3 bugs) were specific to the Linux version of the game. That is, over 99% of the bugs reported by Linux gamers also affected players in other platforms. Moreover (quoting from the OP):

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav... also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978086

and on zoom itself https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2022/01/zooming-in-on... also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29982954 "Zooming in on Zero-click Exploits "

the researcher used the Linux client to do the RE work... so I guess it's not just for 'bug' but also for free security audit! (2 CVE were reported)

I have no doubt that Linux users are awesome at reporting, debugging and finding problems. Also, they tend to be tech-savvy. So reporting bugs are not a big deal for them. Unlike most average users.

My argument was about how hard it's to develop and support software for Linux. Not about the users. You have to admit that Linux (due to its fragmentation) is a nightmare to support. And it has a very small users base to justify putting the effort to support all Linux distros and all desktop environments and hardware configurations and Wayland and Xorg ...etc.

I like Linux, and I wish I could use it all the time. But to be honest, it's more work than what I'm willing to do.

I'll agree that your argument that making linux apps easier to write deploy is a good goal. Its not an easy thing when you have a bunch of different windowing libraries (GTK, QT..) a whole host of desktops, multiple distribution channels (flatpack, snap, apt-get...) ususally computing platforms converge on something common, but I haven't seen it in linux. I wonder if I was writing a application for linux, where would I start?

It is a little of chicken and egg problem. Not a lot of users on linux, so not worth writing software for it. Users see there is not a lot of software and might go somewhere else. But there is enough. And most of it is a little buggy and free. Some of the applications are just great (blender, kritta). The core OS is rock solid though.

I've been using it as my home desktop and honestly linux on the desktop is pretty great.

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