Has anyone here used Linear? Looks interesting
...which is literally the highest praise I have ever given and probably ever will to issue-management software. They correctly realize that we mainly want to not notice the software, which is something that every competitor gets wrong.
What I can't figure out is how they possibly got funding in the reddest of red oceans with a pitch that couldn't have been much more than "we'll make Jira but not suck" (that's essentially all it is), but I'm glad they did.
My biggest complaint is that they don't believe in email notifications. They have a very basic "catch up digest" but it comes in very slow and doesn't appear at all of you happen to look at Linear at the wrong time (because you are "active" and so clearly don't want a notification). So it is easy to miss stuff unless you are constantly checking their inbox.
It also has a bit too much structure with projects/tasks/subtasks which I find is less useful then just dependencies as you often want to break up a subtask but it doesn't really support that. But it does have raw dependencies so you can just use those even if they are quite basic.
But overall it is fine. Which is also the best thing I've ever said about an issue manager.
There are some drawbacks. Linear is highly opinionated about some stuff. I happen to think most of their opinions are sensible, so that doesn't bother me, but it's explicitly not a general purpose replacement for Jira.
I'm pretty impressed with their new developments. This article shows they are thinking about issue tracking from first principles, which is helpful. This triage thing is definitely something we've been struggling with, and something that most other issue trackers do not deal with well at all. We've been a customer for about a year now, and we're constantly seeing steady improvements. Recently upgraded to the top tier package, and I had a minor scare because I did not realize it was going to be billed annually (it mentioned a monthly price with 'billed annually' under it but my brain wasn't braining very well when I clicked upgrade), so I sent an e-mail asking about it, and they got back to me quickly, with a proper in-depth, human sounding response. I just love being in contact with an actual human, and not feeling like a number in an arbitrary system, even though given their scale I must be.
So two thumbs up from me.
They have been incredibly focused on improving the product in ways that are visible and get uptake from me immediately. Its one of the few pieces of software where I want to read the release notes everytime.
If I worked at a shop with less than 200 employees, its the no brainer choice.