Launchpad learning curve and suboptimality
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Launchpad itself |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
This is my first fime using launchpad.net. I am experienced Unix sysadmin so I expected
things to be easy. Well they were not. Launchpad could be improved in several ways
1. First page of launchpad does not have any link to report bug. Especially
figuring out how to report a bug about launchpad itself took time.
2. Requiring user to already know the project name is a major hurdle. It should
be possible to report bug primarily by name of the binary involved.
In context of trying to add "Also affects distribution/
Bug #431975: downloading a torrent to an encrypted home partition hangs and uses 100% CPU
The URL is: https:/
3. Distribution menu lacks my distribution: LinuxMint12. Either the menu should
at all times contain all distribution names (impossible) or option "Other" should
be offered.
Given that LinuxMint is quite mainstream distribution, I am surprised to see it
missing from the menu. If it is missing because it is considered competition
and there is no desire to support it, then it should clearly say so and perhaps
point the user to the appropriate LinuxMint bug tracker.
4. The requirement to name a source package is quite onerous and difficult
for a user to satisfy (the page claims it is optional, but in practise it is impossible
to submit the page without it).
5. Clicking "Choose" brings up dialogbox. Since I think bug #431975 is a kernel
related bug, I typed in search area "kernel". This results
"Too many matches. Please try to narrow your search."
which is not helpful. While I understand that word "kernel" may match
gazillion things, I also think that "kernel" is the most succinct and accurate
way to describe the module I am trying to refer to. In fact it is impossible
to imagine any other way of describing it. How can I possible narrow the
search? A kernel is a kernel and there is nothing more to it.
Perhaps the search box could show at least first 100 results and have a way to
make negative searches so I could eliminate all the other clutter that
obscures the simple module called kernel.
6. Repeat (5) for keyword "init". There really is a Unix process called init and
there is no other accurate way to call it. It should be possible to find
"init" without getting confused with the gazillion "initialize" matches.
Reading the thread on https:/
"This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in a supported series, please file a new bug.
This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team."
7. The bug in question clearly is a serious and real bug. It also has not gone away (hence my
attempt to report it as still open on newer distributions). It is blatant disregard of
of the bug reporter's time and effort that a robot can nullify all work done
in reporting and tracking the bug.
Such automated mechanisms to close bugs that in reality have not been closed
do not contribute to quality in open source software. The robot may clean statistics,
but it also causes the bug to persist in real life as pressure is taken off the module
maintainer. This means focus shifts on new features that create even more bugs
rather than quality increasing. I'd rather have better quality software than more
buggy features.
I'll keep posting more suboptimality as I try to make my amendment to #431975
or report new bug.
Feature request:
8. Please support Single Sign-On in launchpad.net. In particular, I would appreciate
SAML2 support (but OpenID-Connect is also OK). I am even willing to pitch in
system integration effort - I am lead developer of zxid.org.
Cheers,
--Sampo
Changed in launchpad: | |
status: | New → Invalid |
Suboptimality #9
When trying to submit https:/ /bugs.launchpad .net/ubuntu/ +bug/913787 (eventually successful),
I first saw the list of potentially related bugs, clicked "No, I need to submit new bug",
then composed the bug and Submitted it.
I was then taken again to related bugs screen to see if mine was duplicate and apparently
my bug was not yet in the system. This is quite bad as I could have lost my valuable
bug report just due to some navigation error or bug in process (majority of online
shopping carts are lost due to too many steps in process and some step having
bug - by adding more steps you compound the chances of some bug manifesting).
I thenk clicked "No, I need to submit new bug report" again and I returned to the
composition screen (luckily the system did not loose my composition - I definitely
feared this would happen).
Evidently it is impossible to submit a bug whose summary line causes a bug to be
considered potentially related. I was forced to change the summary so that
it would not match any of the other bugs. In effect I had to make the summary
less meaningful just to work around the brain damage of the duplicate bug
detector. Thus your bug tracking system requires me to degrade the quality
of my bug reports. Now that's broken.
Also, given that I am a compentent Unix sysadmin and open source author myself,
I wonder if I really need to jump through all these hoops to contribute. Could you
flag me as competent user so all this could be avoided in future?
Cheers,
--Sampo