We are a family, we recently switched from Windows to Fedora KDE Plasma (Wayland). It was very, very, hard as we encounter many bugs and crashes (starting with the fedora installer, it took us 2 days just to install it as we faced 2 differents bugs). We nearly gave up, on one PC, but eventually succeded installing it. We are super impressed by the OS even if we faced quite somes bugs and crashes (including sevral full freezes that needed hard reboot), and some black screen after updates . So we want to contribute by reporting the bugs we encounter, but the current system makes it nearly impossible for uneducated like us. One PC had (and still has) many crashes, but we end up deleting the reports because the process is too confusing, fragmented, and invasive.
Here is a breakdown of the user experience issues we are facing :
Confusing âSplitâ Ecosystem (Two Apps for One Job) There seems to be two independent applications handling crashes: âProblem Reportingâ and âCrash Process Viewer.â
They both show the same crash, which is confusing.
One tries to report internally, while the other links to bugzilla.redhat.com.
But it seems none report anything. During crashed it soometimes (when it doesnât crash itself) says âreporting the problemâ then when we click on the issue : it says âreported: noâ.
It says âreporting the problemâ then when we click on the issue : it says âreported: noâ.
As a user, we donât know which one to use. These should be merged into a single, unified interface.
The âProblem Reportingâ App is Broken
High Resource Usage: This app consumes massive amounts of CPUâoften more than our web browserâeven when it seems to be doing nothing.
Obscure Settings: The âPreferencesâ (Workflow/Events tabs) are filled with jargon only an IT expert would understand.
Failed Automation: The only setting we understood was adding our Bugzilla API Key. We did this expecting it to automate the reporting. Instead, we click âReportâ and get cryptic messages like âNo matching actions foundâ and then âThis problem has been reported, but a Bugzilla ticket has not been opened.â
It then asks us to go to the website to provide information manually. What is the point of the API key and the âReportâ button if it doesnât actually open the ticket (like github apps often do)?
The Website Experience (Bugzilla) is High-Friction When we are forced to go to the website (seems they are several bug report website, we struggle to know which one):
Login Issues: The site does not remember our login. Even if we logged in 2 days ago, we have to hunt for our credentials again.
Impossible Categorization: We wanted to report a Chromium crash (drag & drop bug). The system asked us to âPick a Classification.â None fit. We tried âOther,â and still no category fit. We should not need to understand the package architecture to report a browser crash.
Privacy Concerns The system frequently warns that reporting will âpublish confidential information publicly.â it proposes to delete the sensitive info but the report is super long, and eveb if we take 10 min to read all we donât really know what is dangerous to share, so itâs not worth it. ((true?? We guess Sometime it says there is ânot enough infoâ but doesnât explain how to fix it without exposing our privacy. Asking a new user to doxx themselves (reveal private data) just to help fix a bug is too high a price to pay (and absurd as we chosefedor for privacy).
Suggestion: If you want users to report bugs, you must respect our time and privacy.
Automatization: It should be a one-click process. The system should automatically select the right category and pre-fill the data.
Sanitization: Confidential data should be automatically hidden/stripped.
Unification: Merge the reporting apps so the user doesnât have to guess which tool to use.
Until this is simplified, we (and probably most other users) will simply close the crash window and move on.
Ps: Finally, please know that we are well aware Fedora is built by volunteers donating their free time. We truly consider you all heroes for the work you do, and we hope our direct feedback doesnât come across as harsh or offensiveâwe only want to help improve this amazing OS!
Unfortunately, none of this will be fixed because nobody is paid to maintain this app any more. Itâs more or less dead. Workstation already removed it.
For the record, thereâs a few reasons for your understandable confusion:
The design of this tool and the system it plugs into has two levels of a problem being âreportedâ. A short, safe report is done automatically to ABRT Analytics - Summary . A more detailed report to Bugzilla, with a full backtrace and system logs, is not done automatically due to the complexity of generating it (especially in the past; itâs somewhat more simple now, with the invention of debuginfod) and the risk it may inadvertently contain private information. So when you see a page saying itâs ânot reportedâ, that means the vague, incomplete automatic report has been done so the system knows the crash exists, but nobody has done the manual full backtrace and report to Bugzilla yet.
The tool asks for a Bugzilla API key now because, for security reasons, Bugzilla no longer allows API access with a username and password. It used to ask for a username and password. When the policy change happened, this tool was already more or less on life support, so nobody had time to do anything more than the bare minimum to swap in a dialog that asks for an API key instead.
If things work correctly the tool should identify the crashing package and file the bug report more or less automatically, with just the prompt for you to provide any additional context you can and the request to look through the report for private information. Itâs unfortunately more or less impossible to make this any easier because itâs really, really hard to reliably predict what elements of a crash report (backtrace and system logs) might contain private information and what it might look like. The tool already has quite a lot of heuristics but we know theyâre not good enough, which is why it still has the prompt for you to look through manually. (This is one big reason the tool is dying; nobodyâs ever quite managed to come up with a convincing answer to how we make sure it doesnât result in people accidentally posting their passwords to public bug reports). It sounds like this didnât work out for you, but I canât quite understand from your post why not. For the record, youâd want to pick Fedora as the product and chromium as the component.
The high resource usage is most likely when the app is generating a backtrace for the crash. This is a resource intensive operation, especially for an app as big as Chromium. In fact, itâs possible some of your reporting problems may be because Chromium is a large and complex app - your system may not be able to generate a backtrace for the crash, which in turn means the tool wonât go ahead with the report.
Bugzilla does remember your login, but only for 24 hours. This is, again, something that was mandated by some kind of security review. It used to remember it for much longer. If itâs any consolation, this is how it works for everyone. I love signing in every day! (If youâre wondering why itâs so security sensitive - we share the instance with Red Hat, and the reports against RHâs commercial products from its customers can contain non-public information which they very much do not want to become public. So itâs quite sensitive from RHâs perspective.)
I think the split ecosystem thing is because Fedora KDE also includes KDEâs upstream crash reporter tool. Iâm not sure why it includes both, @ngompa might be able to help.
However, as you are a new family to Fedora - donât worry about reporting bugs at this time. Get the hang of your system first.
Feel free to ask us here on the forums for help.
You do seem to be experienceing more bugs / crashes than usual - with a bit of help from the team you might have a more enjoyable time.
Knowing how valuable your time is, we did not expect any response. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all our questions so thoroughly! I hope AI will support you in your efforts to compete against giants like Microsoft and Apple. It already feels like youâre close to winningâif you havenât already â just with your talent and your free time. Thanks again!
Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply â and for fedora ! We are very impressed by Fedora despite those difficulties (windows was far from perfect). Before trying Fedora we expected something much harder to deal with. Apart from few basic stuff (like cut/copy pasting files and folder or formating a sd card) itâs as intuitive and even much better. It surprising you donât get a higher share of user, maybe because some basic âwindows featuresâ were only introduced recently.