You’re a frequent GNOME user, and want to help out? You can help us! If you have problems with your GNOME software, report them if they’ve not yet been reported.
People doing GNOME development suffer from a constant lack of time. They are typically working full-time, and their GNOME commitment is limited to their spare time. Therefore, they need people who do the prelimitary work for them. We have to know about the users’ problems to tackle them. Unfortunately, without managing and sorting all their wishes by priority and category, we can’t deal with those reports. That’s where you can help out! Help us to not loose track of all the interesting and cool ideas our users have! Join the GNOME BugSquad! Just pick a software product you really like and follow the instructions.
We really have to join forces to improve our software, let’s do it!
Regarding Nautilus, I’d like also like to thank in particular some very active users and developers who got more and more involved into Nautilus, by filing bugs, triaging them and writing patches, including Vidar Braut Haarr, Christian Kirbach, Reinout van Schouwen, Jaap A. Haitsma, Fabio Bonelli, Teppo Turtiainen, Nelson Benitez and many many others I forgot.
It’s nice to see that Martin Wehner could also invests some of his very very limited spare time into triaging and fixing some bugs, so a previously inactive maintainer is back on stage again.
Good desktop experience is all about getting the details right :).
Hey there Christian,
Whilst I fully agree with the sentiment here, and I do have a lot of time for Gnome, i must say that reporting bugs in gnome programs is sometimes ridiculously difficult.
I have never successfully created a new bug in gnome, despite numerous efforts. Its always either a duplicate, or a report in the wrong place (as in, I think its Gimp, but it turns out to be GTK File Dialog, and then , when I report it there, its actually a duplicate).
I think most people would give heaps more feedback , if it was made easier. Just as a personal exercise, pretend not to be a gnome developer. Pretend to a computer science student who uses gnome. Now, imagine that gedit won’t open a file, or that it crashes when you do X,Y,Z. Now attempt to report this bug, see how long it takes you, and how much work you didn’t think was necessary. When you’re asked to provide files you don’t know how to create, and give answers to questions you don’t understand, the X button looks more and more attractive. It’s just far more difficult than it should be in my opinion.
Don’t get me wrong, I will still try to report every problem I find, but it is my opinion that bugzilla is a serious barrier to entry for feedback on the gnome project. Maybe its possible to address that, and then look for more volunteers.
Klar, wenn man dran glaubt 🙂 Der Glaube versetzt bekanntlich Berge, aber wie Linus Torvalds schon richtig sagt… Use K*
Thanks Christian, you really rock 🙂
*blushes*
I’m simply filing bugs as I see them… 🙂
Des Traynor: please join gnome-bugsquad mailinglist or #bugs on irc.gnome.org to discuss ways to make bug reporting easier.
Done, thanks Olav