*None of the distributions mentioned in this blog are recommended. *
Software always has bugs, and free software is no exception to this.
When we think of free software, we think of software we can distribute, modify, study and of course, run. I don't spend a lot of my time studying or modifying free software, to be honest. There are lot of people who do this, and they're a lot smarter than me... well, most of them. Apparently, none of the people who write free software bug trackers ever actually use them to report a bug, or if they do, they have a very high tolerance for pain and annoyance.
On Sunday, I was unable to get to sleep, and had been downloading some distribution images, as I like to try and stay vaguely current with the very many distributions of GNU and Linux out there, and while I've previously avoided it, I had heard good things about the Gentoo Live CD. The best thing of all was that it got you up and running really quickly, which given my previous attempts at installing Gentoo, was something I was going to need.
Anyway, to cut a very long and boring piece of the story here, I downloaded the image and booted it in qemu and got a desktop and clicked through the installer and something went wrong. I checked and tried again, and it happened again. So, as stated on the installer, I went over to bugs.gentoo.org and tried to report it, and here's what I got...
I need a legitimate login and password to continue.
Yes, apparently, I now need to register with my email address and my name just to report a bug. I also need to check my email for the made up password you're going to send me. Argh.
This isn't Gentoo's fault. Gentoo is being a good free software project and using a free software bug tracker. At this point, two things came to mind. Firstly, how easy is it to find the bug tracker? Secondly, what do other distributions and large projects do in this circumstance? Finally what software do they use?
So here's a list...
Fedora - Once you click around a bit, you come to bugzilla.redhat.com, and you get the same annoying message. They use Bugzilla.
Debian - This is easier, there's a link to 'Bug reports' from their homepage. They recommend you use the reportbug program. You can also send them emails in some very precise manner. There appears to be no way to report it over the web, but they are using debbugs (and not Bugzilla as I originally said)
openSuSE - Their homepage invites me to 'Get it', 'Discover it' or 'Create it' - there is no option to 'Fix it'. 'Discover It' mentions a wiki. From here, I click 'How to participate' and then 'Test openSUSE and Report Bugs' and to bugzilla.novell.com. I now have to create a Novell account in order to report a bug. I really don't want one. They too use Bugzilla (anybody spotting a pattern here?).
PCLinuxOS - A lot of people think its wonderful, I think it's worrying proprietary in places. Let's see how they do when it comes to taking bugs. Their homepage has a clear menu bar along the top, so I choose 'Documentation' from the support option. This opens up a new window, which was unexpected, and from there I'm given a choice to 'Help PCLinuxOS Grow' - growth comes from having lots of squashed bugs, I guess, so I'll try that. Nothing there, unless you want a new t-shirt. I head to their forum, still nothing. I pause for a moment, noting that their forum is proprietary and try for desperation to see if Google has anything. Nothing there either. PCLinuxOS really don't want me to report a bug. Finally out of sheer guesswork, I discover bugs.pclinuxos.com, which appears to be a completely private bug tracker.
At this point, I was feeling like maybe this was a waste of time, maybe I was not going to find any free software bug tracking websites that didn't want my life story before I could report the damned bug. I whizzed through a couple more distributions.
Slackware - Could not find anything.
Mandrake - apparently this is called Mandriva now. That one passed me by. I don't even know why they changed their name. Their homepage has a nice big 'Help' link in the top right. I click it. There's an FAQ link - I click that and I'm told "You are not authorized to access this page.". Ouch. Sorry. Back we go - but wait, there's a link to "Place a request to our Professional Support team: dedicated Mandriva engineers will work with you to find a solution to your problem." - fantastic. This is more like it... dedicated people will work with me to find a solution to my problem... and then I was asked to login. I was given the chance to search, however, so I searched for bugs. They're using Google for their search engine and the first hit.... "Where do you report bugs? - Mandriva Expert" and it's a 6 year old question on their website, and half of it is obscured by another box telling me stuff I can already see, like who submitted it and when, and if they paid, but it does say "Report them at the bugzilla page of mandrake: http://qa.mandrakesoft.com", which I tried, and it doesn't work.
Slowly running out of distributions in my mind now, I remember Ubuntu, or rather Gobuntu, which is what I'm using on this machine.
- Gobuntu - I go to gobuntu.org, assuming it's the right website and I'm redirected to Ubuntu.com. To make sure I'm not doing something stupid, I try kubuntu.org and remember that month I spent playing with KDE recently. That works, there's even a bugs link. I try Xubuntu.org, thinking "Well, if that works, something is definitely wrong with gobuntu.org". It worked, but no bugs link. Anyway, back to gobuntu.org, or rather, Ubuntu.com, along the top in very tiny text is a link for 'Support' and another for 'Community'. Support seemed to be more for people who were paying, or looking for training. I tried 'Community' - I know Jono likes the word, and sure enough was a link to 'Report a problem', which gives me some brief overview of filing bugs and there's a link to 'Report a new bug'. Okay, I'm game... click away. Blah. I have to register. I think I might have an account already, but I don't know which email address I used, and Ubuntu's bug tracker isn't free software, so I'm done here.
Now I was really stuck. I tried to think what other people used... most people I know run either Debian, Ubuntu or gNewSense... gNewSense, of course! Why, we sponsor it at work, and I have it running on my other laptop.
- gNewSense - Bring up the website, and there's a bugs link on the left. Excellent, this is a good start, and then it all goes horribly wrong. "You must be logged in to file a bug." - not only that, but it doesn't even link me to the login page. If you want to report bugs here, you have to actually find the link yourself.
Was that really it? I pondered for a moment, to collect my thoughts. I got some food. As I sat, munching on my Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, I had a sudden flash of inspiration... Wikipedia! Not only would Wikipedia provide me with a complete list of distributions to try, but they must have a bug tracker for Mediawiki.
Oh. My. God. There are a lot of distributions. Like, over 170 in fact. "Can I really check all 170 odd of these things for bug trackers?". Sure, why not. Maybe one of these projects is really good, and has a great little group of people working really bloody hard on it...
...in the end, I decided I'd keep going until I found two that met my requirements, just to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but that I'd post the complete list, and let people leave comments to fill in the rest, thus proving my blog as an interactive experience, and not just a bloke talking rubbish.
There's no way I could report much on each one, but for the sake of completeness, I present a list of three pieces of data.
a) The project's name. 2) Does the project have an easy to find bug tracker? d) Do I have to login or register to use it?
Deep breath. Here we go.
- 64 Studio - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- AbulÉdu - No. If they do, it's in French. Fail.
- aLinux - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- ALT Linux - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- Annvix - Yes. Yes. Fail. (They have a nice logo though)
- Arch Linux - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- Ark Linux - No. Fail.
- Arudius - No. Fail.
- Asianux - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- Aurora SPARC Linux - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- Aurox - Project closed down.
- Austrumi - No. Fail.
- BackTrack - No. Fail.
- Baltix - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- Bayanihan Linux 2006 - No. Fail.
- BeatrIX - Domain gone.
- Berry Linux - Yes. No. Win!
Just stop there a second. The first project that allows people to report a bug without registering is Berry Linux, which describes itself as "A bootable CD Linux. Using new technologies." - it's in Japanese though. Still, congratulations to the developers of... Sourceforge Japan, for allowing people to report bugs without registering.
Moving on.
- Bharat Operating System Solutions - No. Fail.
- BLAG Linux and GNU - No. Fail.
- Buildix - No. Fail.
- Caixa Mágica - No. Portguese.
- Caldera Linux - Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No.
- cAos Linux - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- CentOS - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- ClarkConnect - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- Coyote Linux - Website offline.
- CRUX - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- Damn Small Linux (DSL) - No. Fail.
- DD-WRT - Yes. Yes. Fail.
- DeLi Linux - Yes. No. Win!
"DeLi Linux stands for Desktop Light Linux. It is a distribution for old computers, from 486 to Pentium II or so. It's focused on desktop usage. It includes email clients, graphical web browser, an office programs with word processor and spreadsheet, and so on. A full install, including XOrg and development tools, needs not more than 350 MB of harddisk space."
This is what I love the most about these guys...
"This is the place to report Bugs in DeLi Linux. If you think you found a bug you can post it here. Think of it as a rudimental bug tracking system (BTS). I think for such a small distro as DeLi a complete and full-featured BTS like Bugzilla would be overkill."
It's just a wiki, but it works.
*Before we go on, it's worth noting a pattern here. *
Bugzilla, Mantis and Flyspray were the three most common bug trackers, and they all required a login to post a bug.
Bugzilla - Bugzilla requires an account to report a bug.
Mantis - Requires a login.
Flyspray - "Error #15: You don't have sufficient permissions to open a task."
I'm almost certain that Trac can do this, but what of proprietary bug trackers? The big list of bug trackers on Wikipedia only gave me two I'd heard of that were proprietary -- FogBugz and JIRA. Because they are proprietary, I cannot recommend them, but I have used them both in previous jobs. Further, JIRA is such a nightmare and so horrible to use, that if someone even offers you a look at it, you should punch them in the face and run away to Mexico, unless you live in Mexico, in which case you should go to Manchester. Also, it seems JIRA sucks because you have to create an account to stick a bug in about it on the developer's website. FogBugz has the same problem, though I have seen installations of FogBugz where you don't need this.
So, where the hell does this leave us? Well, it seems that if you want to report bugs in free software, you have to jump through hoops to get it. It seems like a lot of projects are plagued by spam, or something equally unpleasant which forces them to shut away their issue trackers from the people who actually need to use them.
There is another way of course. Let everyone file as many bugs as they want, and check them for spam of course, but let someone enter an email address, if they want to, and when you do, send them a quick email and say 'We are not going to email you about this problem until its fixed. If you like to get an email every time someone does anything to this bug, click the link below', and you've got a lot of happy people, reporting bugs.
Also, if you're running a free software project, please use a free software bug tracker. Don't use JIRA, or FogBugz, or Launchpad, because by doing so, you say 'The ethics of free software do not extend to the tools I use to create the software and improve it', and that doesn't send a good message to anyone.
Oh and Joel, if you're reading this - please make FogBugz free software - even if you only release your old versions, without any support, it would be something. The world needs less JIRA installations, and you might be the key to that happening.
Oh, and finally, here's my list...
- DeMuDi
- Devil-Linux
- DNALinux
- Dreamlinux
- DSLinux
- dyne:bolic
- eBox
- Edubuntu
- EduLinux
- Elive
- EnGarde Secure Linux
- Familiar Linux
- Feather Linux
- Feather Linux
- Finnix
- Fli4l
- Fluxbuntu
- Foresight Linux
- Fox Linux
- FREESCO
- Freespire
- Frugalware
- GeeXboX
- Gentoox
- Gibraltar
- gNewSense
- Gnoppix
- gnuLinEx
- GoblinX
- GoboLinux
- Gobuntu
- gOS
- Guadalinex
- Hikarunix
- Hiweed
- HostGIS
- Impi Linux
- IPCop
- iPodLinux
- Jlime
- Jollix
- K12Linux and K12LTSP
- Kaella
- Kalango
- Kanotix
- Knopperdisk
- Knoppix
- KnoppMyth
- Kororaa
- Kubuntu
- Kurumin
- LiMux
- Linguas OS
- Linkat
- Linspire
- LinuxMCE
- Linux Mint
- Linux XP
- Lunar Linux
- Lycoris
- Maemo
- Mandriva Linux Free
- MCC Interim Linux
- MCNLive
- MEPIS
- MkLinux
- Mobilinux
- MontaVista Linux
- Morphix
- Musix
- Myah OS
- Mythbuntu
- NASLite
- NepaLinux
- NimbleX
- NimbleX
- Nitix
- nUbuntu
- OpenGEU
- OpenZaurus
- Paipix
- PAIPIX
- Pardus
- Parsix GNU/Linux
- PCLinuxOS
- Pentoo
- Pie Box Enterprise Linux
- PingOO
- Plamo Linux
- PLD Linux Distribution
- Protech
- PS2 Linux
- Puppy Linux
- QiLinux
- Red Flag Linux
- Red Hat Linux
- Rocks Cluster Distribution
- rPath
- Rxart
- Sabayon Linux
- SAM Linux
- Satux
- Scientific Linux
- Sentry Firewall
- Sharif Linux
- sidux
- Skolelinux
- Slackintosh
- Slamd64
- SLAMPP
- SLAX
- SME Server
- SmoothWall
- Softlanding Linux System
- Sorcerer
- Source Mage GNU/Linux
- Splack
- SUSE Linux
- Symphony OS
- SystemRescueCD
- The Linux Router Project
- Tinfoil Hat Linux
- tomsrtbt
- Topologilinux
- Trisquel
- Trustix
- Tuga
- Tuquito
- Turbolinux
- Ubuntu
- Ubuntu Studio
- Ulteo
- UserLinux
- Ututo
- Vector Linux
- VidaLinux
- Vine Linux
- White Box Enterprise Linux
- Xandros Open Circulation Edition
- Xebian
- Xubuntu
- Yellow Dog Linux
- Yggdrasil Linux
- YOPER
- Zen Linux
- Zenwalk Linux
