The abrupt merging of Nouveau

Posted Dec 18, 2009 14:29 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: The abrupt merging of Nouveau by farnz
Parent article: The abrupt merging of Nouveau

> That's not my direct experience.

Did it cross your mind that the average Joe does not even speak English?

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The abrupt merging of Nouveau

Posted Dec 18, 2009 14:39 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

So let's get this straight: the average Joe doesn't speak English, yet is able to (somehow) navigate an English-only driver download site, and follow binary driver install instructions, that only come in English? Yet, they're incapable of finding enough help with English to file useful bug reports?

I've done my share of helping non-English speakers work through a non-technical friend who speaks both (usually very bad) English and their language file decent bug reports. Generally, it's not too difficult - Google Translate and similar software tools work well in finding the words needed to describe symptoms, and the technical information is cut-and-paste only anyway, and usually incomprehensible to English speakers, too. Heck, I've even had the fun of working entirely through Google Translate to find a bug; IME, open source driver developers are quite happy to work with you over a language barrier, so long as you're happy to try and make things work.

The abrupt merging of Nouveau

Posted Dec 18, 2009 17:23 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> So let's get this straight: the average Joe doesn't speak English, yet is able to (somehow) navigate an English-only driver download site,

Are you aware that some Linux distributions ship binary drivers, or make their installation just a few native language clicks away?

The abrupt merging of Nouveau

Posted Dec 18, 2009 17:41 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Are you aware that distributions where someone has bothered to translate packages from English to another language are also distributions where you can interact with speakers of that language on the distribution bugtracker? What's more, the people you interact with, in your language, are generally helpful in getting your bug report into shape, then translating it and funnelling information between your language and the developer's preferred language.

Seriously, I've seen bug reports handled and fixed from distributions I didn't even know existed, precisely because I don't even know the writing system used by the distro's native language, let alone the language. But, someone who spoke the right language took a report from their bug tracker, did some basic triage, determined it was a genuine bug, and sent the report upstream, with a note explaining that it was all machine translated, and apologising for the poor English. A back and forth ensued, getting technical data from the bug reporter, and the bug got fixed.