How can I help?

Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Beta 1 is coming Thursday, March 31st.

ISO Testing begins Tuesday, Mar 29th

• ISO Testing overview & Open Week session - pre-release testing of Ubuntu images

  • Testdrive automates the use of kvm or virtualbox, saving its image to ~/.cache/testdrive/.

  • zsync will greatly speed up downloads of iso images

• Upgrade Testing - please report bugs that may not be revealed in automated testing

• join #ubuntu-testing on freenode.net

• join ubuntu-quality for discussion

• Please forward testing related announcements to your LoCo.

• Weekly IRC meetings Wednesdays at 17.00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting

• Thursdays UbuntuBugDay in IRC #ubuntu-bugs

• Laptop Testing Project helps users share their experiences with hardware like theirs.

• Bugs that prevent testing: ... ?

• Stable Release Updates (SRU) are packages about to be released officially. If you would like to help please see QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification

PLEASE NOTE: Development Releases are not for daily use! These releases will contain bugs. You have been warned.

Who is involved?

This page is part of a conscious effort by Ubuntu Quality Assurance Team (lp) and Testing Team (lp) to increase participation of the Ubuntu community and especially LoCo teams in testing. The older Lucid UDS roadmap and blueprint describe the beginning of these efforts.

All Ubuntu Releases are included such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu.

Working with the Ubuntu Community

Approved and "new" Local Community teams are natural partners in the testing process. As advocates and active users we know about the software and the perception of Ubuntu by people who are not computer experts. This perspective is extremely valuable. We hope this page provides a clear and concise jumping off point for active teams and users to learn the skills and procedures needed to test Ubuntu.

Why Test?

A benefit of using open source software is the ability to participate in its development. Contributions to the projects that Ubuntu distributes is encouraged, however most people are first introduced to a software package by using it. Every user can be seen as a software tester. Sometimes problems are noticed that can be reported. Open source software fundamentally depends upon people participating. You are in good company because an incredibly large and growing number of people do participate every day from all parts of the world. If nobody steps forward to report issues then busy, well intentioned developers may inadvertently overlook these unintended features in the software they provide.

There is an art/science to knowing how and where to report these problems. It takes effort to isolate an issue so that one of the various parties involved can fix it, though this gets easier with practice. A great feeling of satisfaction can be found when reporting problems and seeing them fixed. While the daily work of quality assurance can be under appreciated, experienced developers recognize the value of good bug reports and are very grateful.