Introduction

• Hi all and welcome to the Ubuntu tester wiki. Let's get ready to ! The purpose of the wiki is to help new-users, regular users and veteran users of Ubuntu beta releases to have an informative and fun reference base to help with the tedious work involved in beta testing of Ubuntu releases. The page format will also attempt to cast a wider net in hopes of being a user_friendly technical reference base to help others who are testing and/or just plain having fun operating Ubuntu operating systems and products. Of course at this point these current writings only represent a synopsis of a larger schematic proposed by others in the Ubuntu community - so -expect more to come ! Here are some views from Effenberg0x0 CreatorOfTesterWiki .

Your contributions matter. Those who have joined up to the tester-wiki are encouraged to contribute in any way they can. You people are the backbone and the minds that will make this wiki thread a great one for all human beings.

How to get the Development Release?

The best way to get a devlopment release from an existing install of Ubuntu is to follow these simple instructions. First, the sources list can be edited in the terminal by issuing the command sudo sed -i 's/oneiric/precise/g' /etc/apt/sources.list and then sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade These commands are used for the current development release which is Precise Pangolin. You can also find the most current and up to date information at this link: ReleaseScheduleByCariboo907 . Development releases are dynamic, usually every 6 months, so it is important to check in with TheUbuntuForumCommunity

Download ISO

HowToDownloadPreciseBeta1
HowToDownloadDailyLivePreciseBuild

Download "Alternative" ISO

Alternate ISOs can be downloaded here: AlternateISOs

What are the differences between the "alternate" and standard ISO?

An alternate ISO is usually smaller than a standard ISO and will fit on a regular CD. Alternate ISOs will work on older PC hardware with RAM less than 384MBs. They are usually daily builds (or snapshots) as to what point that the current development release has progressed before it's release date. The difference between the standard ISOs and the alternate ISOs is the the alternate ISOs may not always provide a working desktop but there are advantages in that the alternate ISO can provide specialist installations.More to come.

Upgrade from previous versions

Ubuntu offers several different ways to upgrade from previous versions rather than to download an ISO file. This is meant to streamline and economize the installation process but many veteran Ubuntu members will tell you that it is better to do a fresh install- one benifit being that you have your very own ISO disk. Details on how to upgrade from previous versions of Ubuntu can be found at PreciseUpgrades, but, of course these links will change when the Final release of Precise is distributed and the QQ toolchain cycle begins.

Which versions can be upgraded?

Upgrade Methods

/etc/apt/sources.list method

dist-upgrade method

do-release-upgrade method (Ubuntu Server)

update-manager -d method

Updating the ISO

Note: experimenting - to be editied out

zsync / rsync method

Installing the Development Release ISO

Methods

Real Machines

Full Disk

Secondary HDD

Partition (dual boot)

External Media

Virtual Machines

Virtualbox

VMWare Player

TestDrive

VMs: Limitations, issues and workarounds

Install Settings

Known issues and workarounds

Wubi issues

Ubiquity issues

Plymouth issues

Setup Ubuntu

What are Proprietary and Open Source Drivers

Proprietary drivers are programs that are copyrighted and held patent by the companies that own them. This means that they are not free in the sense that they are not Open Source or, better put, written by the members of the Ubuntu or Linux open source community. In 1992 I was attempting to install and run a tape back-up drive whose adapter card was manufactured by a company called Tallgrass. I was running two BBSes and needed to have this valuable back-up device at that time. The problem was that I was using an operating system called MSDOS 3.30 (and then eventually MSDOS 5.0) but the Microsoft Company did not provide a proprietary driver or a generic driver for that matter. Most likely because they did not have a licence to do so. After several calls to Tallgrass Corp and realizing that it would take weeks to have the driver sent by mail, I just ended up putting it on the shelf. So in the early days of the internet one had to have extreme patience to wait for proprietary drivers to become available. By the time a generic (or free but not always) driver came through, that particular Tallgrass adapter card became obsolete.Some hardware adapter cards have what are called undocumented interupt vectors that can only be enabled by a proprietary driver. Some companies sell the interupts for a licencing fee and others are governed by expiry which allows open source software developers to write software drivers so as to employ a competition fairness in the software buisness community.

Open source drivers are one of the main support features which make Ubuntu such a unique operating system because extremely intelligent and dedicated individuals work very hard at providing open source drivers for Ubuntu (which may not be as efficient as the proprietary drivers), but in many cases the proprietary drivers are bested by the open source drivers and Ubuntu is not quick to jump on the obsoletetion bandwagon.more to come

What is a kernel?

What are Kernel Modules?

=== How to make an updated kernel be recognized in a Multiboot system===

Basic Hardware

VGA

Ethernet Card (Wired Network)

Wireless Network Interface

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Sudo Code Definitions

Instructional Development

Throughout testing of past Ubuntu releases a large amount of data was contributed to the forums, mainly in the form of questions and in the replys using sudo code solutions. These contributions are greatly appreciated by all the dedicated members and regular end_users of Ubuntuforums. What I hope to accomplish here in this section is to compile a comprehensive and yet simple list of the most common problems and quick fixes that may entail a fresh installation and subsequent crash. Below is a preliminary list of code that was gathered from Ubuntuforums. SudoCodeHelperLink We hope to put up a more comprehensive list as the wiki develops.

Todo

Ideas:

• We had some amazing threads, specially since the OO cycle, which maybe we could use here;
• The stickies at Ubuntu+1 have some information that can probably be summarised / simplified here - investigate;
• Add a "What is a development cycle" section: How Ubuntu is developed, by who, where, how, when and where it is released (Alphas, Betas, RCs, etc), who tests it, how it is tested, where bugs are reported, how to report bugs properly, who manages bugs reports, etc. A basic vision of how Ubuntu development works."
• Log files: A lot of people don't know they exist, where they are stored, the type of information available in each log file, how to open them, how to search them easily for valuable information.