Common Tools Used for Testing Alpha/Beta Versions

inxi

inxi is a tool run in terminal that will show basic information of your system, kernel version and development version information. You can get inxi buy issuing the command in terminal apt-get install inxi or you can use apt-get install mesa-utils

htop

htop is a terminal run, system monitor tool that shows much more detail than the regular System Monitor as which is offered by default in mostly all Ubuntu distributions. You can retrieve htop by entering the following code in the terminal; sudo apt-get install htop

Here is more on htopHtop

bootchart

bootchart is a program that runs in the background and is able to render a graphical picture of what processes are taking place during a cold or warm boot. It is an valuable tool for finding trouble early on in design of new distributions. To get bootchart you can enter bootchart into the synaptic package manager search dialogue or use the terminal and issue the command; sudo apt-get install bootchart

Here is more on bootchart BootChartingWiki

aptitude

aptitude is another beta tester's tool that is used for safe upgrading and fixing broken packages. Some power-users will only use this program. To install aptitude enter sudo apt-get install aptitude in the terminal

Here is some more information on AptitudeSurvivalGuide