X Proprietary Drivers Testing

Call For Testing

Call For Testing:
nVIDIA/ATI graphic cards and proprietary video drivers

Do you have a *nVIDIA* or *ATI graphics card? Do you want to help
ensure users have a smooth experience if they choose to use the
proprietary drivers?

We are looking for committed volunteers to test nVIDIA or ATI. 
The goal of this testing is to catch regressions early in the cycle,
and fix bugs before they reach a major audience.

If you want to be part of the team you will need:

 1. A computer with an nVIDIA (GeForce 6 or newer) or ATI (R600 or newer) graphics card
 2. A spare partition on that system
  * If you don't have a spare partition you can easily create one.
 3. One hour of your time per week
 4. An Internet connection

If you want to take part in this adventure, go to:
  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Testing/ProprietaryDrivers/Oneiric/VideoDrivers
and follow the detailed instructions.

Thanks for helping making Ubuntu even better!

P.S. This project is to test the proprietary drivers. If you're 
interested in testing the free drivers, we don't need installation 
testing but help is always welcome. Check how at the Ubuntu X team
page [1].

[1] https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat

Setting Up Instructions

1. Every tested system needs to have a spare partition, because the program involves fresh installations of Ubuntu. If you don't have a spare partition, you can create one following these instructions.

2. I know some of you have several systems, but our tracker has some limitations that prevent to provide two results for the same account. To avoid creating too much trouble, just select one of your systems and test ALWAYS with that system. [¹]

3. You have to have an account in our tracking system. We are going to use it to generate data (it will be publicly available).

   1. Go to http://xorg.qa.ubuntu.com.

   2. Click on "Log In" and "Create New Account"
   3. Once you have activated your account, go to the "My profile" page.
   4. Under the field "PCI devices list:" paste the output of the command : 'sudo lspci -v' . This is an important field, as we are going to use it to generate our reports. Please, fill it only with the graphics card model that you are testing with that tracker account.
   5. Under the field "Global hardware description" add the model that you are testing. Add any additional information to describe the hardware you are testing and not provided by lspci.
4. Once you're done with the tracker, add yourself to the list of participants in this page.

5. Once you have added yourself to the list of testers in this page, ask to be included in the Xorg Proprietary Drivers Testers team in Launchpad and subscribe to the mailing list once you've been approved.

6. You're all set!

Testing Instructions

When we will be starting a new testing cycle, the tests will appear in the tracker and everybody is free to submit their results any time during the cycle. Each new cycle, results will be fresh again, and results from the previous week are archived for analysis. If you miss a cycle, don't worry, you can keep testing the following cycle.

Most of the tests involves installing an updated ISO of Ubuntu Oneiric. Daily ISO images are found at cdimage.ubuntu.com. We advise that you download the images you expect to test ahead of time and use zsync to update them, as this will reduce the turn around time on testing.

For every image at cdimage.ubuntu.com there is a .zsync link that you can use with zsync to sync your images. I.e.:

zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/oneiric-desktop-i386.iso.zsync

Or for 64bits architectures:

zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/oneiric-desktop-amd64.iso.zsync

Every cycle, you will see the tracker (http://xorg.qa.ubuntu.com) reset. You need to click on your model and the desktop environment to test to see the list of testcases:

You need to test both Unity and Unity-2D as the window manager is using different capabilities of your graphics card. But the tests to run are exactly the same. There will be 2 milestone every cycle Oneiric Unity for compiz based Unity and Unity-2D for metacity based Unity. Be careful to report results against the right milestone.

The list of testcases appear, with a summary on how many results have been reported:

To read the instructions on how to perform the testing, and report your result, click on any of them. The testcase view will show a form to report your result and a link to the testcase wiki, to guide you through the process:

To report bugs, follow the instructions at X/Reporting.

FAQ

Can I install [K,X]ubuntu instead?

For the moment we are only interested in Ubuntu results, sorry.

Desktop or Alternate? i386 or amd64?

As you wish, the more different configurations, the merrier.

Testing participants

Footnotes: