There would be no change in any deadlines or schedules. All that would happen is a name change. We think the Beta would attract more testers than would #6 in the MS series.

The problem is that we would get more testers if we made a new Milestone/Beta release more prevalent. I think we only post something on new.opensuse.org (which luckily is fed onto the homepage), and planetsuse.org whenever there is a new milestone release. I think on top of a name change, we should add something more to the opensuse.org website when there is a beta release. A new button together with the Get It, Discover It, and Create It buttons or a new banner on our site like the Fedora or Ubuntu websites. If the TCT wants more testers we should do as much as we can to help them and make new beta releases easily discoverable to the public and a name change isn't enough on its own. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

+1 - James Mason 'bear454' On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 9:11 AM, Jos Poortvliet wrote:

On Wednesday 06 July 2011 14:42:26 Larry Finger wrote:

...

This is a request for changing the name of the MS6 release to Beta.

The Testing Core Team (TCT) discussed the general problem of testing of new releases. With openQA, the probability that Factory iso's will boot and install is greatly increased; however, with the current system, many users do not start testing until RC1 is ready. As a result, there is very little time for detecting and fixing the bugs that will only be seen with a workload that is diverse. Such early testing will be particularly important for 12.1. Not only have we regularized the release schedule and naming scheme and need to follow through with a high-quality product, but we are behind due to the early build problems.

The TCT considered several possible changes to entice earlier and broader testing. The schedule does not have much flexibility to increase the time between the RC1 and GM releases, thus we probably need to indulge in some 'social engineering' to get earlier testing. We could change from 6 Milestone and 2 RC releases to 5 and 3, respectively, without tampering with the total time. Alternatively, we could rename from MS6 to Beta. The TCT favors the latter option. It might mislead the users/testers a little regarding the quality of the offering, but we don't think calling MS6 "Beta" is misleading. By most definitions, Beta means feature-complete and free of huge bugs - we should be able to get that with MS6.

A beta release should attract more users. In addition, many of us start full-time usage with MS5 or MS6, thus we know it to be usable for many people. Thanks for considering this proposal to further enhance the user experience and the quality of the final 12.1 release.

This proposal is supported (in no particular order) by Larry Finger, Bernhard M. Wiedemann, Refilwe Seete, Holger Sickenberg, Jürgen Radzuweit, Bruno Friedmann, Ismail Doenmez, and Peter Czanik.

For what it's worth, I think it is a good idea. Moreover, I offer to try and write up something 'better' for the Beta, provided I get some help from this and other lists. The marketeers (incl myself) need more info on what is new/improved/changed! If we have that, we can write a better announcement with more chance to get it out in the press, on lwn.net etc etc.

If we only have what for example was mentioned in the last Milestone article, it's not very likely to be picked up by press, that's how it works - they need something to write about :D

So if we get some info on what's new and improved, we can introduce the Beta with a bit more of a 'kick', including giving our press a heads-up so we get a good number of articles on news sites and subsequently  a bit more testing.

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On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Larry Finger wrote:

On 07/07/2011 11:11 AM, Jos Poortvliet wrote:

...

For what it's worth, I think it is a good idea. Moreover, I offer to try and write up something 'better' for the Beta, provided I get some help from this and other lists. The marketeers (incl myself) need more info on what is new/improved/changed! If we have that, we can write a better announcement with more chance to get it out in the press, on lwn.net etc etc.

If we only have what for example was mentioned in the last Milestone article, it's not very likely to be picked up by press, that's how it works - they need something to write about :D

So if we get some info on what's new and improved, we can introduce the Beta with a bit more of a 'kick', including giving our press a heads-up so we get a good number of articles on news sites and subsequently  a bit more testing.

Jos,

Your comments are very good. Getting the news about a beta and its "features" out to the press and the public should help get better test coverage, and the news will be good as long as we don't release with any show stoppers.

Please let the TCT know of anything you need.

Larry

Larry, Since you're a kernel guy, do you happen to know what the status of btrfs is likely to be in 12.1 I just did some testing with a month old Tumbleweed 2.6.38 kernel and btrfs has locked in mount in my early testing, so that doesn't look so good, but 2.6.39 and 3.0.0 could be much better. btw: what is the name of the post 3.0.0 kernel going to be? 3.0.1? Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Thu, Jul 07, 2011 at 03:16:54PM -0400, Greg Freemyer wrote:

Since you're a kernel guy, do you happen to know what the status of btrfs is likely to be in 12.1

It should work :)

I just did some testing with a month old Tumbleweed 2.6.38 kernel and btrfs has locked in mount in my early testing, so that doesn't look so good, but 2.6.39 and 3.0.0 could be much better.

It always is.

btw: what is the name of the post 3.0.0 kernel going to be? 3.0.1?

No, 3.0.1 is what I will be releasing as the stable updates to the 3.0 release. 3.1 will be what Linus releases 3 months after 3.0. greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org