jdd schreef:

Testing the future distro is one of the most important task of the community. Something that don't need extreme knowledge and need a very large number of participants.

Fully agreed..

I think this aspect is largely underestimated on the wiki.

On the beginning, most members where "fans" and did now all about testing :-). Now we have more and more "users" willing to help, but we have to drive them.

Better is: Guide, or direct, them..

Right now, one have to clic on the front page on "How to participate" (good) to go to a nice looking page (http://en.opensuse.org/How_to_Participate), but have to go to "Develop it" to find:

If one tests, one helps to develop..

"Test openSUSE and Report Bugs You can help improve openSUSE by finding and reporting bugs. Our bug tracking system, Bugzilla, is used for all openSUSE/SUSE Linux products. If you have never written a bug report, please refer to Bug Reporting FAQ to learn what kinds of information make the report most useful."

Communication is the most useful: tell the bugreporter what is needed, and point to the pages were this is explained. The assignee knows what he needs to know to be able to fix a bug. And sometimes the cause is different then one would conclude from the effect,

I think the testing is *not* (not only) a developper task and should be moved to the "Participate in it" section. To test, one have to subscribe this present list (opensuse-testing), and report here before thinking of bugzilla. Here we can teach the bugzilla working to unexperienced users.

To keep in touch with the enduser, it is most helpful that endusers report the bugs, so able to determine which apps are used most, or what endusers find 'impportant'.

To send a newcommer to bugzilla is nearly lose it. I personnally had to pass years before I could use bugzilla, and I'm not always cool with it.

Notice that the text quoted don't even mention the "http://en.opensuse.org/Testing" page!!

This very nice sentence:

"The openSUSE project includes a growing volunteer network of Linux users and developers who participate in the ongoing creation and improvement of openSUSE by testing development releases. This team of testers has a common mission: they improve the world's most usable Linux distribution by finding and constructively reporting relevant bugs."

is on the submit bug page, probably not the best place, because most bigs should be subitted *before* the release, not after.

That depends, a user does not want to get the impression the distro is 'buggy', When he/she finds bugs, and feels compelled to the distro, he/she would want to improve its usefulness.

May be also we should have a way to less scare the user about the usability of the beta releases. Many people (including me) fear to use factory before RC1 not to lose data. Do you have a real example of data loss because early use?? I have none real one. I have many crashes reports, but no data loss.

I never lost any data testing alpha or beta releases, just customized settings... Sometimes one has to reinstall, but not often. I use allways a new home with a new series, but i have allways more than 2 systems that can be used by me for testing, and several others that i can also use. Besides that i have some laptops, and several netbooks, I lost data by windows virusses.. :(

I also advocate using VirtualBox in very early tests (may be also Xen??), because any modern computer can build VirtualBox with 512Mo ram and any distro should run inside - ands it's fearless

Personaly, i don't believe in VM's or emulators to test, but that is just me. Bugs will be found there also.

I can change the wiki pages, but I wont do so without discussion, so what do you think??

thanks jdd

I think that it is obvious to test before the release, on as many as possible systems, by as many as possible people. It takes much time though.... to do it right, that is why it is important that many people participate, so that the dups show the reality of the bugs. -- Enjoy your time around, Oddball (M9.) (Now or never...) OS: Linux 2.6.29-rc5-1-default x86_64 Huidige gebruiker: oddball@AMD64x2-sfn1 Systeem: openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0 (x86_64) KDE: 4.2.00 (KDE 4.2.0) "release 102" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-testing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-testing+help@opensuse.org