Spending some time in #opensuse-testing and working through the features list on the wiki.

We’ve got a few people in channel and getting a few tests knocked out. We can always use more testers, of course. We’ll have people in channel until 13:00 Eastern (19:00 CET).

Since we’re testing on a workday, I know that makes it a bit difficult for some people to join in — but testers are always welcome, and there are usually people around on #opensuse-factory.

Also, suggestions for improving our testing procedures are always welcome. Right now, I don’t think we have quite as much directed and organized testing as would be optimal. I know we have a lot of people from the community who report bugs as found, but we could probably do with additional directed testing.

openSUSE 11.1 beta 4 was released earlier this week, and we need to work out the bugs before 11.1 final. Tomorrow we’re having a testing meeting in IRC to try some directed testing of new features in 11.1.

We’ll be meeting in IRC on Freenode, in the #opensuse-testing channel on Thursday, November 6 from 11:00 to 19:00 CET. (That’s 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern, and 7:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. Tokyo time…) We may go later in the day depending on how successful the testing is going — but the participants from our Nuremberg office will probably be ready to check out by 19:00 CET.

We’ll be working off the 11.1 Feature Test list here: http://en.opensuse.org/Testing:Features_11.1 It’s crucial that we get these features tested for the 11.1 release, as they’re new to 11.1 and we want to shake out any bugs we can. Unfortunately, not a lot of testing has been done for this list (at least, if the features have been tested, very little has been reported back…)

The workflow will look like this:

1. Connect to the #opensuse-testing channel, and the topic should have the numbers of the ongoing tests.
2. Look on the wiki page for a feature that isn’t tested. It should show:
   Status: ready to test
   Test Result: idle
3. Announce the number in channel so everyone knows that it’s being worked on.
4. Announce the results once the test has finished
5. One of the openSUSE team will enter the results of the test in the wiki and in the internal feature db.

All you need is a beta 4 install (or possibly just a system running the live CDs) and some time.

We want 11.1 to be the best release possible — which means that it needs to be well-tested before the release. If you want a bug-free (or as close as possible) release, then you can help get there by taking the time to help test. If not tomorrow — and we’re happy to have testers any ‘ol time — then any time is fine. Just grab the feature test page and go. Or, if you happen to encounter bugs in the release that don’t relate to features on the list, fire up bugzilla and let us know about those too.

If you have questions, sign up for the openSUSE testing mailing list, or feel free to ask in the #opensuse-factory channel on Freenode.