new on testing

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre]

Hi!

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 11:23:10PM +0200, Oriol Castejón wrote:
> Hi,
> I've been using Ubuntu for a year and a half or so, and I'm really satisfied
> with it. That's why I've thought I would like to help with all the testing
> stuff, but I don't know really where to start. So I'll begin by introducing
> myself a little bit: I'm a Spanish young man and I recently finished my
> degree on Mathematics, and now I'm doing a master. I know something about
> programming, I've used C/C++ and Python, and I use a laptop (I've seen
> there's a Laptop Testing Project, so I think I could fit in there).

Nice to know you're interested in helping out! We always need more help :)

> The main thing I'm concerned about is that my computer may not work
> properly while testing new Ubuntu versions, etc., which would be a problem
> because I need to work with it for the things I'm doing at University. Is
> there really any reason to be concerned about that?
> 
> So, how do you think I could help? Thank you for your attention!

There are many ways in which you can help. Clearly, in some cases it is
complicated to just run the development version of Ubuntu directly on your
main system, especially when you need a stable system to work with.

One of the options you could consider would be dual-booting to a partition
that has the development release. You could also regularly burn ISO images
of the development release and try the Live CD on your system if you're
interested in making sure the hardware in your laptop is well supported.
There's other nice options, even though they don't allow testing the
hardware specifically. You can use VirtualBox, or any other kind of
virtualization technique in order to help testing a release.

You may be interested in looking at the wiki page on the subject:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/UsingDevelopmentReleases

Also, I particularly recommend the presentation on "The Bleeding Edge". :)

/ Matt