It's Show and Tell Time!

Err, show and tell?
Who remembers their first years of schooling? At least for me growing up in the US, those first years invovled an activity called 'Show and Tell'. We were instructed to bring something in from home and talk about it. This could be a picture or souvenir from a trip or unique life event, something we made, another person who does interesting things, or just something we found really interesting. It was a way for us to learn more about each other in the classroom, as well as share cool things with each other.

Online Summit
Ok, snapping you back to reality, it's nearing time for UOS 15.05. UOS is the Ubuntu Online Summit we hold each cycle to talk about what's happening in ubuntu. UOS 15.05 will be on May 5th - May 7th.

So what does the childhood version of me reminiscing about show and tell have to do with UOS? Well, I'm glad you asked! There is a 'Show and Tell' track available to everyone as a platform for sharing interesting and unique things with the rest of the community. These sessions can be very short (5 or 10 minutes) and are a great way to share about your work within ubuntu.

With that in mind, it's a perfect opportunity for you to participate in 'Show and Tell' with the rest of the community. I encourage you to propose a session on the 'Show and Tell' track. This track exists for things like demos, quick talks, and 'show and tell' type things. It's perfect to spend 5 or 10 minutes talking about something you made or work on. Or perhaps something you find interesting. Or just a way to share a little about the team you work with or a project you've done. For those of you who may have been a part of the 'lightning talks' during the days of the physical UDS, anything that would have been considered a lightning talk is more than welcome in this track.

Cool, where do I signup?
Proposing a session is simple to do, and there's even a webpage to help! If you really get stuck, feel free to contact me, Svetlana Belkin, Marco Ceppi, or Allan Lesage who are your friendly track leads for this track. Once it's proposed the session will be assigned a date and time. Myself or another track lead will follow-up with you before UOS to ensure you are ready and the date and time is suitable for you.

Is there another way to participate?
Yes! Remember to checkout the show and tell sessions and participate by asking questions and enjoying the presentations. I guarantee you will learn something new. Maybe even useful!


Thanks for helping make UOS a success. I'll see you there!

Testing Vivid Vervet final images

Ubuntu 15.04, otherwise known as the vivid vervet, is nearing release. We are now in the final week before the release on April 23rd. That means it's time to test some images!

Everyone can help!
For the final images, I'd like to extend the call for testing beyond those brave souls willing to run alpha and beta software. I encourage everyone to make a backup (as always!) and upgrade / install vivid. Then report your results on the tracker. Positive results are extremely helpful for this milestone, so please report those too. As a bonus, you can enjoy vivid a few days before the rest of the world (there's no need to re-install the final image), and avoid the upgrade rush after release.

How can I help?

To help test, visit the iso tracker milestone page for the final milestone.  The goal is to verify the images in preparation for the release. The information at the top of the page will help you if you need help reporting a bug or understanding how to test. 

Isotracker? 

There's a first time for everything! Check out the handy links on top of the isotracker page detailing how to perform an image test, as well as a little about how the qatracker itself works. If you still aren't sure or get stuck, feel free to contact the qa community or myself for help.

Thanks and happy testing everyone!

Final beta testing for Vivid

Whoosh, Spring is in the air, Winter is over (at least for us Northern Hemisphere folks). With that, it's time for polishing the final beta image for vivid.

How can I help? 

To help test, visit the iso tracker milestone page for final beta.  The goal is to verify the images in preparation for the release. Find those bugs! The information at the top of the page will help you if you need help reporting a bug or understanding how to test. 

Isotracker? 

There's a first time for everything! Check out the handy links on top of the isotracker page detailing how to perform an image test, as well as a little about how the qatracker itself works. If you still aren't sure or get stuck, feel free to contact the qa community or myself for help.

What if I'm late?

The testing runs through this Thursday March 26th, when the the images for final beta will be released. If you miss the deadline we still love getting results! Test against the daily image milestone instead.

Thanks and happy testing everyone!

Unity 8 Desktop Testing

While much of the excitement around unity8 and the next generation of ubuntu has revolved around mobile, again I'd like to point your attention to the desktop. The unity8 desktop is starting to evolve and gain more "desktopy" features. This includes things like window management and keyboard shortcuts for unity8, and MIR enhancements with things like native library support for rendering and support for X11 applications.

I hosted a session with Stephen Webb at UOS last year where we discussed the status of running unity8 on the desktop. During the session I mentioned my own personal goal of having some brave community members running unity8 as there default desktop this cycle. Now, it's still a bit early to realize that goal, but it is getting much closer! To help get there, I would encourage you to have a look at unity8 on your desktop and start running it. The development teams are ready for feedback and anxious to get it in shape on the desktop.

So how do you get it? Check out the unity8 desktop wiki page which explains how you can run unity8, even if you are on a stable version of ubuntu like the LTS. Install it locally in an lxc container and you can login to a unity8 desktop on your current pc. Check it out! After you finish playing, please don't forget to file bugs for anything you might find. The wiki page has you covered there as well. Enjoy unity8!

It's time for a testing jam!

Ubuntu Global Jam, Vivid edition is a few short weeks away. It's time to make your event happen. I can help! Here's my officially unofficial guide to global jam success.

Steps:

1. Get your jam pack! Get the request in right away so it gets to you on time. 
2. Pick a cool location to jam
3. Tell everyone! (be sure to mention free swag, who can resist!?)

But wait, what are you going to do while jamming? I've got that covered too! Hold a testing jam! All you need to know can be found on the ubuntu global jam wiki. The wiki even has more information for you as a jam host in case you have questions or just like details.

Ohh and just in case you don't like testing (seems crazy, I know), there are other jam ideas available to you. The important thing is you get together with other ubuntu aficionados and celebrate ubuntu! 

P.S. Don't forget to share pictures afterwards. No one will know you had the coolest jam in the world unless you tell them :-)

P.P.S. If I'm invited, bring cupcakes! Yum!

PSA: Community Requests

As you plan your ubuntu related activities this year, I wanted to highlight an opportunity for you to request materials and funds to help make your plans reality. The funds are donations made by other ubuntu enthusiasts to support ubuntu and specifically to enable community requests. In other words, if you need help traveling to a conference to support ubuntu, planning a local event, holding a hackathon, etc, the community donations fund can help.

Check out the funding page for more information on how to apply and the requirements. In short, if you are a ubuntu member and want to do something to further ubuntu, you can request materials and funding to help. Global Jam is less than a month away, is your loco ready? Flavors, trying to plan events or hold other activities? I'd encourage all of you to submit requests if money or materials can help enable or enhance your efforts to spread ubuntu. Here's to sharing the joy of ubuntu this year!

Quality opportunities for the Vivid Cycle

I thought I would add a little festivity to the holiday season, quality style. In case your holidays just are not the same without a little quality in your life, allow me to share how you can get involved.

There are opportunities for every role listed on the QA wiki. Testers and test writers are both needed. Testing and writing manual tests can be learned by anyone, no coding required. That said if you have skills or interest in technical work, I would encourage you help out. You will learn by doing and get help from others while you do it.

Now onto the good stuff! What can you do to help ubuntu this cycle from a quality perspective?

Dogfooding
There is an ever present need for brave folks willing to simply run the development version of ubuntu and use it as a daily machine throughout the cycle. It's one of the best ways for us as a community to uncover bugs and issues, in particular things that regress from the previous release. Upgrade to vivid today and see what you can break!

QATracker
This tool is written in drupal7 and runs the iso.qa.ubuntu.com and packages.qa.ubuntu.com sites. These sites are used to record and view the results of all of our manual testing efforts. Currently dkessel is leading the effort on implementing some needed UI changes. The code and more information about the project can be found on launchpad. The tracker is one of our primary tools and needs your help to become friendly for everyone to use.

In addition a charm would be useful to simplify setting up a development environment. The charm can be based upon the existing drupal charm. At the moment this work is ready for someone to jump in.

Unity8
Running unity8 as a full-time desktop is a personal goal I have for this cycle. I hope some others might also want to be early adopters and join me in this goal. For now you can help by testing the unity8 desktop. Have a look at running unity in lxc for an easy way to run unity8 today on your machine. Use it, test it, and offer feedback. I'll be talking more about unity8 as the cycle progresses and opportunities to test new features aimed at the desktop appear.

Core Apps
The core apps project is an excellent way to get involved. These applications have been lovingly developed by community members just like you. Many of the teams are looking for help in writing tests and for someone who can help bring a testing mindset and eye to the work. As of this writing specifically the docviewer, terminal and calculator teams would love your help. The core apps hackdays are happening this week, drop by and introduce yourself to get started!

Manual Tests
Like the sound of writing tests but the idea of writing code turns you off? Manual tests are needed as well! They are written in English and are easy to understand and write. Manual tests include everything you see on the qatracker and are managed as a launchpad project. This means you can pick a bug and "fix it" by submitting a merge request. The bugs involve both fixing existing tests as well as requests for new testcases.

Images
As always there are images that need testing. Testing milestones occur later in the cycle which involve everyone helping to test a specific set of images. In the meantime, daily images are generated that have made it through the automated tests and are ready for manual testing. Booting an image in a live session is a great way to check for regressions on your machine. Doing this early in the cycle can help make sure your hardware and others like it experience a regression free upgrade when the time comes.

Triaging
After subjecting software to testing, bugs are naturally found. These bugs then need to be verified and triaged. The bugsquadders, as they are called, would be happy to help you learn to categorize or triage bugs and do other tasks.

No matter how you choose to get involved, feel free to contact me for help if needed. Most of all, Happy Testing!