Notes from the Mousepad

I’ve modified the Xubuntu Testing wiki pages to provide better instructions on testing Xubuntu, and hopefully we’ll get a good group of testers fired up. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough tests done on Xubuntu Herds 1, 3, or 4, so no Herd was officially released.

You can take a look at the testing pages here. I know that quite a few of the Chicago Local Community Team members are Kubuntu developers and users, but it never hurt anyone to help out a different member of the *ubuntu family, so I hope some of you will give it a try.

I’m optimistic that we’ll get a good number of testers, though, and hopefully you’ll be seeing a Herd 5 release of Xubuntu Feisty by the end of the week.

<j1mc> somerville32, i had a great install experience with the nightlies leading up to herd4.
<somerville32> j1mc: Did you report that?
<j1mc> no
<somerville32> hehe
<somerville32> See, we need that
<somerville32> We need to get an official testing team together maybe
<j1mc> i’m mostly on xubuntu-user mailing list.
<somerville32> j1mc: Would you like to head up an Xubuntu testing team?
<j1mc> what would it entail? are there other examples of testing teams?
<somerville32> IT seems like you already do quite a bit of testing
<somerville32> So you’d just need to recruit a few more people to help you out and schedule regular testing
<somerville32> Especially just before a pre-release
<somerville32> So that we can release an image as the pre-release
<j1mc> sure. i think i can do that.
<somerville32> What platforms can you test on?
<j1mc> just i386 right now.
<somerville32> Ok
<j1mc> i could get another machine pretty easily. i volunteer for free geek chicago
* somerville32 nods.
<j1mc> we use xubuntu there, so they’d be willing to donate a machine.
* somerville32 nods.
<somerville32> So you’d just need to find a few dedicated individuals who could help test the other official platforms too
<somerville32> Awesome!
<j1mc> and then get them to report their results.
<j1mc> hehe
* somerville32 hands j1mc the “Xubuntu ISO QA Manager” hat.
* j1mc accepts hat

I’d like to give major props to the Ubuntu Wireless Troubleshooting Guide. I was out at a place with free wifi tonight, and I could see the access point via wifi-radar, but couldn’t connect to it.

I switched over to my laptop’s Win2k partition (booo . . .) to do some research, and found the aforementioned guide. After reading it, taking a few notes, and then switching back to my Xubuntu install, all it took was for me to issue two commands via the terminal, and I was connected to the AP. It didn’t even take me to the “Hey, you’re at this restaurant,” greeting page . . . just instant surfing.

I’ve saved the Wireless Troubleshooting Guide to my home folder, and will use it as a reference until I get more familiar with the commands. Having this handy reference also means that wifi-radar is coming off of my laptop.

I went through a bit of trouble installing Xubuntu Feisty Fawn onto my Thinkpad t22 laptop today. The install went off without a hitch onto my desktop PC, but I got one “corrupt package” error after another during the extraction of the base installation files onto the laptop. Perhaps something is wrong with the cd/dvd drive?

As a rather kludgy work-around, I reinstalled a command-line system of Xubuntu Edgy Eft, changed the apt-sources list file to look for Feisty sources, upgraded the command-line system to Feisty, and then installed the Feisty xubuntu-desktop metapackage. That went off without a hitch. I was even able to get wifi up and running after installing linux kernel restricted modules. I obtained the nifty instructions on how to do so from here. As I say, “nifty.”

With a nice install of xubuntu, I’ll now be able to continue on w/ my xubuntu-doc bug reporting, which is off to a decent start.

Even though my schedule has been pretty hectic lately, I’ve decided that I’m going to try and contribute to the Xubuntu documentation project. Why Xubuntu? Well, for one, I use it. Xubuntu Edgy is presently on my Thinkpad t22, and it’s worked great for me. Also, Xubuntu probably receives less contribution from the community than Ubuntu or Kubuntu. I don’t even think that Xubuntu had separate documentation for Xubuntu Edgy – when you first started FireFox in Xubuntu Edgy, it said, “Welcome to Xubuntu 6.06!” The project could use some help, I think.

I’ve hung out a bit on #ubuntu-doc, and am on the ubuntu-doc mailing list. I figure that I’m going to get a start by proofreading. Someone on #ubuntu-doc said that would be a great way to go, especially considering that I’m not a technical expert. I do have a decent way with words, though. Wicked grammar skiillz. So, look for some bug reports from j1mc on the Xubuntu-doc bug report page. I’ll be getting some up there soon.