CHAPTER 43

Helping with Ubuntu Testing and QA

IN THIS CHAPTER

Community   Teams

Bug Squad

References

There are many ways to help the Ubuntu community create, refine, and

promote the operating system. Some are highly technical, like writing code or
packaging programs to be included in the software repositories. Some are less
technical, such as helping promote Ubuntu locally or through blogging
interesting news items from the community. Somewhere in the middle,
leaning toward the technical side, is a task that is wide open for greater
community involvement.

This is a rather brief and intentionally vague chapter. Testing by volunteers
requires more than a casual interest if it is going to be helpful to the
developers and not an annoyance. For that reason, this chapter covers the
basics of how to get involved and some of the opportunities but not the
precise details. If you are interested—and, after reading this chapter, we hope
you are—the next step is to visit the websites listed in the “References”
section at the end of the chapter.

Community Teams

Two community teams—the Ubuntu Testing Team and the Ubuntu QA Team
—would love to see volunteers who can follow directions, be careful and
methodical, and notice details. Both teams work to refine the distribution
during the development cycle to help make Ubuntu the best it can be.

The Ubuntu QA Team looks directly at the overall quality of the distribution,
trying out default programs and configurations and trying to break things. The