Manual testing of the development version is an important part of the development cycle. The goal of manual testing is to find bugs that have been introduced during the cycle.
Finding these gives developers the opportunity to fix issues before the release. The sooner they are found, the bigger the possibility is that the bugs are fixed before regular users see them on their desktop. Without manual testers, our releases would be buggy. All that being said, we need your help doing manual testing.
Unfortunately, manual testing can often be a tedious and thankless job for the contributors who are doing the testing and bug reporting for the community. This cycle we’re hoping to change that up a bit.
We will be giving out 7 Xubuntu Sticker Bundles from now through April to selected top testers on the following schedule:
| Timespan |
Admissible test reports |
| February |
Test reports from start of cycle to 28th February |
| March |
Test reports from 1st March to 31st March |
| Final Beta |
Tests reported during the milestone |
| April |
Test reports from 1st April to 23rd April (end of the cycle) |
| Final Release |
Tests reported during milestone |
| Cycle |
Tests reported during the whole Vivid Vervet cycle |
Depending on the success of this initiative we’ll look into adding Xubuntu t-shirts and Ubuntu books to the program during the LTS cycle leading up to April 2016.
How can I participate?
To help us out with testing and be considered as a sticker bundle recipient, do the following:
- Follow the Xubuntu-devel and/or Xubuntu-users mailing lists for calls at milestones when specific image testing is required.
- Report all of your tests to the image tracker, for you to be considered your name needs to be on the trackers.
Learn more about ISO and package testing on the Ubuntu wiki.
Terms
Test images are available outside of the milestone periods for dailies. A limit of one sticker bundle is available per tester. The winning tester will be notified at the end of each period and contacted by our marketing lead for shipment details.
Thanks
Thanks to UnixStickers.com for graciously donating the Xubuntu Sticker Bundles for us to give out.
Thanks to the Ubuntu Community Fund for covering the price of incidental materials and shipping for these bundles.
Finally, thanks to everybody who has done manual testing for us!
Xubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn
The Xubuntu team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 14.10!
The release is available for download by torrents and direct downloads from http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/
As the main server will be very busy in the first days after the release, we recommend using the Torrents wherever possible.
For support with the release, navigate to Help & Support for a complete list of methods to get help.
Highlights and Known Issues
To celebrate the 14.10 codename “Utopic Unicorn” and to demonstrate the easy customisability of Xubuntu, highlight colors have been turned pink for this release. You can easily revert this change by using the theme configuration application (gtk-theme-config) under the Settings Manager; simply turn Custom Highlight Colors “Off” and click “Apply”. Of course, if you wish, you can change the highlight color to something you like better than the default blue!
Starting with Xubuntu 14.10, you should use pkexec instead of gksudo for running graphical applications with root access from the terminal for improved security. The Xubuntu team has prepared and shipped the necessary pkexec policy files for all default applications in the Xubuntu installation that we deemed necessary.
Please note that changes in the default configuration affect all users who haven’t changed the default configuration. Read more about the default configuration changes in the release notes.
Highlights
- New Xfce Power Manager plugin is added to the panel Note: Upgraders from Trusty will not see the new xfce4-power-manager panel plugin by default, but instead stick to indicator-power. This can easily be resolved by uninstalling indicator-power and adding the “Power Manager Plugin” to the panel.
- Items in the newly themed alt-tab dialog can now be clicked with the mouse
Known Issues
- com32r error on boot with usb (1325801)
- Virtualbox can start with a black screen (1378423)
- Black background to Try/Install dialogue (1365815)
- Qt apps don’t use the Gtk+ style by default, workaround is to install qt4-qtconfig and set the style there
Workarounds for issue in virtual machines
- Move to TTY1 (with VirtualBox, RightCtrl+F1), then back to TTY7 (with VirtualBox, RightCtrl+F7) and proceed
For a more complete changelog between Xubuntu 14.04 and 14.10, please refer to the release notes.
The Xubuntu team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 14.10 Beta 2. This is the final beta towards the release in October. Before this beta we have landed various of enhancements and some new features. Now it’s time to start polishing the last edges and improve the stability. The Beta 2 release is available for download by torrents and direct downloads fromhttp://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/utopic/beta-2/
Highlights and known issues
To celebrate the 14.10 codename “Utopic Unicorn” and to demonstrate the easy customisability of Xubuntu, highlight colors have been turned pink for this release. You can easily revert this change by using the theme configuration application (gtk-theme-config) under the Settings Manager; simply turn Custom Highlight Colors “Off” and click “Apply”. Of course, if you wish, you can change the highlight color to something you like better than the default blue!
Known Issues
- com32r error on boot with usb (1325801)
- Installation into some virtual machines fails to boot (1371651)
- Failure to configure wifi in live-session (1351590)
- Black background to Try/Install dialogue (1365815)
Workarounds for issues in virtual machines
- Move to TTY1 (with VirtualBox, Right-Ctrl+F1), login and then start lightdm with “sudo service lightdm start”
- Some people have been able to boot successfully after editing grub and removing the “quiet” and “splash” options
- Install appears to start OK when systemd is enabled; append “init=/lib/systemd/systemd” to the “linux” line in grub
The Xubuntu team is pleased to announce the immediate release of Xubuntu 14.10 Beta 1. This is the first beta towards the final release in October. Before this beta we have landed various of enhancements and some new features. Now it’s time to start polishing the last edges and improve the stability.
The first beta release also marks the end of the period to land new features in the form of Ubuntu Feature Freeze. This means any new updates to packages should be bug fixes only, the Xubuntu team is committed to fixing as many of the bugs as possible before the final release.
The beta 1 release is available for download by torrents and direct downloads fromhttp://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/utopic/beta-1/
Highlights and known issues
New features and enhancements
- Inxi, a tool to gather system information, is now included
- To allow users to use pkexec for selected applications instead of gksu(do), appropriate profiles are now included for Thunar and Mousepad
- The display dialog has been updated, multiple dispays can now be arranged by drag and drop
- The power manager can now control the keyboard-backlight and features a new panel plugin, which shows the battery’s status, other connected devices with batteries and controls the display’s backlight brightness
- The themes now support Gtk3.12
- The alt-tab dialog can now be clicked with the mouse to select a window
- Xubuntu minimal install available - information on installation and testing will follow shortly.
Bug fixes
- Setting-related menu items earlier available only under Settings manager are now shown and searchable in Whiskermenu (1310264)
- Presentation mode in Xfce4 power manager is now working (1193716)
- apt-offline is now functional, previously “Something is wrong with the apt system” (1357217)
Known Issues
- Video corruption when booting a virtual livesession (1357702)
- Failure to configure wifi in live-session (1351590)
- com32r error on boot with usb (1325801)
New application versions in the Xubuntu packageset
- Catfish 1.2.1
- Xfwm4 4.11.2
- Updates to xfdesktop4 (4.11.7), xfce4-panel (4.11.1), login screen (lightdm-gtk-greeter 1.9.0)
- xfce4-appfinder (4.11.0)
- xfce4-notifyd (0.2.4-3)
- xfce4-settings (4.11.3)
- xfce4-power-manager (1.3.2)
- xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin (1.4.0)
- Light-locker-settings (1.4.0)
- Menulibre (2.0.5)
- Mugshot (0.2.4)
Other changes
XChat is removed from the default installation; we recommend trying the Pidgin IRC feature if you need to connect sporadically. Otherwise, if you prefer XChat, it’s still available for installation in the repositories.
inxi is a full featured system information script that will detect information about hardware specifications, including but not limited to vendor details, CPU info, graphic and sound cards. Most importantly, it will output everything in a easy to read format and it can also be used on irc clients like irssi, weechat or xchat.
How to use inxi?
The general use of inxi is inxi -<color> -<option>. inxi output is colored and to change the color for better visibility use the c option followed by a number between 0-32.
inxi -b and inxi -F
The b option output basic system information, while the F option will output full system information.
Hard drive details
inxi -D
Outputs information on your hard drives, like make, model and size
Hard drive partitions
inxi -p
Outputs information about all mounted partitions, mount points and space usage
Networking
inxi -n and inxi -ni
Outputs information about the details of the network interfaces and configuration. When the i option is used with n, Inxi will output IP address details (for both WAN and LAN).
Hardware
inxi -AG and inxi -h
The A and G options output information about the audio and graphics hardware respectively. You usually want to use them together. The h option outputs you the full list of options you can use to get even more information about your hardware.
Using inxi in IRC clients
Xchat, irssi and most other clients
/exec -o inxi -<option> | pastebinit
The -o option shows the output to the channel. Without it, only the user will see the output.
Weechat
/shell -o inxi -<option> | pastebinit
Note: For weechat to run external scripts like inxi, shell.py has to be installed.
Using inxi -c0 within a IRC client environment is highly advisable because colored output doesn’t work in pastebins.
