Kubuntu 20.04 Testing Week

The Kubuntu team is delighted to announce an ‘Ubuntu Testing Week’ from April 2nd to April 8th with other flavors in the Ubuntu family. April 2nd is the beta release of what will become Kubuntu 20.04 and during this week, there will be a freeze on changes to features, the user interface and documentation. Between April 2nd and final release on April 23rd, the Kubuntu team and community will focus on ISO testing, bug reporting, and fixing bugs. Please join the community by downloading the daily ISO image and trying it out, even beginning today.

QA tracker: http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/milestones/408/builds

From this main page, click on the ‘Kubuntu Desktop amd64’ link to arrive at the testcases page. On the testcases page, you can download the ISO by clicking the ‘Link to the download information’ and report test results to the various test cases for Kubuntu. If you see other flavors needing testing on the main page, please test for them as well.

Chat live on IRC (#ubuntu-quality) or Telegram (UbuntuTesters: https://t.me/UbuntuTesters) if you like, during this time of pandemic social distancing.

If you have no spare computer to use for testing, no problem! You can test without changing your system by running it in a VM (Virtual Machine) with software like Virtualbox, or running it in the live session from a USB or DVD, so you can also test if your hardware works correctly. We encourage those that are willing, to install it either in a VM or on physical hardware–requires at least 6GB of harddisk space–and use it continuously for a few days, as more bugs can be exposed and reported this way.

The easy way to report a bug is to open up Konsole by pressing alt+space and typing konsole or Menu > Konsole and then typing `ubuntu-bug packagename`, where packagename is the program or application where you experience the bug.

If you prefer working in the terminal, open the virtual console (terminal) by pressing control + alt + F2, 3, 4 etc. and typing `ubuntu-bug packagename`, where packagename is the program or application where you experience the bug. Control + Alt + F1 to return to your desktop. If a crash has landed you in the terminal, login with your usual user name and password, and report the bug as above.

Here is a nice youtube video showing the entire process, including one way to figure out what packagename is appropriate in GNOME: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjTyzyY9RHw

Using ‘ubuntu-bug’ will automatically upload error logs and/or other files to Launchpad that developers need to fix the bug. By the way, the installer’s packagename is ubiquity. Experience tells us that is the most useful packagename to know for ISO testing when things go wrong with the installation. The live session software package is casper, should you encounter bugs affecting the live session itself, not programs. Other programs with bugs should be filed against their packages, for instance firefox, dolphin, vlc, etc. Only the bug *number* is needed when reporting the results of a test on the QA tracker.

Please test programs / applications that you regularly use, so you can identify bugs and regressions that should be reported. New ISO files are built every day; always test with the most up-to-date ISO. It is easier and faster to update an existing daily ISO with the command below (first right-click on the ISO’s folder in Dolphin and select ‘Open in Terminal’) or just open konsole or yakuake and `cd path-to-ISO-folder`. Zsync downloads only changes, so it’s very quick.

$ zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/current/focal-desktop-amd64.iso.zsync