On Thu 2003 Oct 23 at 13:01, "Buchan Milne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote, in part: > ... > But, I don't think anyone on this list qualifies as a newbie. > People on this list should be testing at least half the betas > on at least one machine, and/or running cooker full-time on a > box (if you don't, you're most probably a lurker ;-)).
Give newbie lurkers some guidance and Mandrake can convert them to newbie lurker testers (NLT). That newbies and NLTs are welcomed in the Mandrake community, even by experienced and skilled developers, is a reason that Mandrake users are loyal. But what needs to be tested? What are the priorities? What can we do to most help Mandrake? Where do we fit in? Many lurk for lack of guidance on how to use available time. Testing (playing, according to my wife) takes place when I have the time, mostly during foul weather when I'm stuck inside. I I may have several days or nights to devote to testing or I may be too busy to even check email daily because of real life oblications. When I do have time, I don't know what needs testing most, so I 'play' with packages. With guidance from developers, I could focus on specific hardware or packages or scripts or what? I'm always behind. The bugs I find have already been reported and in many cases have already been fixed when I find them. Occasionally I can confirm a reported bug. I live in a rural area with only dial-up Internet access. My TelCO is far from my home and the phone lines are noisy, limiting my speeds to 30 to 40 kbs with a 56k modem. For the near future, the only available high-speed Internet would be satellite, which I can't afford. Besides, the 'fair use' policies of Dish and DirecPC would decrement my speed after downloading over 300 megs in a 24 hour period. Add the lack of a reliable US mirror, and keeping up with updates, cooker and contrib is always a problem for me. I depend on disk mills for cooker snapshots and contrib packages to seed my home server, then I try to keep up with changes by nightly rsync. My FTP tree is mostly up-to-date until a major change. I can do network installs promptly. If I build my own CDs, I'm never sure if they are identical to the ISOs that were distributed so I buy CDs of betas and RCs from a disk mill. The only reliable one right now is http://www.budgetlinuxcds.com/ and it takes a week to get the disks from France. I have a variety of PCs. Most are home-built from discounted parts or parts salvaged from 'throw away' PCs. I probably won't get an IA64/Athlon64/Opteron until they're 'old.' But I'm an 'empty nester' with lots of room so I have lots of PCs in lots of configurations networked together. One or more are running a beta, RC or cooker and/or one of my own learning experiments. Right now, that would be TaiClock on an RC2 install. I'm no hacker, just an experienced newbie lurker tester who has used Mandrake since 7.0. How can I best contribute tonight? Try kernel 2.6.test now? Try a new install on a GigaPro box with a 1GigaByte CPU or a slot-A Athlon or a Cyrix box? Or..? R J 'Tree' Greenwood Catlett VA USA
