Hi

I noticed in distrowatch.com that some distros are offered as development releases and in a related area, linux programs and drivers will have alpha/beta versions for people to try out.

Do you like beta testing these distros, programs and drivers or do you prefer to wait for the final candidate of the release version?

Test.
Yes.
I am a team member on distros so I donate time on new features and upgrades.

Like has not no bearing on it. Just my way of helping out.

I do it for Slackware Linux and i3 windows manager.

I contribute a mirror site and snapshot testing to the LFS project.

Thanks rokytnji, sycamorex and szboardstretcher for your info replies. Based by your replies, it seems you do more than test but contribute back. I'm guessing you guys contribute code and/or feedback.

I'm not at that level yet to contribute code because I don't have that skill. I, however would beta test programs and drivers for new hardware and such.

I guess you based your observation on the "Contributing Member" title below our usernames. It's not related to contributing code (click on the link to find out) - This year I received mine as a gift from Jeremy (thank you!) for posting in one of the threads regarding LQ feedback.

Well, it depends. My system should be stable. Definitely I never test alpha. Sometimes I test beta software, rarely distros because I want stability. The main reason I switched to Linux is because Windoze is extremely unstable in general. I don't like the feeling that something bad could happen any time... you know that sense of dread every time I use a Windoze computer, like you're walking a tightrope above a canyon and you can hear the strands breaking. However, I will test individual programs that are in beta, this typically will not crash the whole system.

My hat is off to those at the bleeding edge of testing. Your blood is not shed in vain

I do my bit for Slackware when I can, and I've also had a few of my fixes/enhancements adopted by a couple of upstreams after talking with their developers via email, but some projects/devs are more approachable than others.

No, because I don't know enough and am too lazy.

Like Brian, I don't think I could offer very useful feedback on bad software. I do review new distros for this site and if there's a problem with one that's generally good, I may sign up to their forum / bug-report service and tell them about it.

The other day I told Salix that their SiS video driver was broken. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only Salix user who uses it, and they just get it from Slackware anyway. So I downloaded the source from Xorg to compile it myself: one missing file (which I got from Apple, of all people) and one function with the wrong number of parameters. Off I went to Red Hat for their source code, only to find the same bug! Evidently their developer corrected the code when compiling it (it's fine in CentOS) but forgot to alter the source. Not being a C programmer, that was the end of my attempted contribution.

while i clicked sometimes it all depends on what the system is used for. if its my personal laptop i dont bother with testing beta or anything else i just wait until its it the repos and yum update away.

if its for my file server then i will test drastic new changes in a VM before implementing them on the live server. that goes for anything that is "critical"

if its a minor change ill just wait for it to hit the repos. if its something that im concerned about ill give it a few weeks to see if there is a hurried patch. then ill yum update.

I started using Slackware -current on my Thinkpad recently just to get the hang of it and to report back in case of any abnormality after an update. This is the little I can do for the wonderful Slackware team.

Regards.

I'm also with BrianL. I don't know enough and I have other useful things I'd rather do, like annoying people on the internet.

I do report possible bugs if I stumble over them.

Just sometimes.
But I am like brianL

Very unwise to follow my example.