Linux Mint Forums

Hi all, I was wondering whether the dev team intends to release iso images for LMDE Update Pack 5 very early in the testing phase so as to test the installer, too? If the answer is yes, any idea when one could expect them? Cheers.

If in fact there will be a new ISO image for UP5 (I don't know either way), it will be available once the testing team has approved it for RC. If you want ISO images before RC, you have to join the testing team

Thanks for the quick reply! Is my understanding correct that two different approaches are adopted for the testing of upcoming LMDE releases? In the sense that everybody is invited to test (and report feedback on) the transition to a new update pack via the incoming repository whereas testing an installation from scratch by means of pre-RC DVD images is a non-public task performed internally by the testing team? And would the latter approach exclude non-developers from testing with intent? I am just asking to understand how this works, I don't mean to express discontent or anything. I know that the debian-installer team puts even very early images online without advertising them, so one needs to closely monitor the developer's mailing lists to be on the ball. With that said: what's the recommended method of eavesdropping on the LMDE developers to find out where those pre-RC images are hidden?

You basically have it correct that for LMDE there are two testing approaches. The public one for UP#, and the private one for ISO images (RC / final release). You can follow the progress of the ISO images tests here: http://community.linuxmint.com/iso (LMDE is not up there yet, but it will be once testing starts). As you can see, testing is done through pre-defined test-cases. The ISO images are not available publicly until all tests are passed to satisfaction of the ISO maintainer.

Many thanks for the clarification! Cheers.