On 2/27/06, Havard Rast Blok <newsmail1@hblok.net> wrote:
 
[ snip ]

Welcome Arthur!

It's good to see more new people here. I've recently joined the list
myself, and am still slowly finding my way around the tools and tricks.
(Search on Bugzilla for example; beats me...)

That's where I am now I suppose.

As for what to test or even how to test, you'll probably find endless
discussions and books on both of these questions. But given the specs on
your testing machine, in I my opinion verifying that the most common tools
still work well on an older machine would be useful. Because I think a
basic installation, running a browser, e-mail client and some office
applications, etc. should still be feasible on a machine a few years old.
So if it takes an intolerable amount of time to boot, or to start an
application, I'd stay that's an issue worth flagging on this list.

Fair enough.

Furthermore, I think one good way of testing in general is to try to use
the application or system as you normally would do, i.e. some kind of use
case testing. That is, would day-to-day use cause any issues, or even,
would your mom be able to cope?

This is more towards  my original query as to testign methadology. Thanks.

I suppose some on the list will disagree to some of these views (but I
don't mean this to be a troll). My main point is that in order to make
mainstream Linux Desktop happen, we have to see it through the eyes of
inexperienced users. Surprisingly, my mom does not ask about how to
upgrade her Fedora laptop using yum, or how to set up a wlan. Rather, the
most occurring questions are: "Do I right-click or left-click this button?
Double or single click? How do I disconnect the USB disk again? And why
does it not always show up on the screen when I plug it in?" (In FC4, I'm
stuck on the last one).

KDE in FC4 may currently do this, I know it does for  CD/DVD Roms. Also with KDE, you can add the "Storage Media" applet to a taskbar, sorry, not sure how to do this with Gnome.

Havard

Peace.

--
Havard Rast Blok

--
As a boy I jumped through Windows, as a man I play with Penguins.