2nd, Help get Lenny released before the Inauguration.
http://blog.schmehl.info//2008/10/07#releasing-lenny
For users
Even as a "simple user" (aren't we all just users?) you may help getting Lenny released. Some things you can do:
If you are running stable (aka Etch), you could consider upgrading to Lenny and see, if everything works fine. Currently there are no detailed release notes documenting the procedure, so your best way to test upgrades are to:If something goes wrong or something unexpected happens, please report it. If you already know a specific package, report a bug against that package. If you don't know, please report a bug describing the problem you experienced to the "upgrade-reports package. If your problem is something, which can't be fixed properly, but should be documented (e.g. hardware support regressions, packages no longer available) please report a bug against the "release-notes" package (Bonus points if you not only report the bug, but also supply a paragraph to be added to the release notes).
- Make backups
Change your /etc/apt/sources.list
Run "aptitude update" to get information about new packages
Run "aptitude install dpkg aptitude apt script" to install the newest package management
Run "script aptitude full-upgrade"
Exit the environment of the "script" command, by typing "exit"
The command "script" will log the entire output of the command in the file "typescript". Should something go wrong during the upgrade, please send this file along with your bug report.
If you upgraded succesfully, you should report that, too. There's a template for upgrade reports, which you can use.
Speaking of the release notes: You can take a look at the bugs reported against the release notesand see if you can help there, e.g. by writing a paragraph describing a problem. Install the package "devscripts", (you'll need the version provided by backports.org, and run the script "rc-alert --include-dists TU --include-dist-op", and you'll get a list of release critical bugs open for one of the packages you have installed. Guessing that you have them installed, because you are using them and are interested in them, you should have a very high interest to get these bugs fixed :)
You can try to help, by trying to reproduce them and reporting that to the bug report. There are even some easy bugs, where the maintainer hasn't found the time to fix it, yet. Bug 497290, for example, didn't need deep technical skills. It just needed someone with some time to collect the needed data for the copyright file.
If you speak a language other than English, you might consider joining the translation efforts. While it is to late to translate the debian-installer or the installation guide to a new language for Lenny (perhaps for the next release then?), you could start translating the release notes to a not yet supported language. If you are willing to do so (which can be quite time consuming, especially in the final phase), please contact either your localization team or the debian doc mailing list if there's no local mailing list.
See? Even as a "simple user" without deeper technical knowledge you can help us getting Lenny in shape to be released.