Puppy Linux versions are released and posted on this forum in different stages of development.
We the users of Puppy Linux are asked to be part of the development of a new Puppy version.
Help by downloading a version of Puppy, in it's different stages of development, and test, find bugs, programs not working, offering a fix you may have found, etc......
To help you understand.
Here are the stages a Puppy version goes through.
Alpha
Alpha software is not thoroughly tested, by the developer, before it is released to customers. Alpha software may contain serious errors, and any resulting instability could cause crashes or data loss.
Alpha software may not contain all of the features, that are planned for the final version.
Beta
A beta phase generally begins, when the software is feature complete, but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs.
Software in the beta phase, will generally have many more bugs in it, than completed software, and speed or performance issues, and may still cause crashes or data loss.
Release candidate
A release candidate (RC), also known as "going silver", is a beta version with potential to be a stable product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. In this stage of product stabilization, all product features have been designed, coded and tested through one or more beta cycles with no known showstopper-class bugs. A release is called code complete when the development team agrees that no entirely new source code will be added to this release.
Stable release
Also called production release, the stable release is the last release candidate (RC) which has passed all verification's / tests. The remaining bugs are considered as acceptable.
A good Puppy version developer, will make their first topic, about the Puppy version, identified as alpha.
As a newer stage version of the Puppy version iso, is posted.
Change the topic subject, identifying it, with beta, release candidate, stable release identifier.
Keep this information, in your mind, when you download and use a Puppy version.
you will have a much better understanding of what you are using as a Puppy version.
You can see, by some of the topic issues, that are on this forum.
Some issues do not get found, until a lot of people start using A Puppy version and it gets used on many, many, different computers.
