infinite knots

Last year the influx of X.org bug reports to Ubuntu was pretty crazy. So far this year, myself and a band of other community members have made a good dent in the volume of bugs and gotten the influx under control; see this graph: X Bug Triaging Activity (2008-2009).

A solid momentum has built up, which is good since X.org is such a key piece of Desktop Linux, and the more solid it is, the more solid the whole Ubuntu experience will be.

Since I think a lot of the basic bug triage is pretty well understood now, I'll be focusing less time on that going forward. I've documented many of the processes at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/X, and I'd like to encourage others to jump in.

Here's some pretty straightforward tasks/projects that would help clean up the bug tracker and move more of these bugs towards a solution:

1. Review packages with small numbers of bugs. A lot of the packages with Triaging common classes of issues. Certain types of bugs come up again and again, and while the bugs themselves are different, the symptoms and troubleshooting procedures are very similar. I've written several guides for common issues at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting; pick one, and search launchpad for matching bugs.

2. Request re-testing against Jaunty. Especially for -intel and -ati bugs, we can't upstream bugs unless we know they still exist in the latest version of their code. So having them re-test Jaunty is an important step towards getting their bug upstreamed. If you ask someone to test Jaunty, please make sure to follow up by then forwarding their bug upstream once they've confirmed.

3. Forward triaged bugs upstream. While we fix some X bugs in Ubuntu, the vast majority actually need upstream's help. Your help in forwarding bugs upstream to bugzilla.freedesktop.org can go a LONG way towards getting these bugs finally figured out and solved.