:guitar: ROS 2 Lyrical Luth Testing Kicks Off on April 30th

Open Robotics is calling for community volunteers to participate in a two-week Testing and Tutorial Party for the upcoming ROS 2 Lyrical Luth release. The event kicks off on April 30, 2026, with a virtual meeting where the core team will distribute early beta binaries and source packages. The goal is to systematically test the release across a massive matrix of possible setups before the public launch on May 22 (World Turtle Day). Participants will be tasked with selecting specific configurations—combining RMW vendors like Zenoh or FastDDS, operating systems from Ubuntu to Windows, and chip architectures—and running through official ROS tutorials and test suites.

This crowdsourced approach is essential because internal testing of every possible configuration is not feasible. Volunteers will report bugs and issues via a dedicated GitHub repository, directly contributing to the stability of what Open Robotics hopes will be its "best ROS 2 release yet." To incentivize participation, the organization is offering Lyrical Luth-themed swag and credits to its Fourth Wall shop for the testers who complete the most tests or close the most issues. The testing window runs from April 30 to May 14, providing crucial feedback before the final code freeze and release.