In addition to making the OS X operating system a free purchase for eligible systems through the App Store, one of Apple’s latest developments has been the announcement of a public beta program to expand its testing for the development of the next version of OS X.

This program was initially announced in April, and since then Apple has continued to supply its AppleSeed and developer programs with early builds of OS X Yosemite, but so far has not made it available through the public beta program.

Recently, Jim Dalrymple of The Loop has received word from Apple that the public beta of OS X Yosemite will be released tomorrow, July 24. This announcement was not made publicly by Apple, but does suggest that those interested in trying the beta should not have very long to wait.

Being beta software, and specifically operating system software, this public beta should only be used on systems which you do not rely on. Beta software will undoubtedly have bugs, some of which may be severe and can lead to data loss, or even hardware malfunction, and overall is distributed with the intent for users to find problems and report them back to Apple, and not use the software for regular work.

Even with these risks in place, you may still wish to participate and otherwise simply try the new operating system. If so, then consider several approaches you can take for safely installing and running the public beta, which include using secondary boot partitions, external hard drives, and virtualization software to keep the new OS confined and separate from your current installation.

As always, be sure to fully back up your system regularly, both before installing Yosemite, and when using it.

OS X Yosemite should run on any Mac that supports OS X Mavericks, but if you are uncertain about your system’s compatibility, then you can check here for how to look up whether or not your Mac is supported.

You can sign up to receive the Yosemite beta on Apple’s Yosemite Beta program Web site.