Aspiring MOTU introducing myself

[rmunn at pobox.com]

Hi all,

After the Ubuntu Developer Week last January, I became inspired to try and start working on Ubuntu (and Debian) packaging. Someday I hope to become an official MOTU, but for now I'm still learning. I've been reading through https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/GettingStarted (and many other pages, of course), and you may have seen me on #ubuntu-motu as rmunn trying to get advocates for http://revu.ubuntuwire.com/p/python-nltk. I haven't actually introduced myself yet, though, so I figured I should remedy that. :-)

My name is Robin Munn, and I've lived all over the world, but currently reside in the Dallas, TX, USA area. I first started using Linux around 1998-1999 when I was in college studying computer science. I think I tried Red Hat first, but quickly moved to Debian because I liked the .deb package system and the dselect tool (apt-get didn't exist yet, or if it did I didn't know about it) better than rpm, which I never could quite figure out. I believe Sarge was the first version of Debian I installed.

I used Debian for a while, but there were often bits of software I wanted to use that didn't have a Debian package. Not knowing any better, I compiled them from source and installed them myself, into /usr rather than into /usr/local. This quickly led to conflicts with the package-management system, which didn't like the /usr tree changing without its knowledge :-). About that time I discovered http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ and decided to give it a try. Building a complete Linux system from scratch taught me a lot about the interdependencies between different parts of the system, and I learned more from that "distribution" (if a "how to do it yourself" manual can properly be called a distribution) than from any other distro I've used before or since.

However, chasing down dependencies and doing the "./configure && make && make install" dance started getting old, so I decided to try something else. I had grown fond of compiling things for myself and feeling like I was in complete control over my Linux box, so I gave Gentoo a try. Gentoo's ebuild system was basically "./configure && make && make install" on steroids with common choices already made for you, so it was a perfect fit for me at that stage of my development as a Linux user, and I used Gentoo happily for several years.

After a while, though, waiting for X or OpenOffice to recompile started to wear on me, and I began to ponder the idea of going back to a binary-package system like Debian. Then I started hearing about something called Warty Warthog, which was making a big splash in the Linux blogs. It felt like Debian -- because it was based on Debian, obviously -- but with more of an end-user focus. Where Debian had always felt a little geared towards system administrators, this new "Ubuntu" system felt more like it was designed for people who didn't want to configure every little config file in /etc "just right", but just wanted to get some work done with their computers. That described me pretty well at that point, so I started using Warty Warthog, then Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger, and so on. I've been using Ubuntu ever since, and have even -- for the first time since I started using Linux in 1998 or 1999 -- felt comfortable recommending Linux to non-geeks like my immediate family, who don't care about how the computer works and just want to use it to get their work done.

As for my other skills, I've been working as a computer programmer since I graduated from college in 2001, except for about eight months of unemployment in mid-2002 when the dot-com crash caught up with me. I'm noddingly familiar with C, C++, Java, and Perl, have dabbled a bit in Lisp, and have become quite proficient in Python. (I'm now the one my co-workers turn to as the "Python expert" when they have questions about their Python code, though obviously there'll always be more I can learn). Still on my "should really learn someday" list are such languages as C# (which is more on the "should really learn REAL SOON NOW" list), Haskell, and Clojure.

While my job mostly involves coding, I've had an interest in learning packaging for a couple years now. And recently, I've been encouraged by my boss to pursue that interest, since we have a small but growing number of Linux users (who are mostly using Ubuntu) among our personnel where I work. So I may be able to invest work hours in Ubuntu packaging, though it remains to be seen how that will balance with my other tasks at work.

I look forward to working with you all in making Ubuntu better for its users.

-- 
Robin Munn
rmunn at pobox.com
GPG key 0x4543D577

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