hello Ubuntu!

[Elliot Murphy]

Wow, a lot of interest on this thread. This response is also for all
the other folks who wrote in about wanting to learn to contribute -
welcome!

2010/3/1 adrian orozco <orozcoadrian at gmail.com>:
> Thanks for responding Elliot.
>
>>>> Are you interested in working on fixing bugs in packages in Ubuntu?
> First I'd like to learn about making Ubuntu packages.

Great! This is a great place to start:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Packaging

There are even screencasts, which is pretty cool. Definitely go to the
work of setting up a pbuilder and a PPA, try rebuilding some existing
packages, then try making some small change to the package on your
own, and learn the rules for how to create a new version number. Once
you are comfortable with that process, you'll be ready to find some
bugs to fix, or find some patches that people have already proposed,
and work on testing them and preparing them for upload if they are
suitable for inclusion in Ubuntu. The harvest site is a great place to
look for things to work on that won't take a huge amount of time:
http://daniel.holba.ch/harvest/

>>>> Do you have much experience in software development already?
> Yes and no. I got a BS in Computer Engineering in 2005. Currently I'm about
> 1/3 into a Masters in Computer Science. I've been working professionally as
> a software engineer for almost 5 years. I have lots of experience mainly in
> Windows world, Visual Studio, Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest. I want to
> gain more experience in Linux and in open source software.

Sounds like you won't have any trouble diving in and becoming productive.

> I'm very interested in attending a loco team meeting. I signed up last year,
> my user name is climbatizer, but I never got around participating, until
> now.

Great! Hope to see you around. Don't be intimidated by the rules,
everyone is super friendly. It's really very easy to be productive and
get things fixed in Ubuntu, although it can be confusing at first
until you learn the release schedule.
-- 
Elliot Murphy | https://launchpad.net/~statik/