[UbuntuWomen] Introducing myself

[Caroline Ford]

As I was asked to introduce myself - here goes!

I'm not really sure what to write but I'm in my early 30s, a mature IT
student and am living in London, UK. I have always been interested in
computers since I was given an 8 bit one aged 9. I used to be able to
program in basic, pascal and fortran as a teenager but never used them.

During my linguistics degree in the early 90s I discovered the internet
and have been online pretty much ever since. I've played with various
varieties of linux before settling on mandrake on one of my computers as
it was the most user friendly. Mandrake (now Mandriva)'s lack of support
for their free edition and constant asking for money got on my nerves.
Earlier this year I logged onto that box and found I had NO security
patches to download - it hadn't been looked at for a couple of months
and was less than a year old so I knew that wasn't the case. I suspected
that to get patches I would have to join the Mandriva Club (ie pay) so
started to look for a new distro. After looking at Fedora and not liking
it I discovered Ubuntu! I was expecting Ubuntu to be hard and unfriendly
as it's based on Debian which always seemed to be the distro aimed at
developers rather than users but of course this isn't the case..

Unlike my previous use of linux Dapper is so nice it's become my primary
desktop. It doesn't feel inferior to windows from a user perspective and
I feel much more in control. I'm learning all the time but the learning
curve is manageable and I'm really enjoying it :)

I've been involved in Wikipedia for over 3 years (I'm an administrator
and a bureaucrat) which has motivated me to get involved in the Ubuntu
community. The community is nice and MUCH friendlier than Wikipedia's. I
can do work for Ubuntu without getting stressed.

I've decided not to get involved in documentation as that's too much
like Wikipedia and instead to get involved in more technical work -
currently bug triage. I'm hoping to learn more, maybe get involved in
packaging and maybe get a linux qualification.

Caroline