Hello people,
I'm Marco Sgobino, a CS student from Italy. I have been a Linux user for almost 5 years, with practically the entire time having a Fedora system installed somewhere. For sure, my main machine has been running Fedora for 4 years straight, while I sometimes toyed with other operating systems. I always install the Workstation edition, but I am also a happy user of Sway window manager.
I really like this operating system, to the point I'm suggesting it to many friends and colleagues who want a much more flexible and powerful system or are willing to find alternatives to throwing their pc in the trash due to Windows planned obsolescence (despite not being labeled as 'lightweight distro' or 'minimal distro', Fedora runs well on decades old hardware). I got to know Fedora by simply looking at the ubiquitous distro recommendations, it was suggested almost everywhere.
I would love to help the Fedora Project in some areas I could be inclined to, that are programming and package maintaining. I have knowledge in Java, C and C++ and I'm planning to learn some Python as well. I write bash scripts sometimes, although not in complex ways yet. In particular, I would like to start maintaining some packages I find useful, especially `starship` (which appears to not be in Fedora anymore from 37) and some Sway related utilities such as `wallutils`. I am willing to learn anything useful and anything required for the task, either from the programming/maintaining side and from the security/conventions of community side.
Sadly, this semester is specially tough for me; I don't want to indulge in classic student's complaining, but I really have to focus on a big pile of exams before attempting serious work on Fedora Community. Still, I would like to get the feet wet with the community, following exchanges of messages, possibly learning required skills in midtime. I will be really glad to help the moment I have the chance in the future. What are the required skills and what are some useful places/informations to look up for the task I will carry? In which other areas can I help?
Thanks in advance to all Fedora Contributors and Fedora People that make this software distribution not only possible, but also great.
On Mon, 2022-11-07 at 13:39 +0000, Alessio wrote:
Ciao Marco, and welcome!
A.
Thank you very much.
As suggested on the ticket in pagure.io, I will write down a bit more of myself.
I live in Trieste, Italy, a city in north-east part of Italy, very close to the neighboring country Slovenia. Trieste is a delightful seaside city, notorious for its 'Barcolana', a historic international sailing regatta that involves thousands of ships in a sailing race. I study computer science there at the university. I recently heard there is a Linux User Group in the city, I'm going to attend their meetings soon.
My main motivations for helping and contributing in Fedora are to learn new stuff, to help building the operating system I use and to get in touch with new, interesting people---the order of these three reasons doesn't matter. I find this operating system a good choice when it comes to software development and, generally speaking, when it comes to have a solid, well tested, machine you can rely on. The community is very welcoming and warm: I first had a taste of it on the Telegram group, where every technical issue had been elegantly solved in a matter of minutes.
Speaking of what I am able to do, I am currently building up my software development skills these months, in particular Java and C++ skills, plus some web programming skills. I also know C language and a bit of lua; I still have a lot to learn.
I regularly enjoy both GNOME and Sway---I already got pointed to look at the Sway SIG (I heard they are building a new Spin out of Sway). As I already said, I would also like to maintain some packages I use or could use that are not present in the main repository.
I enjoy using the commandline, in particular zsh+starship, and in the past I used zsh+oh-my-zsh. My VCS of choice is git, with which I manage my (little) projects and classroom notes.
I am also able to manipulate images with GIMP at a basic level (no professional design skills); my drawing skills, instead, are close to zero.
My past contributions to free and open source related projects were at an Italian volunteering group named 'Etica Digitale' (Digital Ethics), involved in journalism and news production related to digital ethics topics such as privacy, digital rights, and similarly important subjects. My goal in the project was to write and maintain a guide for newcomers and unexperienced people to help them using more privacy- respecting technologies (for instance, the guide included slow and simple explanations on why privacy is important, why care of it, and how to do it, by incorporating step-by-step guides on substituting proprietary applications with free ones both on mobile and on computer platforms). I left the project a year ago due to serious divergence of views with the current project holder, specially in relation to the nature of the group and its future goals; still, the idea of a simple guide, step-by-step, to help unexperienced people gain more control over their privacy captivates me.
Currently I cannot spend time contributing to Fedora, a thing that will change as I settle down some engagments and obligations I currently have. I think that, after an initial time of sudden learning of new things, I might spend at least 4 hours a week contributing. My plan is to start slow and then adjust on some schedule I find comfortable to not mess up things in both life and Fedora.
I usually communicate through Telegram or Matrix. I never used mailing lists before. This is my first use of a mailing list, so forgive me for any mistake :)
fedora-join@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Alessio -
Marco Sgobino