• Real name: Gregory Simonian
• Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Ubuntu derivative: Ubuntu

• E-mail: vahag1991@yahoo.com

• Web site: http://scienceonlooker.blogspot.com

• Total Years using Linux: 1

Support Media

Mainly on forums and IRC. You can find me as "cactaur" on ubuntuforums.org. You can also find me under the alias of "cactaur" on #ubuntu-california and #ubuntu-students on IRC on irc.freenode.org.

Linux Experience

Went through the "try as many distros as you can get your hands on" phase, and Ubuntu remained as the best one for me. I have some programming experience in Java, not that it's of much use currently in linux.

I've also helped at a Linux Installfest sponsored by the Linux Users of Los Angeles. The primary distribution being installed was Ubuntu. Also assisted at the California LoCo InstallFest.

Ubuntu and Me

Total Reinstalls: 2

First reinstall was after a strange crash course with permissions, where I accidentally changed all of the permissions in my system using the not so smart command: sudo chmod 777 /

Second reinstall was more humorous and well documented. It essentially involved the fsck command and GPartEd mounting filesystems without my knowledge.

Contributions

IRC

A frequent visitor to and member of #ubuntu-california. My primary function on #ubuntu-california is moral support and helping to stimulate discussion.

I also sometimes pay a visit to #ubuntu in my free time to help people whose problems I can understand and solve. Usually I help solve the small problems, so that the real experts can go on dealing with the particularly difficult ones.

A recent channel I've joined is #ubuntu-students where we try to encourage Ubuntu advocacy in younger groups of people; namely in high school. Still projects to get going over there.

Forums

I've been a member of the forums for far longer than IRC. On the forums, I've done my share of give-and-take. However, after I started helping at #ubuntu, my forum activity has largely waned. My most valuable contribution to the forums has been a howto I wrote for the script xplanet-gnome

Other

My blog has also been a medium where I heavily advocate Ubuntu and Linux. I've also put up my xplanet-gnome tutorial there. I've also done a post about installing pidgin, which I found was a very widespread problem for people. The solutions were already all over the Ubuntu forums, but I figured one more guide couldn't hurt. Sure enough, that page turned out to be one of the most popular on my blog and has helped literally tens of people.