About me

Hello Ubuntu! After reading up on becoming an Ubuntu member I have started this wiki page to keep track of my small yet meaningful (hopefully!) contributions to the project.

I am a Desktop Architect at a very large firm with about 200,000 PC's (Almost all Windows unfortunately). However I am a member of a review board for open source technologies there. Some open source is better than no open source! My blog is located at http://chadarius.com. Come visit me!

My Journey to Ubuntu

I've been using Linux for 10 years. I started with Redhat to create my own file server. Eventually I used it to host my web site over my SDSL line until I moved to Rolling Meadows, IL where I live in bad DSL area. I eventually moved to using Gentoo for my home servers, which really taught me lots of under the hood Linux goodness.

I started using Linux on the desktop for everything except for some gaming about 3 years ago. I was a very happy SuSE desktop user until Novell made their weird deal with Microsoft to protect only Novell customers from non-existent patent threats from Microsoft. It makes no sense to me, other than the fact that Novell seems to have received quite a lot of money. I had already downloaded Ubuntu 6.10 a few weeks beforehand to install and play with. The very next day I replaced SuSE with Ubuntu on my laptop. Shortly afterward I replaced my SuSE MythTV build and my wife's SuSE laptop build with Ubuntu as well. I have never looked back. I've found Ubuntu just as easy or easier to use as SuSE.

I'm in the process of moving my Gentoo servers to Ubuntu and consolidating everything onto one server to handle all my home requirements.

St. Thomas Christian Computing Forum

I help organize and host a Christian Computing Forum at my church every month at St. Thomas United Methodist Church in Glen Ellyn, IL. Out of that I started St. Thomas Open Source Repository (http://chadarius.com/node/33). It includes a CD for a host of useful Windows open source applications for people to get their feet wet with FLOSS and I also provide KUbuntu for when they want to make the jump to Linux.

Most of the software is general purpose and useful for everyone. Its a great way to get people to start using open source without making the move to Linux. I find that once they start using Firefox and Open Office on Windows and they know that they can use the same software in Linux, that their fears of switching to Linux become lower.

Contributions

I'll be tracking my contributions here over time and I hope to become an Ubuntu member soon. I just need to find my nitch and get crackin'!

I started my small but meaningful Ubuntu career by editing the download links for the Belkin F5D7050 USB wifi card at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/Belkin_F5D7050_ver_3000_(Ralink_rt73_driver)

I also posted a bug and a fix for MythTV recently. It was a small change to the 6200ch file that controls the Comcast DVR units via firewire. My bug can be found at http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/2904.

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