Ubuntu Wiki

This is a draft of the new "Contribute To Ubuntu" we hope to include in the shipped documentation for Edgy Eft.

Introduction

Ubuntu is most of all a community. All of the software, artwork and documentation in Ubuntu has been created, tested, used and discussed openly by people around the world participating in the Open Source community made possible by the Internet. Anyone who uses Ubuntu is part of this global community, and we invite you to help shape Ubuntu to better meet your needs. To make it yours!

Anyone can help shape and improve Ubuntu. You can do it by using Ubuntu in your everyday life and recommending it to others, by helping other users, by translating programs or documents to your native language, by testing the software and reporting issues, by creating artwork or writing documentation, by fixing software issues, writing new software or keeping others' software up to date. You can read more about how to begin contributing below.

No matter how you want to contribute, we will welcome new drive and ideas and any contributions to improve Ubuntu and spread Open Source to the world.

Spreading the Word

The easiest way to give back to the Ubuntu community is by sharing Ubuntu with others: Recommend Ubuntu to others, show them how to download and install Ubuntu and the possibilities and qualities of Open Source Software. As the Ubuntu community grows, so does its influence and the more accepted and supported Ubuntu will become! You can spread the word by:

• Ordering CDs from Shipit and give them to people who might be interested. Drop them off at libraries, Internet Cafes, schools, computer shops or anywhere else where people use computers. Be sure to help people to use and understand Ubuntu if they become interested.
• Give a talk at your local school, Linux User Group or library on Ubuntu! There are lots of notes from other Ubuntu talks given by others in several languages are available on the wiki.

• Write a short account of how and why you use Ubuntu by following these guidelines and send it to mystory@ubuntu.com. Your story can then be used to show others how Ubuntu can be used!

• Join or start a Local Community Team - if you like Ubuntu, it is likely that others around you like it as well! See the "Going Local!" section for details.

Marketing

If you want to help promoting and marketing Ubuntu in a more general and coordinated effort, you can join the Ubuntu Marketing Team which coordinates a number projects including a community-run Ubuntu magazine to spread awareness of Ubuntu.

Contact:

• Read the MarketingTeam wiki page.

• Join the ubuntu-marketing mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-marketing IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

Going Local!

Chances are that you are not the only person in your city, region or country who is using Ubuntu. You can help to make Ubuntu better for people in your area by helping out local Ubuntu users or translating the Ubuntu software and documentation to your local language.

LoCo teams

if you want to meet other Ubuntu users in your area, you should look for a Local Ubuntu Community team (LoCo team for short) to join. There are LoCo teams spread out all over the world, and you can find a list of all of them [:LoCoTeamList here]. If there isn't a LoCo team near you, you can found a new one! Just follow the instructions on the wiki.

Contact:

• Read the LoCoTeams wiki page.

• Join your local LoCo Team mailing-list and IRC channel (details can be found on the LoCoTeamList wiki page)

Translation

If your home language is not English but you happen to have really good English skills and are comfortable using software in English, you help to translate the Ubuntu applications and documentation into your native language. To help out you can:

• Use the web-based Rosetta translation system makes it easy to translate Ubuntu applications into your language. Even if you just translate a few lines you may make all the difference to someone in your own country who is just starting to learn about computers and Free Software.
• Translate popular wiki pages within the Documentation Wiki.
• Test that your local language fonts and display works correctly. If they don't, file bug reports on the issues.

Contact:

• Join your local LoCo Team mailing-list and IRC channel (details can be found on the LoCoTeamList wiki page) to get in touch with other users in your region so you can coordinate your translation efforts.

• Join the Ubuntu-Translators mailing list to stay in touch with other Ubuntu translators.

Helping others with Ubuntu

You can make a major contribution to the Ubuntu project by helping others use Ubuntu. There are four main community support channels where you can help out other Ubuntu users by answering questions and referring them to relevant documentation:

• Join the Ubuntu support mailing-list ubuntu-users.
• Join the Ubuntu support and discussion IRC channel: #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net
• Join the Ubuntu Forums
• Check the Launchpad Support Tracker for support requests for Ubuntu that you can solve.

NB: If you prefer to help other Ubuntu users in another language than English, please refer to the LoCoTeamList for info on local language support options where you can help out.

New User Network

If you are enthusiast about Ubuntu and want to help others learning how to use it, you can join the New User Network - a group of community supporters who spend 10 hours or so a week helping new users.

Contact:

• Read the NewUserNetwork wiki page

• Join the #ubuntu-nun IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

Usability

If you want to improve the usability of Ubuntu, you can try out one of the Ubuntu usability tests on your friends, and record their reactions and impressions of Ubuntu. You can then report these impressions to the Ubuntu Desktop team.

Contact:

• Read the Wiki page
• Join the ubuntu-desktop mailing-list

Writing Documentation

If you get stumped by a problem with Ubuntu, chances are good that many other people will be frustrated by it as well. If you are not currently able to write code to fix the problem, you can help everyone else out by writing up your experience and documenting the solution! All documentation and help pages in Ubuntu are written by volunteer community members gathered in the Ubuntu Documentation Team, and you can help out in a number of ways:

• Check the existing documentation to see if it covers your problem. If it does, you can add to it, edit it or remove errors (such as typos, grammar and spelling, and technical errors), send any suggestions and changes to the Documentation Team mailing-list.
• If no relevant documentation exists, you can add a page in the Documentation Wiki which is a separate community wiki for editing and writing documentation. Rather than answer a question two or more times, write up the answer and make it available to everyone in the wiki.
• Read through the HOWTOs and other documentation in the Ubuntu Forums and check them for accuracy, and put them in the Documentation Wiki.
• Join one of the Documentation Team projects and work on directly on maintaining and developing one of the guides for Ubuntu or one of its derivatives. A new version of these guides are released with each new release of Ubuntu, and these are translated through the translation tool Rosetta in the same manner as all other applications in Ubuntu.

Contact:

• Read the DocTeam wiki page

• Join the Documentation team mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-doc IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

Wiki

You can spell check, edit or write the pages of the Ubuntu wiki. The better and more accessible the information in the wiki is, the easier it will be for people to use. You can find a list of pages in need of editing on the WikiToDo page. The Wiki is maintained by the Wiki Team - a group of active wiki contributors that edit and clean up the main Ubuntu wiki according to a community-maintained Styleguide.

Contact:

• Read the team wiki page
• Join the Documentation team mailing-list and the #ubuntu-doc IRC channel on irc.freenode.net - both of which are also used for Wiki team discussion.

Creating Artwork

If you have artistic talent, you can help improve the style and feel of the Ubuntu desktop by contributing to the artwork and design of the next release of Ubuntu. All of the splash screens, icons, wallpapers and sounds of Ubuntu are designed, discussed and approved by the Ubuntu Artwork team, and you can help out by examining the current approved Ubuntu artwork projects at https://launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-art/+specs and create something that will fit with what is being planned with the next release of Ubuntu.

Contact:

• Read the ArtTeam wiki page,

• Join the Ubuntu-art mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-artwork IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

Testing and Bug squashing

Ubuntu, like any other software, needs good testers. You can contribute to Ubuntu simply by running the latest version and reporting software issues - we call them bugs - and helping to manage those bugs until they are fixed.

Software Testing

All software-specific bugs is the domain of the Ubuntu Bugsquad which is the Quality Assurance (QA) team for Ubuntu. Getting involved with the Bugsquad is easy:

• Join the Ubuntu devel-announce mailing-list to get all of the announcements of when a new development version of Ubuntu is released. The development version of Ubuntu is the one that the developers are currently working on, so they're usually quite unstable and full of bugs.
• Download and run the latest development version of Ubuntu, and upgrade it regularly. You can download the Ubuntu development version here. Do not use a development release as your main operating system, if you feel comfortable using an operating system that may break with a new upgrade.
• You will run into problems when you run a development version of Ubuntu, when you do you should report those problems as bugs in the Ubuntu bug tracker. Unless you let the developers know of the bugs you encounter, they won't be able to fix them as they need information on under which circumstances these bugs occur.
• When you find a bug, you should report bugs into the Ubuntu Bug tracker. You should check that the bug hasn't already been reported by searching for it. If you find the bug already reported, you can add a comment of your own about it, or change its status to "Confirmed". If the bug hasn't been reported, you can file a new bug report.
• You can make a huge impact by fixing bugs that bother you, and thus improve Ubuntu!

Contact:

• Read the Bug Squad wiki page
• Join the #ubuntu-bugs IRC channel on irc.freenode.net
• Check the devel-announce mailing-list for announcements of Bug days which are special occasions where the Bug Squad mount special efforts to teach new contributors how to find, reproduce, confirm and close bugs.

Also see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs

Hardware Testing

All hardware-specific bugs - ie. bugs that only appear when certain hardware or certain combinations of hardware - belong to the the Ubuntu Testing Teams. With each new Ubuntu development release, it is necessary to test whether all of the Ubuntu system and associated applications still work with all kinds of hardware and peripherals. You can help by testing Ubuntu on your own hardware.

General Testing

• The Ubuntu Testing Teams have made a list of things they need to test on every new development release. Run through the list and test each part. Note any failures and fill out a report and send it to the Ubuntu-devel mailing-list.

Contact:

• Read the Testing wiki page
• Join the ubuntu-devel mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-devel IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

Laptop Testing

If you have a laptop, you can join the Ubuntu Laptop Testing Team for laptop-specific testing.

Contact:

• Read the LaptopTesting wiki page

• Join the ubuntu-laptop mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-laptop IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

Server Testing

If you run a server, you can join the Ubuntu Server Testing Team for server-specific testing.

Contact:

• Read the ServerTesting wiki page

• Join the ubuntu-devel mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-server IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

NB: Please note that none of these channels are support channels per-se, please use #ubuntu for that!

Writing code

You can make technical contributions to Ubuntu by preparing - we call it packaging - other Open Source software for use in Ubuntu, by fixing bugs in software already included with Ubuntu or by writing brand new software. No matter what kind of technical contribution you would like to make to Ubuntu, we recommend that you join the ubuntu-devel and ubuntu-devel-announce mailing-lists. All information about technical development passes through these mailing-lists.

Packaging (MOTU)

If you know of a cool application, feature or change available else in the Open Source world that you would like to have in Ubuntu, you can add it yourself by packaging it for Ubuntu.

All software in Ubuntu is arranged in software packages called .deb files. Most of these packages are taken from the Debian distribution and merged and stabilized for use with Ubuntu, though others are prepared directly from the source code. These packages are all sorted into two repositories, Main - containing the core component packages which are maintained by the core Ubuntu developers, and Universe - containing all other Open Source packages which are maintained by the Ubuntu developers who humorously call themselves Masters of the Universe - or MOTUs for short.

If you want to get involved with packaging, you can help out the MOTUs as a MOTU hopeful. The MOTUs are community members who have been granted upload rights to the Universe repository by the Technical Board, whereas MOTU Hopefuls are community members (like you) helping out, gathering experience and who one day may gain upload rights themselves.

To get started as a MOTU helpful you can:

• Get in touch with a MOTU Mentor who will help you with the basics.
• Read the Packaging Guide
• Join the MOTU school lessons that address relevant issues about package maintenance.

• Look over the MOTU ToDo list to see which projects need help.

Once you have gained experience with packaging tasks (for example, by playing an active role in the MOTU team), you will be able to move from a universe-only maintainer to an Ubuntu core developer by .

NB: The MOTUs also maintain the packages for K|Ed|X|ubuntu and the other Ubuntu derivatives, so you if you want to contribute to one of these specifically, you will need to get involved with the MOTUs.

Contact:

• Check out the MOTU wiki page
• join the #ubuntu-motu IRC channel on irc.freenode.net
• join the ubuntu-motu, the ubuntu-devel and the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing lists.

Programming

If you want to program brand-new features specifically for Ubuntu or redesign and develop current ones, there are several ways to get you started:

• Look through the list of Ubuntu specifications on Launchpad. Pick one that interests you, and hopefully there should be enough information to begin with an implementation.
• Look through the list of paid bounty projects that are registered for Ubuntu in Launchpad. Pick one that interests you and submit a proposal and references.
• Write and package brand new software for Ubuntu. Contact the MOTUs to get new software into the Ubuntu Universe so that people can try it out and give you feedback. In time it may become part of the Ubuntu Main portfolio of applications that are available to all Ubuntu users by default.
• If you are especially interested in the Ubuntu Desktop, you can get involved with the Desktop Team which works to bring the latest cool desktop stuff to Ubuntu.
• If you are especially interested in the Ubuntu Server, you can get involved with the Server Team which works to bring the latest system administration tools and server applications to Ubuntu.

Contact:

For general development:

• Read what wiki page???
• Join the ubuntu-devel mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-devel IRC Channel on irc.freenode.net.

For Desktop development:

• Read the DesktopTeam wiki page.

• Join the ubuntu-desktop mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-desktop IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

For Server development:

• Read the ServerTeam wiki page.

• Join the ubuntu-desktop mailing-list
• Join the #ubuntu-desktop IRC channel on irc.freenode.net

Giving Ideas and Feedback

Write specifications.. come to a summit. etc.

• Participate in discussions and brainstorming on the Ubuntu Wiki where we work on the fastest-moving documents before they are ready for publication on the main web site.
• Add your ideas to the Idea Pool for features you'd like to see in Ubuntu, products, marketing suggestions or any other ideas you'd like to add here.

Remember, in the open source world, work counts more than talk so try to find friends or link up with people who can help turn your vision into reality.

The Ubuntu community communication channels

ubuntu-announce and ubuntu-news.

Unresolved: Ubuntu membership.. Launchpad...