I, Didier Roche, apply for MOTU.

Who I am

I am a 25 year old French system administrator, living near Paris.

About my Linux profile, I started using Linux with Red Hat 6 in 1999. I then really become a regular Linux user since Mandrake 7.0 with a KDE based interface. I used Mandrake until 9.0 release of Mandrake, and then decided to try debian, and was truly satisfied with it, despite the long configuration time it took to have a working environment. I found the apt tools really cool compared to rpm one.

I was seeking for an easy-to-use and install Linux distribution. I found the "no-name-yet", known as Ubuntu today, and become to make some test with it. I have sticked with it and Ubuntu make me love the GNOME environment since this date.

I also went in Africa for 1 month with a non-governemental organisation, Africedu : (project 2006: Lome, capital city of Togo), shipping in a school 60 computers set up with Ubuntu 5.10 (and upgraded there to 6.06 from on old hard drive!). We made some training there.

As a programmer, I know C++, XHTML/CSS, PHP, XML/XSL/XPATH, shell scripting (Bash/Ksh) and java languages. I am currently learning python which seems to rock on! Oh ya, and I began a little more than ten years ago, with... visual basic :/ (nobody's perfect).

My Ubuntu story

I wrote a documentation I wrote to my dudes when going to Africa to teach them the very basics of Ubuntu. It turns out as a Simple Comme Ubuntu, free book (under CC:By-Sa licence), part of framabook collection, solded at more than 3 000 copies only by the Internet, and downloaded more than 300 000 times at the very moment.

It becames popular and so people from ubuntu-fr ask me to help in coordinating the ubuntu-fr wiki. Today, I am involved in French ubuntu-fr loco team as a member of the administration team and part of the chair (as the secretary) of ubuntu-fr French non governemental organisation. With this, I am participating to French Ubuntu Party as an organizer and differents French FOSS meetings in promoting ubuntu.

Then, for ubuntu development, at last RMLL, I spoke with huats about MOTUship and he presented me the mentorship program. I was excited about that and dive in it from last July, having to balance my spare time between ubuntu-fr and ubuntu development (a solution is to poke huats for every tasks you have to handle in parallel manner)

My involvement

So, from then, I worked to learn a lot of things reading a whole bunch of documentation (long time transportation to go to your paid work enables you to read a lot!), and working in my two prefered areas, at the time being: ubuntu-desktop and ubuntu-server teams.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Areas of work

I am working more on the desktop team at the moment, but try to dedicate more time time to the server one as well.

Things I could do better

learnt about dh_install --list-missing and to diff to see added depencies not leasted in NEWS (I was relying on that before)

I will try to be present in the desktop/server team meetings, but the schedule is not really great regarding with my paid-work. So, at this moment, I just read ML summary of those meetings.

Plans for the future

General

gcc

What I like least in Ubuntu

Please describe what you like least in Ubuntu and what thoughts do you have about fixing it.

Comments

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Endorsements

As a sponsor, just copy the template below, fill it out and add it to this section.

TEMPLATE

== <SPONSORS NAME> ==
=== General feedback ===
## Please fill us in on your shared experience. (How many packages did you sponsor? How would you judge the quality? How would you describe the improvements? Do you trust the applicant?)

=== Specific Experiences of working together ===
''Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better.''
=== Areas of Improvement ===