JeremyBicha

Revision 17 as of 2011-05-20 01:08:33

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  • Name: Jeremy Bicha

  • Launchpad ID: https://launchpad.net/~jbicha

  • Ubuntu Member, Prospective Developer, and core member of the Ubuntu Documentation Team

Who I Am

I am a United States Navy Veteran and spent 2007-2010 living in Bahrain. I am studying Computer Information Technology with the University of Maryland University College. I hold the following IT certifications: CompTIA A+, Security+, Network+, Linux Professional Institute Level 1, and Ubuntu Certified Professional (back when that was still offered :-().

My Ubuntu Story

I have been using Linux since June 2006. My first Linux distribution I tried was Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake. In fact, I had to wait an extra couple days for the then-latest-and-greatest to be released. Although I occasionally play with other Linux distributions, Ubuntu works the best for me. I happily run Ubuntu on my laptop, desktop, and home server. In 2009 I started making a number of minor contributions and attended UDS-M in May 2010. Linux makes computing far more fun, interesting, educational (and I suppose time-consuming) for me.

Early Contributions to Ubuntu

  • Alpha tester since at least 8.10 (it's been so long I don't really remember).

  • Wrote 2 patches for Moodle and successfully got them into Karmic just before release

  • Packaged Kabikaboo for Debian & Ubuntu

  • Suggested the Maverick codename

  • Reported, triaged and fixed a variety of bugs

Documentation

  • Played a significant role in converting Gnome 3's Desktop Guide to be used as the online and offline help in Ubuntu 11.04.

Bugs fixed for GNOME 3 integration into Ubuntu

  • Enabled Nautilus to be used to show desktop icons (currently disabled by default)
  • Enabled users to use other sessions (Ubuntu, Ubuntu Classic, and Unity 2D [or should that be Ubuntu 2d])
  • Restored missing "System Settings" link from Session menu
  • Restored "Home Folder" shortcut to Unity's launcher
  • Fixed "Sound Preferences" link in Sound menu
  • Set cheese dependency correctly so video effects would work and it wouldn't crash

  • Reported this bug where Nautilus doesn't open folders right when set to draw desktop icons

  • Currently helping package various Gnome 3 apps for 11.10 (and the 11.04 PPA)

Ideas for the Future

  • I think one of Ubuntu's biggest problems is consistency in hardware support. There are a lot of regressions from release to release and there is no automated test for these. Some of these bugs could be realized and fixed before release if some kind of automated framework is in place. Related to this is that there is no public database of hardware that does/ does not work in any particular Ubuntu release. An opt-in tool (checkbox on steroids) could help populate this.
  • I'd like to see a plugin for Software Center allowing users to donate to support developers of software that they like. A plugin would allow this concept to be tested more carefully than just integrating into the mainline. This idea is a bit controversial because money can discourage volunteers but I think if the donations are user-driven instead of committee-driven, it wouldn't be too big of an issue. I think it is reasonable for the middle-man provider to keep a small percentage of the donation for facilitating the transaction (and like many money-making schemes, that idea is probably controversial too).

Bug Triaging

I'm a member of the Ubuntu Bug Control Team but I helped report and triage bugs with the Ubuntu BugSquad for quite a while first. A list of bugs related to me can be found here.

Kabikaboo

While my wife was working on writing a novel in a month for NaNoWriMo, I looked around for a suitable app to help her. I found Kabikaboo, a tree-based text-editor written in PyGTK. I jumped in and made numerous fixes removing deprecated code, adding spellchecker support, and cleaned up the Glade UI code. Helping out with this project taught me a bunch more about project management in Launchpad. I worked with the Debian Python team to get Kabikaboo into the Debian repositories and then into the Ubuntu Lucid repositories.

Comments

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  • Jeremy's contributions to the Documentation Team over the Natty cycle have been phenomenal. He reviewed and rewrote a very large number of help pages in the Ubuntu system help to port Gnome 3 docs to Ubuntu and without his contributions we would have struggled to get anywhere near where we are now with the onboard help. The quality of his work meant that he was offered membership of the ~ubuntu-core-doc team (with commit access to the Documentation Team's branch) very quickly indeed. Since then he has continued to do excellent work. See his commits to the gnome-user-docs/natty branch here. I recommend him for membership. -- mdke 2011-05-05 07:24:40

  • When I first joined the Ubuntu Documentation team I was unsure where to start and thanks to the patience and helpfulness of Jeremy I was able to hit the ground running. I have a lot of respect for Jeremy and his teaching skills. He also is an extremely hard worker who is always looking to help the community and maintain the projects he is a part of. -- -- steven.richards 2011-05-11 15:33:45

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