Welcome

Hello...

I'm Matthew Vermeulen. I've been using ubuntu since August 2005. I think Ubuntu is the best Linux distro around, which is why I am currently a member of the AustralianTeam, trying to do what I can for Ubuntu. I've been a member since March 2006.

About Me

How I Found Ubuntu

Linux

I was introduced to Linux by Knoppix around the beginning of 2004. At the time, I had hardly heard of Linux, and I was hoping that Knoppix (3.3) would run faster on my old, old P1 133 First time I tried to boot it I thought something was wrong, because it would get to starting X and no further. Eventually I got it to boot the whole way by selecting Fluxbox WM. One night I left it overnight to boot, and found a nice KDE desktop in the morning. I timed it a few weeks later and realised that it was not freezing, it was just taking 2.5 hours to boot :D.

I installed Knoppix to my hard drive in the hope that it would run faster there. It did, only taking about 15 minutes to boot instead. A few months later I found a computer magazine with Mandrake Linux 9.0 on it, and gave that a try. Over the next 1.5 years I tried a number of distros, all on my old Pentium 1. These included, Red Hat 7.2, Mandrake 9.0 and later 9.2, Lycoris Desktop/LX and SUSE 9.2. All of these were what I could pick up from computer magazines...

Ubuntu

Then, one day in May 2005 I was bored, browsing the web, when I came across Shipit on the Ubuntu website. I thought it was too good to be true, and so I didn't bother with it. However, my curiosity got the better of me and I placed an order and promptly forgot about it. Just over a month later, my CDs arrived! I put the live cd in my computer, restarted, watched stacks of text scroll past, and then X failed to start :(. I gave up on my computer (now a PIII 800 Mhz with Win XP and SUSE 9.2) and tried the family Celeron 2.4. I loved the look, but decided I would just have to live with Windows XP and the occasional play in SUSE. However, a few weeks later, I spent a whole morning getting X to work on the live cd. I then installed Ubuntu 5.04 on the hard drive, and over the next few weeks moved entirely from Windows to Ubuntu.

That's pretty much it. I installed Breezy once the preview release came out (got broadband between Hoary and Breezy) and stayed with Breezy until February '06, at which point I switched to Dapper, and I'm now running edgy.

What I've done

• Currently I am a member of ubuntu-au

• I've done a lot of work on the AustralianTeam wiki, now working as the official AustralianTeam wiki maintainer.

• I spend a lot of time in #ubuntu and #ubuntu-au, providing support to users (and asking a few of my own questions )

• I'm doing work in the ubuntu-I10n-en-au translation team

• In the hope of obtaining a unified commonwealth english translation, I'm also working in the ubuntu-I10n-en-gb translation team. (See also EnglishTranslation)

• I'm working on a few howtos for the community documentation, eg https://help.ubuntu.com/community/F-SpotHowto

Contact Details

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