About Me

My Linux experience began with Red Hat (mostly because it had Bomberman preinstalled), but I soon upgraded to Debian (Woody) and finally Ubuntu (Feisty). I've been an Ubuntu evangelist ever since.

At the beginning of my technical career I was employed at a web technology company, writing web applications with Ruby on Rails. This was where I got a lot of Debian experience, writing software on my Debian machine and administering Debian servers.

From there I began work at my university developing neural networks and evolutionary algorithms for limb control of a quadruped robot. I then began work developing embedded Linux applications to facilitate control of autonomous underwater vehicles. I got some good embedded Linux experience here, mostly focusing on the Gumstix Overo platform.

More recently I worked as a roboticist for the U.S. Department of Defense, writing software to facilitate control of autonomous ground vehicles running Ubuntu.

Nowadays, I'm happily employed at Canonical, working on Ubuntu. Specifically, I'm on the Snapcraft team, focusing on snaps and the snap developer experience, as well as robotics enablement for snaps and Ubuntu Core.

Contact Information

Contributions

Before my employment at Canonical, I was looking for a new laptop when I saw that Dell was offering a discount on their XPS 13 in exchange for help getting Ubuntu stable on it (the Sputnik project). I took them up on that offer and ended up contributing a number of kernel patches to Ubuntu that have since moved into mainline.

At Canonical, I've contributed to Ubuntu in a number of ways:

• Wrote the Unity8 Snappy Scope (allowing one to install/uninstall .snaps from the scope).
• Helped write the Ubuntu Phone pay service, allowing users to purchase apps as well as in-app items.

• Backported seccomp filters to all Ubuntu Phone kernels < v3.5.

• I'm a Snapcraft developer, improving it and guiding future developments.
• I've made numerous contributions to snapd and snap-confine.
• Contributed to developer.ubuntu.com documentation.
• Helped host Ubuntu Testing Days as well as Snapcraft Office Hours.

Future Goals

• Blog more often.
• Become more involved with the Ubuntu Community.
• Further improve Ubuntu Core and Snapcraft, particularly relating to robotics (e.g. ROS and MOOS).

Testimonials

Note: If you have anything nice to say about this person, please do add it below along with @ SIG @ (no spaces). The @ SIG @ command will sign your name and date/time it after you "Save Changes".

• I have only good things to say about Kyle. He has a lot of technical experience, he's curious, happy to learn more, he is very easy to work with, goes out of his way to help, he's thoughtful, is happy to work with anyone - no matter if it's other contributors, people from other teams, partners or just curious community members, goes the extra mile to fix things, participated in Snappy clinics (video sessions) and is always approachable. -- dholbach 2016-02-19 15:22:51

• You probably remember Kyle as the nice co-host of the Ubuntu Testing Days I've been working close to him in multiple snappy-related projects and I'm very happy that he now wants to join us as an Ubuntu Member. He's everything that we could ask for: helpful, friendly, knowledgeable, constant, committed and reliable. We need more members like Kyle. I'm sure he will help us growing our community in the right way, and with all the challenges that we are facing right now. -- elopio 2017-08-23 04:09:29 [Update] Kyle is on a fast track to become the president of Ubuntu! A couple of months after earning his Ubuntu membership, he's already looking to take some responsibilities with a high impact for our community. I would like it very much for Kyle to join the LoCo council, we need a strong team in there to tackle the hard task of helping Ubuntu spread far and wide. -- elopio 2017-10-24 02:37:39