I, Roderick B. Greening, apply for MOTU.

Who I am

I am 37 years old, residing in St. John's, NL, Canada - the oldest city in North America. I currently work for a national Telecommunications company, as regional manager. I am responsible for ensuring the successful deployment and delivery of our various voice and data services, many of which I helped develop over the last 10+ years. Our internet services (mail, news, web, etc) all run on Linux based systems, which vary from RPM based to Deb based.

I have been a user of Linux since about 1993. I have used Slackware, Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake (Mandriva), Gentoo and Ubuntu (Kubuntu). Over the last year, I have worked to switch my entire family and friends to use Kubuntu. This has been a rather easy task, considering these are non-technical people. Having a well built OS to start with, however, made the transistion very easy.

I like to read, everything from technical books (programming Qt, Python, etc) to SciFi/Fantasy, especially anything Star Trek related. At any one point I have about 7 books I am in the process of reading (I keep one in just about every room in the house and the office).

I am also a hobbist photographer, and have a Canon Rebel Xt. I have taken pictures for weddings, portraits, and other photoshoots, all purely as a hobbist.

My Ubuntu story

Prior to coming to Kubuntu, I worked on an overlay for Gentoo, which provided KDE enhancements (qt-copy patches, compiz/beryl, etc) to the Gentoo user base. Also, prior to my switch I was working on obtaining my developer status (similar ot MOTU) within the KDE Herd.

I switched to Kubuntu as I desired an easier system to maintain and manage, both for myself and for my friends and family, and Gentoo was not suitable for that task. Given Ubuntu's popularity, I gave it a try and haven't looked back.

My first Kubuntu CD was ordered via shippit, and it was Dapper Drake (6.06). I immediately installed it on my Acer 4912, and kept it dual boot with Gentoo, until I got all my minor issues sorted. I opened a few bug reports and worked on fixing my issues. At this point, I never knew how to package deb's, but I knew how to patch from source, and eventually submitted a fix or two to the Kubuntu team.

It wasn't until much later that I got the real developer itch back. I was using Hardy Heron, and having some difficulties with Knetworkmanager. I decided to jump online and ask Riddell how I would go about attempting to fix it. The rest is history. From that point on, I was patching, fixing bugs, updating packages and even helped get qt and kde packages ready for Intrepid Ibex.

My involvement

I am a Kubuntu Member since October, 2008, having been approved as a direct result of my help in updating packages necessary for the Intrepid Ibex release.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Most of my work has been in getting KDE built and in shape for each release cycle. I typically have built and uploaded approximately half of the KDE packages each cycle, starting with Intrepid, and all the point releases in between. Of particular note, I worked a long time on getting Qt 4.5.0 RC1 ready for Jaunty, and this was critical in getting us to a point where we could consider using Qt webkit in Konqueror (still being investigated). Additionally, Qt 4.5.0 brings significant speed improvements for rendering, and thus a better user experience.

I also helped ScottK update Kommander and KVirc for Jaunty, from SVN snapshots.

Packagekit is a new big part of Jaunty. KDE will use KPackagekit to replace Adept 3.0. I have been working on several packages and enhancements to make KPackagekit better. Part of this has been implementing missing features, like Editing the software sources. I added a patch to allow using software-properties-kde within KPackagekit to accomplish this. I am currently working on a simplified view for KPackageKit, to allow users to add/remove applications, as specified via the app-install-data package. I have been working with the packagekit team (#packagekit) and we have developed a app-install specification, which is currently being developed to further this work (here is the draft of the spec I helped prepare - http://cgit.freedesktop.org/packagekit/plain/docs/app-install-v1.draft).

I also have been working on a Python frontend to UFW, kde-ufw. Work has been suspended as my priority is getting KDE into Jaunty. I hope to make have it ready for Karmic (It's about 70% complete).

Areas of work

Here are the packages I have currently uploaded:

kdebase-workspace, qt4-x11, kde4libs, kpackagekit, krusader, update-notifier-kde, kvirc, kdesdk, kdenetwork, kdeaccessibility, kdebase-runtime, kdebase, kde4bindings, kdeedu, kdegraphics, kdeutils, kdegames, kdetoys, adept, qtjambi, desktop-effects-kde, scim-bridge, gtk-qt-engine

This has been mostly via the Kubuntu desktop team, working with ScottK, Riddell, Nixternal, Seele, Vorian, NCommander, JontheEchidna, Smarter, etc. ScottK, Riddell, JontheEchidna and Vorian are most familiar with my uploads and work. All have been a tremendous help in getting my packaging skills up to speed.

Packaging for Kubuntu is a dream. THe process it simple and well thought out. The team is great and very helpful. Bugs are worked on regularly and quite responsive. Getting assistance with my issues has never been a problem.

Things I could do better

Read more of the documentation. I'm sure there are procedures/processes I do not fully understand the reasons behind, and therefore cannot offer suggestions on making them better. If I read more, then I should better understand and hopefully will be able to improve.

Plans for the future

Finish ufw-kde is a big one for me personally.

General

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 ===

CategoryMOTUApplication