Ubuntu Wiki

My contributions

I joined launchpad on 5-1-2010, with a firm motivation to join and contribute to ubuntu community. I had to start all by myself as none of my friend had any prior knowledge in linux or ubuntu. At first it was very hard as the processes were not really easy to understand and the wiki was confusing. I kept working moving into BugSquad, then BugControl and now headed to Ubuntu Membership.

Most of the contribution I did is bug triaging till now, in the package xserver-xorg-input-synaptics. The package was not easy to start with, but my motivation and love for hardware and kernel area never let me get back. When I started, the package had a lot of open bugs(mostly duplicates) and was in a bad shape but its in quite a good shape now.

List of contributions

• Bug triager (since I joined launchpaxserver-sorg-input-synapticsd, Ubuntu Bug Control member again since 2010-08-07)

  • Adopting:

    • xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

  • While triaging bugs for xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, I found that it is very closely related to linux kernel, so many bug that are initially filed against it, are actually related to kernel, so in a way I triaged bugs for kernel also.

• Wiki pages:

  • Totally rewrote and reconstructed - DebuggingTouchpadDetection

  • Created and written new page - DebuggingTouchpadDetection/xev

  • Another page created DebuggingTouchpadDetection/evtest

• Mentorship: I'm in the BugSquad Mentorship team and is currently mentoring two students

  • ahmed

  • stanley_robertso

• Statistics

  • xserver-xorg-input-synaptics statistics of contribution.

  • My 5-a-day statistics.

    • I'm placed at 11 position in daily statistics and 21 position in weekly statistics.

Future plans

My future plans is to keep contributing to the ubuntu and FOSS community for all the years and to be an integral part of it, at the same time, help and motivate others for the same. My specific interests include kernel, security area, and xserver-xorg-input-synaptics. For that I have already started to get comfortable with the code of xserver-xorg-input-synaptics. Besides that I'm trying my hand at packaging also and will seek MOTUship after Ubuntu membership.

What I got from ubuntu

I have been deeply fascinated by ubuntu and FOSS philosophy. Actually, my mindset has been totally changed after I joined ubuntu. Here I met so many people, always ready to help just for good cause and no personal benefits. After working with them, my mindset has also changed and now I feel like helping others in the same way. This is the greatest thing, I think, I have learnt from ubuntu. Apart from that I have made so many great friends which are worth millions to me.

Testimonials

Bhavani Shankar

Seeing simar's work from the above (and personally from a past few months) he is extremely dedicated to whatever he does at this young age. I think he will be a good addition to the member team. All the best for his future pursuits wrt ubuntu and foss in general --bhavi 19th December 2010

Artur Rona

I am mentoring simar for Ubuntu packaging and teaching about security fixes. He is going to improve his skill and want to expand his contribution. Apart from that I know simar is bug triager. I think he could be an Ubuntu member.

Ahmed Shams

NOTE: Simar didn't ask me to put my testimonial, but I came here to add it, as it's one year from since his continuous Mentorship to me began.

Simar mentored me through bug triage for X11/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics, although I chose this hard criteria and it was hellish in the beginning BUT he successfully turned me from just a noop into someone loves and dedicates most of his time to X11 in Ubuntu, I even joined the Ubuntu X SWAT. I enjoy his good personality, knowledge, passion to help others and friendship, even after my Mentorship period(2 months) ended, I don't hesitate to get back to him asking for help and he always reply in the same day (weired ). I'm sure, he will add a great value to wherever he exists. ashams on 2011-07-17 00:16 UTC