I have a new avatar!

I now have a new avatar for my Launchpad page! It is made by Rafael Laguna, and although it isn't 100% accurate compared to my actual face, he did a PHENOMENAL job at making me an avatar.

A HUGE thanks to Rafael Laguna, who was kind enough to make this for me. He also makes the Lubuntu artwork and he does a wonderful job at what he does.

Ubuntu Membership!

I recently obtained official Ubuntu Membership, hence this blog post being on Planet Ubuntu. I wanted to summarize a few concepts I learned while working towards this goal.

What is Ubuntu Membership?

From https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership, "Official Ubuntu Membership means recognition of significant and sustained contribution to Ubuntu or the Ubuntu community." I would suggest checking out that page if you would like to know more.

Details about the meeting

Meeting log: http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/ubuntu-meeting/2016/ubuntu-meeting.2016-02-04-22.01.moin.txt

Wiki page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/tsimonq2

Launchpad page: https://launchpad.net/~tsimonq2

Contributions

I keep all my contributions up-to-date here, so if you would like to learn more about my contributions, that is where to start.

Lessons Learned/Advice I have received

If you plan on getting your membership in the future, this is the advice that I would give:

When applying:

• Be yourself.
• Have a statement prepared beforehand describing a bit about you and what you have done in the community, with links to wiki pages. My original statement was:

Wiki Page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/tsimonq2 , Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~tsimonq2 , Ubuntu US Wisconsin LoCo Team Wiki Page:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WisconsinTeam

My name is Simon Quigley (tsimonq2) and I am from Wisconsin, USA. I am currently 13 years old(I turn 14 in March of 2016). I have been interested in computers for the past few years, and I started using Ubuntu in February 2015. In late July, I used Lubuntu due to the condition of my computer, and it really brought my computer back to life. So I switched, and I said to myself, "hey, I really should get involved with the community." So I did. I Googled a lot of things, wanting to contribute to Lubuntu, and I found QA. It seemed easy enough to start with, but I was really confused/unsure on what I had to do. I looked around, and I read something about IRC. At that point, I joined one of the Lubuntu IRC channels asking for help on this. I was greeted by the most friendly people, specifically wxl. They were all really kind to me, and soon thereafter, I figured out QA and started contributing. For a while I stuck around QA and Lubuntu, but in November of 2015, my contributions really took off. Due to the extensive amount of free time I get by being a kid combined with my fast learning capabilities and intelligence, I explored many different avenues of contributing and "attacked" them all. But before this started, I had some social problems with several individuals in an offtopic channel. That day in late November, I promised to exponentially increase my contributions and fine-tune my social interactions with other people. Ever since, I have contributed countless ways, in countless amounts, and even though it's only been about three months since I really started diving in, I believe I have contributed massively.

To highlight my contributions(which are on my wiki page if you would like more specifics), my first unintentional form of contribution was through Ask Ubuntu. I answered a few questions and it just sort of died down. After I actually knew what contribution meant, I started with Package QA(when Wily was in development), because at the time, all I had was my old Pentium 4(which I am actually on now). That is how I met the Lubuntu team. After I got my newer computer, I started with ISO QA. ISO QA was really one of the gateway form of contributions that got me familiar with a lot of the tools as well as the Ubuntu install process. I am currently the number one Xenial ISO QA tester, with 114 test cases completed. Right before this happened, I watched the Ubuntu Snappy Clinic, which really inspired me to get started contributing more regularly to Ubuntu. When this was starting, I was in talks with Anthony Hook(he *should* be here today, hello h00k!) to reincarnate the Ubuntu US Wisconsin Local Community team. I emailed him asking about it and he gave me the position of contact(the way he tells it, I stepped up to the position, but I guess it depends on how you look at it XD). Our team has monthly meetings and informal IRC meetings(the next one is tomorrow on #ubuntu-us-wi). I have worked to establish many resources and options for the team. Right now we are sort of in a transitional phase, where things are getting set up and we have a lot of works in progress. At this point, after the LoCo had it's first meeting, I started contributing to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. At first I just wrote summaries, but recently I have also helped with link hunting. This brings me to mid to late December. I started as a mentor for Google Code-in, which, to summarize it, is a project that is to help high school students with an introduction to Open Source. I just created tasks and "mentored" them. What that means is to help the student complete the task, and to review the task when it is done. balloons should be around, he was an "Admin" for Ubuntu. He helped with the technical side of things. He witnessed some of the mentoring I did for QA tasks. wxl co-mentored some tasks as well.

Those were my contributions leading up to recently. Recently I have been starting with the development(code) side of Ubuntu. I have been looking at FTBFS(Failed To Build From Source, http://qa.ubuntuwire.org/ftbfs/ ) issues and although I haven't fixed any issues that require packages, I have requested rebuilds and filed MIRs(Main Inclusion Request). Along with that, I have also recently been starting to fix QA test cases and I am shortly going to be working to formulate some documentation for the API(yes, there's an API :D).

So although this is a very long explanation and it probably fills up your IRC client's screen, I hope you look favorably upon my application for Ubuntu Membership. Thank you.

I showed this to Walter Lapchynski and he told me this was MILES too long. So I revised this a bit and here is what I pasted(if you look at the logs it got cut off but I think they know what I meant):

Wiki Page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/tsimonq2 , Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~tsimonq2 , Ubuntu US Wisconsin LoCo Team Wiki Page:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WisconsinTeam

My name is Simon Quigley (tsimonq2) and I am from Wisconsin, USA. I am currently 13 years old(I turn 14 in March of 2016). I have been interested in computers for the past few years, and I started using Ubuntu in February 2015. My contributions started in late July after asking a question on a Lubuntu IRC channel and meeting friendly people. My forms of contribution include but are not limited to: Package and ISO QA, Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter summaries and link finding, complete reincarnation of the Ubuntu US Wisconsin Local Community Team, helping a lot with Lubuntu, being a Google Code-in mentor, Ask Ubuntu, and various manual QA test case fixes.

I hope you look favorably upon my application for Ubuntu Membership. If you have any questions/comments/concerns please let me know. Thank you.

So my suggestion here is, make a statement that is not TOO long, but not too short either. The suggested length is 1-5 sentences and I think this is a great amount.

• Be prepared to answer questions about your contributions/community interactions.

In the meeting, Thomas Ward kept me on my feet, but from meeting logs that I have read, there aren't an overly excessive amount of questions.

• The LoCo council will probably be silent.

As far as I remember, they have a special IRC channel that they communicate in. They also have a mailing list. This does NOT mean anything bad. I was really nervous, so this was the worst part(I went and got some spicy foods, I don't know why), but consider it a drumroll.

Here is some advice I can give for contributing in preparation for the meeting.

• Be curious and learn as much as you can

Believe me, you don't know everything you can in the Ubuntu community already. If you do, you already have membership. :)

Always be curious. I used Ubuntu from February to July before contributing, and this is the reason I started contributing. I wanted hands-on knowledge about how Ubuntu works on the inside. Sure, you can watch other people contribute, but you really don't know much unless you get your hands dirty in my experience.

This is really the main premise of why I started/continued to contribute.

• Don't be afraid to ask questions

Questions produce answers. Answers produce more questions. Those answers produce more questions. This can stretch your knowledge and contribution avenues more than you think. I wondered how packages were built in the Ubuntu archive, so I found FTBFS. FTBFS led me to build logs. This led me to schroots. And I now regularly use schroots today. Believe me, this helps more than you think.

This concludes my advice to new contributors and people who want to get their membership. If you would like to start contributing, check out find-a-task. If you want to explore more avenues to contribute, check out the Ubuntu Community page. And lastly, if you want one-on-one help with Linux in general(there are Ubuntu people around there so don't be afraid to ask about that), check out Linux Padawan.

If you have questions/comments/concerns about this article or you would like to work with me to get started with contributing to Ubuntu, my email is sqawesome99@gmail.com (tsimonq2@ubuntu.com should work in a week or two, but it doesn't seem to be working yet, :/) or I am tsimonq2 on Freenode(PMs and pings welcome).

Why Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is an open source operating system that I find much easier to use and do tasks with then Windows, Mac OS X, or FreeBSD. In this blog post, I will attempt to explain the history of my computer tinkering, and what led up to Ubuntu. I will also explain why I stick to Ubuntu.

As some of you know, I am 13(as of writing this). When I was a kid, I didn't know much about computers, in fact people knew a lot more then me. I was the usual kid that played games on the computer, and would download virus upon virus. Then I found out that the computer had more going on behind the scenes. Being very intrigued, I started tinkering. I began messing with Windows settings, overclocking, and taking apart my computer. I broke(whether it be a Windows installation or the hardware itself) countless computers. But I slowly learned. I then got interested in code, as code is the foundation of all software. I did some little programming things, and I broke another computer. Believe it or not, everything was regular.

I then learned enough that I stopped breaking computers. This brings us to April(ish) 2014. I went a good 6 months without breaking my computer. During this time, this is not only the summer that I learned HTML and CSS, but I also got introduced to the CompTIA A+ certification(which I still don't have). It was Christmas day. I set an Avast startup scan and a Windows check disk. It then didn't boot. I was so sad, because I had broken yet another computer. So I spent Christmas day 2014 trying my hardest to revive my Windows installation. I had no luck. So I gave up, as I had a very bad headache, and I felt terrible.

At this point, I just used the library computers and a laptop that my mom had. This brings me to February 2015. I made a video about Bill Gates for a school project, and I had to use several different Windows computers that belonged to a family friend(he got me started on computers). After I got the project done, he talked to me. He said that at this point, I was smart enough with computers to fix it. I pondered for about an hour, then I had an idea. Back during my tinkering, I tried Fedora(which never installed), because I had always seen Linux on download pages. I used a USB drive, and got Fedora on it. Fedora didn't install again.

So I read online that Ubuntu* was another option. I made a USB drive and it worked perfectly. Sure, it crawled most of the time, but it ran good enough that I kept with it. For the first few weeks, I hated it. The learning curve was a lot. But after a while, I liked it more and more. I ended up really liking it. Since this was the time that Vivid Vervet was being developed, I updated to the development release of that(in the first betas at that time) because I wanted bleeding edge. I subscribed to the development mailing lists, even though I didn't know anything that anyone was saying. I continued to learn.

This brings me to June 2015. I was over at a friend's house, and I happened to have a Lubuntu DVD with me. I convinced him to try the Live CD and he loved it. We dual-booted it with Windows. I started to have a fascination with Lubuntu. So I went home and installed the DE. I absolutely loved it. I then played with that a bit.

I then watched the Snappy Open House. I then worked with balloons afterwards to (unsuccessfully) get Snappy on my computer in a VM. Although it didn't work, I began to look into contributing to Ubuntu instead of just using it. I looked at the contributions that I could give towards Lubuntu, and then joined the Lubuntu Development IRC channel. I was greeted by wxl, who was very helpful to me. I then started to go to him for help on a regular basis, and he continued to help me. This is really when I started to look into the infrastructure of Ubuntu.

I then looked into the Ubuntu US Wisconsin LoCo team. I contacted Anthony Hook, who was the contact at the time, and I became the contact after our first meeting in years(or so I hear), which was in November. We have really grown since.

My first contributions to Ubuntu were in early August, doing some package QA. I ran wily at that time. I continued to look into contributions and I met a lot of people. Since in the past, computer tinkering was a solo act, and now I had people to work with, I spent the next few months just talking and kept my contributions to a minimum, although I read a lot about Ubuntu and learned a lot. This brings me to late November 2015. I had some conflicts with some people, and it was clear that I needed to focus more on contributions rather then just sitting back. So I took a step back from just talking to people and I made more contributions to Ubuntu then I had ever done before. I kept my social interactions to a minimum, and I really worked hard.

This brings me to today. I am continuing to contribute regularly and more intensely, and I am loving it so far.

The main question here is, why Ubuntu? Well first and foremost, this is how I started with Linux. I love the people, I love the infrastructure, and I really don't want to have to change that. Second, I have had really bad experiences with a lot of the major distros, trying them and not liking them. Lastly, Ubuntu is very stable, and is a good base that a lot of good people worked on them.

I plan on making another post in the future to set some goals for myself, but overall I think this is it. Thanks for reading! :)

*Keep in mind that my computer was a very old Pentium 4 desktop that crawled.