Hello, chat! I’m Revisto, and I want to share my journey to GNOME Circle and how I became a GNOME Foundation member. I’ll discuss my experiences and the development path of Drum Machine. This is the first part of the “Journey to GNOME Circle” series.
I love Free and Open Source communities, especially GNOME and GNOME Circle. I find contributing to open source communities far more rewarding than contributing to projects maintained by a single individual. If you find the right community, there are many experienced, generous, and humble people you can learn from. You can explore various projects maintained by the community, experience consistent quality, be surrounded by an amazing community, and even enjoy some perks!
I found the GNOME community to be one of the best in the FOSS industry. Why?
- There are lots of apps and projects you can contribute to, from GTK to Terminal to GNOME Shell itself.
- It has a welcoming community full of experienced people.
- GNOME looks fantastic, thanks to Jakub Steiner. The GNOME design is stunning. It has great documentation and handbooks for beginners, making it super beginner-friendly.
- Different ways to contribute, you can help with documentation, programming, design, translation, create new apps, and more.
- Membership perks.
GNOME Foundation Membership?!
The GNOME Foundation offers membership to its active contributors. Whether you’re an active translator, help with documentation, enhance GNOME’s appearance, or generally MAKE GNOME BETTER, you can apply for membership. Additionally, if your app gets into GNOME Circle, you qualify for membership.
What are the perks?
Here are some of the perks in summary. You can find complete information here.
- Email Alias (
nickname@gnome.org): gnome.org email addresses are provided for all Foundation members. This address is an alias which can be used as a relay for sending and receiving emails. - Your own blog at
blogs.gnome.org: Foundation members are eligible to host their blog on blogs.gnome.org. - Listing on Planet GNOME: Foundation members who have blogs can have them included on planet.gnome.org.
- Travel sponsorship for events: Foundation members are eligible for travel sponsorship to GNOME conferences and events.
- Nextcloud (
cloud.gnome.org): GNOME hosts a Nextcloud instance at cloud.gnome.org. This provides a range of services, including file hosting, calendaring, and contact management.
These are useful and beneficial for your reputation and branding. I use my email alias for GNOME-related work at AlirezaSh@gnome.org, and have my blog at alirezash.gnome.org, and sync my Obsidian notes with Nextcloud on GNOME infrastructure. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my travel sponsorship as a speaker at events because I’m from Iran, and due to OFAC regulations, which is so unfair.
What’s GNOME Circle?
I’ve always had the idea of creating beautiful, useful apps for Linux. There were many apps I needed but couldn’t find a good version for Linux, and some apps I wished had better GUIs.
GNOME Circle is a collection of applications and libraries that extend the GNOME ecosystem.
“GNOME Circle champions the great software that is available for the GNOME platform. Not only do we showcase the best apps and libraries for GNOME, but we also support independent developers who are using GNOME technologies.”
— GNOME Circle
In GNOME, we have core apps like Terminal, GNOME Shell, Text Editor, etc., and we have GNOME Circle apps. These are apps that independent developers have created using GNOME technologies (GTK and Libadwaita), following the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, and meeting the app criteria. Once accepted, these apps become part of GNOME Circle.
GNOME Circle has lots of really cool apps that you should check out. It includes Curtail, an application to compress your images; Ear Tag, an audio file tags editor; Chess Clock, which provides time control for over-the-board chess games.
GNOME Circle is really cool, full of beautiful apps and creative developers.
Insert image of fun little stuff that looks like ideas here.
App Idea?
If GNOME Circle sounds interesting to you, or you like GNOME Foundation membership perks, or you appreciate the open-source community, or you want to create an app that fulfills your own needs, you should have an idea. What app do you want to develop? I believe we all have ideas. Personally, I really want a good VPN client for Linux (because of censorship in Iran, it’s vital), or a good-looking, user-friendly download manager, among other apps.
I highly recommend you check out other applications on GNOME Circle. There are lots of creative projects there that can inspire you. Some of my favorites:
- Wike: Search and read Wikipedia articles.
- Komikku: Discover and read manga & comics.
- Fretboard: Look up guitar chords.
- Ear Tag: Edit audio file tags.
I think it’s a good idea to check if your idea has already been implemented. You can check the apps in GNOME Circle and also check the apps that are being reviewed by the GNOME Circle Committee to become part of the circle soon: GNOME Circle Issues.
Although you can submit a new app with a similar idea to an existing app, I believe it would be better to bring new ideas to the circle or even contribute to existing circle apps that align with your idea.
On a side note, I really enjoy reading other people’s app requests and discussions here. I’ve been reading them to familiarize myself with the application acceptance process and understand the possible reasons an app might get rejected.
Insert image of an online drum machine here.
Since I’m a music producer (listen to my work here), I really like the idea of making music production in Linux easier. I had music-related ideas for my first app in the Circle: synthesizers, drum machines, and eventually a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I started simple and went with Drum Machine. I looked at different online drum machines, such as drumbit.app and onemotion.com/drum-machine, then I started thinking about how I wanted my own drum machine to look like and I drew this (I know it doesn’t look good; I’m bad at drawing >-<).
Now I had motivation, an idea, and wanted to actually start making.
I’ll detail the development process and evolution of Drum Machine in the next post, so stay tuned!
You can find me here:
- Mastodon: @revisto@mastodon.social
- Blog: blogs.gnome.org/AlirezaSh
- GitHub: github.com/revisto
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/revisto
- Telegram (Personal): t.me/revisto
- Telegram (Tech Channel in Farsi): t.me/revistoTech
Thanks for reading!