Hello everyone, this is (not actually) my first post to the Planet Debian. There was some older posts I filed under this category, sorry.
My name is Aron Xu, and I’ve just passed my NM process so I’m now a Debian Developer who has his shiny new account to work on more Debian stuff. During the NM process, I have to say people involved are really really nice. And DAMs are busy guys which gives me a very deep impression. It is an honor to be accepted to this group of people, who have been doing splendid things to make the world a better place.
I live in China, where has many Debian users but very few DD or DM. Actually, there are more people here using the famous Debian derivative, Ubuntu. As I have been a person who tried to participate the communities of some projects in the past 6 years, from rpm-ish to source-ish and then deb-ish, my experience is that the technical differences are significant in some degree, but the people and ideas behind are far more important for a community. I choose to stay at Debian, and work hard to finally get my Debian Developer account. I have to say I like Debian and the people around it very much, or I won’t commit so much time to make it better, and help others with it.
From now on, apart from maintaining my packages, I would like to serve this project more by mentoring new maintainers and sponsoring (barely sponsoring is not so good, though, should point many of the maintainers and potential maintainers to existing teams), and help QA team to do something improve the general quality of Debian.
I am (still) a high school student, whose high school life is reaching its end in no more than half a month. So it takes me many time to work on preparing the upcoming college entrance exam, with some tension and excitement. After several (not too) bad setbacks during the past two years, now I still can’t tell whether I’m ready to face the challenge after this period of life with a strong courage, but anyway I need to keep on and fight for the sunlight of tomorrow. I think I know better about “life is not easy” than ever before at such a milestone. I am younger than many DDs who can tell me I haven’t really suffered from life’s difficulties; I am older than many boys and girls from whom I can see the shadow of my past days.
Thanks for your reading.
It’s really surprising to know that you are still a high school student in China and have six years experience in the FOSS community. I’m a college student from China, but I tried to learn Linux just two years ago. I have also tried many GNU/Linux distributions, especially Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo. But I switched to Fedora a few months ago, because I found it comes with the newest Linux technology, which is really exciting. Though I have found it has its own weaknesses comparing to Debian, I tried to adapt to it. I’m now trying to integrate into the community. Wish I can become a Fedora developer one day.
Good luck for your exam!
I’m glad to see more and more people start participating FOSS community, especially from China.
From my point of view technical details differ from one to another, but the differences are not a good reason to tell which is better – they serve different people with a diversity of sparkling ideas. Though I choose to stay with deb-ish systems, highlighting Debian and Ubuntu, I sincerely wish everyone enjoy their time no matter what they have chosen or what they would like to try.
Well if you’d like to be a developer, start right now, don’t wait until you lost your passion “one day”. “I don’t think I have the essential knowledge and skills” is never a good excuse because you can never know what you like and need if you don’t start. Sometimes it might be hard, and sometimes it might be frustrating, but the process is filled with happiness, anyway. ;-)
Welcome to Debian!
Thanks!
Indeed, welcome to Debian! Congratulations on all that you have contributed so far, and I hope that Debian is interesting and exciting for you for years to come.
I’m really happy to join the club, but not simply exciting because I have paid some time to achieve this aim. It would be a long-term commitment from the beginning of my starting maintaining packages to my retirement someday, although it’s hard to tell what will happen along with the changes to come, I like it and feel it that way.
Thanks!
Oh a high school boy that has the same age as my younger brother and had six+ yrs of exp. in FOSS. Can’t believe it. You rock, man.