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I've been using Debian / Ubuntu for many years, as much due to inertia and familiarity as anything else. And I have a lot of respect for the project. If I want

I've been using Debian / Ubuntu for many years, as much due to inertia and familiarity as anything else. And I have a lot of respect for the project. If I wanted to start being a contributor to a distribution, which one would be the best to dive in to?

camdenlock 8y ago
I would be interested to know the generally-accepted answers to this as well. What are the free/libre OSes which most folks enjoy contributing to?
- doublepg23 8y ago
  It's a bit of an odd ball, but I loved contributing to the GuixSD project. I contributed multiple packages after learning Guile Scheme in a couple of days.
Insanity 8y ago
And a follow-up question: how would you get involved with it.
type0 8y ago
The smaller ones are often easier to contribute, port some packages to Void!
- aboutruby 8y ago
  That's also where you make the least impact. There is probably an impact graph with popularity * impact of change on the project * probability of change being accepted * log(delay of change reaching 80% of users). For instance with Homebrew: high popularity, high probability of being accepted and low delay to reach 80% of users, so the impact of the change on the project is the main factor.
UncleEntity 8y ago
> If I wanted to start being a contributor to a distribution, which one would be the best to dive in to? I tried to contribute a package to Fedora once upon a time...gave up in frustration after a while since it went nowhere after a bit of hoop jumping.
- Conan_Kudo 8y ago
  I'm sorry you felt that way. All I can say is that we've done a lot of work in recent years to drastically improve the quality of life for new contributors, especially packagers! The process is pretty well documented here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_m... If you have issues, feel free to hop into any of the Fedora communication channels[1][2][3][4][5] and ask for help. [1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_hel... [2]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Telegram https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Telegram [3]: https://discord.gg/fedora https://discord.gg/fedora (Yes, Discord!) [4]: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/ https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/ [5]: https://fedoraforum.org/ https://fedoraforum.org/ (Unofficial, but a strong, helpful group!)
Conan_Kudo 8y ago
I think Fedora is a great distribution to get started in. New stuff, cool tech, and decent, well-specified workflows across the board. :) We also have a cool website that helps you figure out what you want to do and how to apply it: https://whatcanidoforfedora.org/ https://whatcanidoforfedora.org/ (Yes, it's inspired by the Mozilla one!)

camdenlock 8y ago

I would be interested to know the generally-accepted answers to this as well. What are the free/libre OSes which most folks enjoy contributing to?

doublepg23 8y ago
It's a bit of an odd ball, but I loved contributing to the GuixSD project. I contributed multiple packages after learning Guile Scheme in a couple of days.

Insanity 8y ago

And a follow-up question: how would you get involved with it.

type0 8y ago

The smaller ones are often easier to contribute, port some packages to Void!

aboutruby 8y ago
That's also where you make the least impact. There is probably an impact graph with popularity * impact of change on the project * probability of change being accepted * log(delay of change reaching 80% of users). For instance with Homebrew: high popularity, high probability of being accepted and low delay to reach 80% of users, so the impact of the change on the project is the main factor.

UncleEntity 8y ago

> If I wanted to start being a contributor to a distribution, which one would be the best to dive in to? I tried to contribute a package to Fedora once upon a time...gave up in frustration after a while since it went nowhere after a bit of hoop jumping.

Conan_Kudo 8y ago
I'm sorry you felt that way. All I can say is that we've done a lot of work in recent years to drastically improve the quality of life for new contributors, especially packagers! The process is pretty well documented here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_m... If you have issues, feel free to hop into any of the Fedora communication channels[1][2][3][4][5] and ask for help. [1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_hel... [2]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Telegram https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Telegram [3]: https://discord.gg/fedora https://discord.gg/fedora (Yes, Discord!) [4]: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/ https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/ [5]: https://fedoraforum.org/ https://fedoraforum.org/ (Unofficial, but a strong, helpful group!)

Conan_Kudo 8y ago

I think Fedora is a great distribution to get started in. New stuff, cool tech, and decent, well-specified workflows across the board. :) We also have a cool website that helps you figure out what you want to do and how to apply it: https://whatcanidoforfedora.org/ https://whatcanidoforfedora.org/ (Yes, it's inspired by the Mozilla one!)