The Ubuntu Chronicles: The Saga of Amber and Ubuntu

Part 30

Education and Apologizes through Comments – Thanks Everyone! I love learning Ubuntu and the personalities which make it what it is. 🙂 Isn’t it GREAT!

MPT – Thank you for clearing up the reason for your remarks. (see comments post 29). I did not in any way mean to paint you in a bad light. Which was the reason I stated that I was surprised by the remark. My sincere apologizes if that’s the way it seemed. I am trying to figure out where in the Open Source Community end users like me (those who only use, and try when appropriate to give back.)

ScottK – I realize that developers are users too. If I inadvertently inferred that everyone: contributors, developers, and average users alike were not all users that was not my intent. No matter what skill level you have anyone who uses Ubuntu (or whatever flavor of Linux) are all users and part of the Ubuntu community and the greater community of Linux users.)

Ted – I am not trying to speak for all users in anyway. I am trying to encourage users like me,(the non-technical, non-developer), to seek and find a place in the community. That they have a voice and should use it. If they don’t know they have a voice, how can they learn to use it.

Also, why do I need to update daily, because I am running Jaunty, Beta after today. However, even before I ran the script that Mackenzie gave me, There was NO window popping up. Something is/was broken. I had nothing telling me there were updates, yet I knew there were updates some days during alpha you can have updates every couple of hours. It is not that my computer is doing that much work, it is that thanks to the developers things are being fixed at a steady pace. (and that is a sincere THANK YOU!, for all the hard work you all do, I WISH I could do 1/10th of what you all can do) That is what Alpha is all about if I understand it correctly. Beta things slow down. So, that is why I want to update daily. I mentioned that I waited a week and it took a few days to get everything synced back up.

I posted to Jono’s ( Jono Bacon) new sampling of Art of Community yesterday, that my understanding of Community is narrowing, yet my understanding of participants (contributors) is growing. I hope that makes sense. I am anxious to read Art of Community this summer and see if my perception changes or if my understanding is in focus.

The user group I was referring to is those who use the OS Ubuntu, like me, who don’t write code, don’t hack the kernel, can’t do the artwork, haven’t learned how to edit documents yet, those things, they all require some level of skill that the user like me does not have (yet). The process of learning takes time. I am a desktop user, I want to help. I find it exciting to learn the ends and outs of this Ubuntu community. (Please before someone else say it’s user vs. whomever, that is not my intent, but unfortunately there is a separation, and that’s OK. 🙂 ) I think the Universe that Ubuntu and other Linux distros circle in and around is big enough for that.)

I find that it is like moving to a new city. I enroll my kids in the school I choose. I figure out what church to go too. I see what the community offers new people. Where I fit in. If I had a job I’d figure out how that works into the community. All these things have many different avenues to participate in, and some of them even overlap into other areas. Home, School, Church, Job, City, this and more make up the Community. It ripples out to all areas. I could keep going, but I think you get the idea.

It (Ubuntu) is easy to use. I just find it hard to find a place to contribute. So I am working on my skills so that other than saying, ‘I like this” or “I don’t like this”, I’ll be able to do something else. I am trying to show other non-developers that they have a place in this community, without taking anything away from the significant contributions of those developers, because without them (the developers), then people like me would not have a place to even begin to use a Linux OS and in this case Ubuntu. It is circular.

Thanks Everyone! I’m enjoying learning but, where’s my GPS for the Ubuntu Community. 🙂 Again, thanks for all the comments. There is so much to learn and so many places to go to find things. I learn so much from all the comments please keep them coming!

ps I think I fixed it, but I wanted to apologize to Noel J. Bergman for accidentally putting Joel instead of Noel. Should be correct now. (post 29)