After having looked back at the first months of this blog, I also want to look forward and see how I can improve its content. If you’re a Debian/Ubuntu user and/or contributor, I want this blog to be a truly useful resource for you. What kind of articles would you like me to write?
I have lots of ideas but I can’t do everything. I’ll share some of them so that you can discuss them:
- New in Debian testing: a regular column covering changes affecting testing users.
- Short presentations of software available in Debian/Ubuntu (like debaday.debian.net used to do).
- Articles covering wishlist bugs on developers-reference so that they can be easily reused to improve the documentation!
- Interviews of Debian contributors.
- Description of small tasks that one can do to start contributing.
Pleases discuss and share your ideas in the comments. Don’t limit yourself to the above list, you know better than me what you need: tell me what kind of documentation was lacking in your daily usage of Debian/Ubuntu, or what could have been better explained while you tried to contribute to Debian/Ubuntu.
While I set no limits on Debian/Ubuntu topics that I accept to cover, my main focus is around documentation for end-users and/or contributors.
If you prefer you can also send your feedback with Identi.ca, Twitter or leave a comment in the entry for this article in my facebook page.
One thing that has confused me a bit is how packages are first uploaded and how they finally reach in the stable repos and finally synced to Ubuntu. Actually I have a few libraries/applications which I want to appear in Debian/Ubuntu. How should they be started. I heard it is first uploaded in Debian NEW.
I hope my doubt is clear
I have really enjoyed your packaging posts (i.e. the conffile stuff and quilt format). I’ve been around Debian/Ubuntu packaging for several years but never at a very deep level. It’s great to see ways to use the tools properly or different ways of packaging from what I learned.
Description of small tasks that one can do to start contributing.
Yes yes yes! I looked at the constitution and guidelines and so forth and there just. so. much. It’d be nice if there were a low-angled learning curve via some tasks of increasing difficulty.
>>>Short presentations of software available in Debian
Yes ! I enjoy presentations about softwares.
Perhaps also a few posts about the technical differences between Ubuntu and Debian (default choices, settings, etc). It’s useful for us the Ubuntu’s defectors 😉
I think that Debian’s Maintainers Guide is too difficult to a newby. I want to package but it has a lot of technical things that confuse me. I’ve readen that a lot of times and it stills confusing. Maybe some content about packaging for real newby guys that want to start… I want to package some PHP softwares but I don’t know how. Maintainers Guide talks about C programs.
Keep doing your good job.
Thank you.
+ 1
+1
Ideia++
I Agree
Things about /etc/apt/preferences (package/repository description) and pin priority could be helpful to better understand aptitude & co. I found myself confused with Debian documentations that didn’t explained things deeply enough.
For that matter and other topics of interest, I bought the excellent french book “Les caihers de l’admin Debian”…! 😉
I like your idea about commenting changes in the Debian testing branch!. Here are my two cents:
* News regarding the Debian and Ubuntu relationship, for better or worse. Or even better, what about cross distro collaboration (i.e: bugs, development, etc) ? Debian Derivatives Front Desk, maybe?
* Work being done on documentation.
* Tools and tips to create your own Debian based live-CD.
* Some random stuff I’m interested in and their progress in Debian: LXDE, Xorg, KMS, Linux Kernel, Virtual Machines (VirtualBox, KVM, Xen) mplayer, lightweight web browsers (i.e: Midori).
That’s all I can think of, by now.
Thanks.
Cheers!.
If somebody wants to collaborate with Debian, he/she will find that anybody will tell him/her what to do. This is wonderful because it means you have no bosses and have freedom to do what you really like.
But, on the other hand, you can feel a little bit lost… It would be nice to have some posts with “easy-intermediate” tasks that a newbie can do to help and start learning how Debian works.
Thanks for your work!
Personally, I’d love to read interviews with other people involved in the Debian project, because I’m just as interested in the social side of Debian as the technical side.
Of course, the “deb-a-day” idea sounds cool too, and I also like “big picture” articles that inspire people to work in areas that are holding back Debian, Ubuntu or GNU/Linux in general.
Thanks for your great work, both on Debian and this site.
Raphael,
It will be extremely difficult to write about things we’ll all like.
My advice is to continue writing about what you consider important, we will filter what we would like to read about at your newsletter weekly digest.
Maybe you can send in you newsletter just title and teasers, so we can know what an article is about and jump to the blog to read the article of our interest in full.
Keep going!