openSUSE:GNOME Interview with Dimstar
Faces of openSUSE - Dominique Leuenberger
The openSUSE Project, a community program sponsored by Novell is responsible for the release of the openSUSE Linux distribution, everyone's favorite distribution.
The current release of openSUSE, 11.4 (Celadon), is a very special release for many of us, it ships with the GNOME 2 Desktop Environment, the most polished release of GNOME2 in openSUSE, and after the release of GNOME 3, it was the first distribution to make GNOME3 available!
While valuable features like the availability of GNOME 3 are important, there is always normal people behind those features, people that spare a part of their free time to implement those features and maintain them. One of this people is Dominique Leuenberger (DimStar), a core member of the openSUSE GNOME team, with valuable participation in many other fields like Multimedia (VLC Player) and Compiz, in fact it's hard to search for a changelog file which hasn't an entry from Dominique, as it's equally hard to find a single bug report from GNOME or Compiz that hasn't been seen by Dominique.
In a serious attempt to understand what madness drives User:Dimstar to devote so much time to the openSUSE Project, we decided to interview him on behalf of openSUSE News about his contributions, relation with free software and about himself.
Dominique Leuenberger
We started our interview with User:Dimstar in a very relaxed way, even without ice cream (GNOME Team contributors favorite delight). Understanding that we were before a volunteer contributor, we inquired him about his relation with Free Software and why such choice:
As a long-standing Linux user, and after SUSE Linux changed to openSUSE, giving the community a direct and open way to collaborate, I started with bug reporting. My knowledge at that time was far lower than it is today. Having seen my bugs fixed was a very good motivation to keep on doing those reports.
As to why opensource: I'm not really religious about this and I have absolutely no fear or so running skype or adobe reader on my machine. Having seen through the pace of which bugs are being resolved I report (or lately even start to send patches with the bug), if there is a choice between closed and open variant where the feature set both satisfy me, I'll very likely go for the open version.
What future do you see for free software in general?
At least over here in Europe it's amazing on how often you see studies
on how much more expensive open source software is, as more developers would be needed to customize the tool for oneself. Surely, nobody takes into account that this is optional and on choice: try to customize a closed source app! As to how the future will look: I can only hope that not every company has blinded CIOs that just run for a label. Better run for functionality and you might see open source outrunning many closed source applications quickly. Let's hope for this variant, shall we?
What is your preferred platform and desktop environment?
Yes, I admit, I'm a GNOME user. Actually, for a good while already,
since about last year October, a gnome-shell user and now very happily GNOME3 user. First contact was 'ouch - no way'... after a while, nothing else please!
What are the normal tasks you use your system for?
This very much depends on the time of the day: during work hours I use it for system administration/app deployment and email, in the evening it's mainly reducing to information gathering, learning, communication with family abroad and general emailing (excl. any app development/community contribution.
What was the most annoying problem you had to deal with as a user?
Any kind of low-level issue: X not starting, kernel oops on boot. And my silly server overheating when getting under stress (the CPU is at 75C in
idle...)
We know you have quite a few hobbies... mind to share?
Besides openSUSE? That would mostly be around relaxation, some biking
(which is not fun in Holland. Here the bike is pure transportation) and I used to play Badminton.. should finally get back into this.
What are your favorite tools?
A swiss pocket knife (smiling...)
At first, I felt intimidated and was planning to finish the interview, but then after some thinking, Dominique is a citizen from the Confoederatio Helvetica. 'Swiss pocket knifes' sounded ok with me... and I proceeded!
Dominique Leuenberger and the openSUSE Project
The interview proceeded, now with a set of questions about his relationship with the openSUSE Project.
What future do you see for openSUSE as a Project?
If we finally get over the hurdle that everything needs to be voted for and after a successful vote be continuously discussed, I'm sure we can get well ahead of others. SUSE has always been very strong and polished, we offer not only one desktop to choose from but a bunch of them. There is never a need to have another distro just because you like another DE. Learn it once, stay with it.
Of course the project is more than the distribution, and things like OBS and Studio are really cool gadgets.
What is the most attractive feature of openSUSE for you?
The easy way of collaboration using OBS. Once you start it and get a bit a grip on the policies used by the various groups (which vary a lot in my experience.. some are very strict, others are loose), it's a matter of a few minutes to get a change proposed. There is not even need to pre-discuss it if you think it's worthy of this change.
What characteristic of openSUSE would you advertise for your friends?
It just works - And if it doesn't, you have a huge community around you to help you out to find what you're doing wrong.
What made you take the decision to contribute to the openSUSE Project?
A bug on my system. As per bugzilla, my first one reported was
bnc#200704 in August 2006. Sounds about right. I kept on doing this, enjoying to see my bugs getting fixed, then followed up and trying to actually fix it myself.
How would you describe your relationship with openSUSE?
Loving and caring for each other :)
How would you describe openSUSE Community?
Open and friendly, with some components of over-complication here and there.
Dominique Leuenberger and his contributions
To what projects/sub-projects do you contribute for openSUSE?
The main areas are GNOME:* / Virtualization:VMware / X11:Compiz and games I think. Of course GNOME:* has references to multimedia:libs (gstreamer
for example) and a bunch of other areas. If there is nothing left to do in GNOME and I'm bored, I fire up "osc collab todo" and see what else I can update for Factory.
What was your biggest challenge as an openSUSE contributor?
Keeping Compiz in a somewhat running state. It's getting worse and I
almost consider ditching that beast.
How did you overcome the challenge?
Putting more energy into it. But the state of Compiz in 11.4 seems not really satisfactory. IT's getting more difficult to maintain it though, as I no longer use it (that's after all how I gained maintainership: it was abandoned, nobody cared for it, I liked it and fixed it up to work again)
How many hours do you spare from your spare time for openSUSE contributions?
That varies a lot but I think it's roughly 20 hours of spare time (my work time, which I unofficially spend to some extent on openSUSE as well, not counted)
What was the most gratifying experience that you lived as an openSUSE contributor?
The T-Shirts coming in every few months :) And actually seeing that what I do is being used by others.
What are your favorite tasks as a contributor?
Declining Submit-Requests.
What's that 'special' package you really loved to make available?
Blob Wars: Blob and Conquer. It's an awesome game.
Do you seek often user feedback from your work?
No reason to seek: most of the packages I'm involved in, have rather good visibility and if something breaks, I can be sure to hear about it.
Can you describe the 24 hours of one day in your life as an openSUSE contributor?
Shall it be a Monday or a Saturday? Workdays generally start at around 7am with the usual wake-up procedure: bathroom, breakfast, coffee and so
on and around 9am I should be in the office, where I have my day job as a Desktop LifeCycle Manager (generally: how to get Windows and all its needed applications on all the workstations in the company, with a few admin interventions per machine/user as possible). This always paired with having my eyes on my IRSSI session running on my home machine, which is reachable from work and runs a screen session of course.
Work goes generally until 6pm, having a walk home and then have dinner with my lovely Fiance. Depending on out both plans for the evening there can be some more time devoted to openSUSE or not. This is not strict :)
When working on openSUSE, in parallel there is normally the TV running, cats to be cuddled, fiance to be communicated with, and what else all happens. And around midnight / 1am we normally head for a good night sleep.
Dominique Leuenberger and GNOME3
What are the strong points of GNOME in openSUSE?
It works, is kept close to upstream gnome with only a few tweaks here and there. And we have a very polished Theme.
What's your main role on openSUSE GNOME Team?
I was once nominated to be part of the core gnome team: full access and power to destroy it and with this the responsibility to fix it again.
Most of the things I do go around Package updating, bug fixing here and there and some help on irc if I feel like.
What's the relation between the openSUSE GNOME Team and upstream (GNOME Project)?
I think we have a rather good relationship. Of course, a bunch of the team have been very active upstream contributors and representatives. I never had an encounter when reporting something / discussing with any upstream dev that would bring a negative shadow on openSUSE.
What's the big motivation that pushes GNOME Team towards?
We try to do what we do every day: we take over the world!
Why is GNOME 3 important to openSUSE? And to you?
It's a completely different way of approaching your desktop. It takes a few hours to get used to it, but once you got over the gap, you just
feel right with it. There are of course bumps here and there, but by the time of the next release of openSUSE, we should have GNOME 3.2 already.
Any good reasons to migrate to GNOME3?
- It looks good
- It's intuitive to use (newcomers have less trouble than techies) - It does not smash you with a hundred options
What're the most important advancements in GNOME3?
The new way to interact with the desktop through the shell instead of a 'start menu' and a panel. And the notifications, which are actually interactive (they do not only notify, you can even act on them like directly answer to an incoming chat)
Why would you recommend openSUSE and GNOME3?
You get a solid system, a good looking user interface with a nice theme and a friendly community around it to help you in case of trouble.
Why is it fun to use/contribute for openSUSE through GNOME Team?
Ever hung out on #opensuse-gnome? Then you know the answer. Don't take everything serious that's being said there. BUT: We really DO like ice
cream :)
The End (?)
Interviewing Dominique was a very pleasing experience, tainted by his humor and good disposition. I wouldn't be surprised if every single installation of openSUSE has a few packages maintained by Dominique, specially on the Desktop.
If you are an openSUSE user, whenever you use the gstreamer backend, GNOME or many others... You will know that a cool Swiss guy invests a large part of free time to take them to you! Feel free to submit reports, Dominique will answer them and will rejoice in polishing your experience! Even if you're not like Dominique and use KDE, there's a huge chance that you still have a few packages maintained by him on the system!