Re: Volunteering for the project

[David Sheryn <dhs%chromiq.org@localhost>]

On Sat, 07 Feb 2009, Guillaume Lasmayous wrote:

> Subject: Volunteering for the project
> From: Guillaume Lasmayous <netbsd-lists%guigui2.net@localhost>
> Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:34:40 +0100
>
> Hi there,
>
>
> Funny enough, I had in plan to update my -current Netbook running
> NetBSD to the the latest full-featured Gnome desktop (incl. Compiz et
> al.).
>
> This project comes at the perfect time.
>
> I would be happy to help.
>
> Please note I'm no developer, even if I try to maintain a few 
> packages in pkgsrc. I'm more a tester or maybe doc writer, or
> whatever else is needed apart from coding.

> @+,
> Guillaume.


This is pretty much my position, too.  Not much of a coder, but happy to 
 help with testing, docs, etc. (I'm good at finding obscure 
installation bugs, as another member of this list may attest to ;-)

As I posted somewhere else, this project is quite serendipitous, as I 
was trying to help someone get NBD up and running last week.  As it 
turned out, I had little difficulty talking him through the installer 
(the bit that many people are complaining about), but I would definitely 
regard G. as a "clueful newbie" (he managed to fix the disk geometry 
problem in the BIOS himself -- so someone _reasonably_ technically 
clueful) -- maybe this should be the initial "target audience" ?  The 
real challenges started once we'd got NBD through it's first boot 
(thanks to abs for championing the addition of ee :-)

At the risk of a breach on netiqutte, I'll repost here, in case the 
scenario is helpful:


> DHS scribbled:
>
> It is highly ironic that the day before the announcement came out, I
> was trying to remotely talk a competent network/firewall engineer
> through a NetBSD install so that he could have cheap but effective
> remote network moniting box to gather some diagnostics (NBD was an
> obvious choice: ssh for remote access, tcpdump to do the work, etc.)
> He manged to fix the BIOS problems himself, but trying to
> remote-tutor an ab-initio vi user through editing /etc/rc.conf was,
> shall we say, interesting. A netbsd-desktop cd that would have
> simplified getting him up nad running with wireshark would have been
> an excellent use of NetBSD... and it's attracting people like him
> that could draw in valuable expertise/resources that might help
> develop the "core " of NetBSD as well. I don't think he's been too
> put-off yet...


/DHS