Till Kamppeter
Age: 37
Location: Coimbra, Portugal
IRC Nick: tkamppeter
How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
From 1997 on, my first experience is with SUSE 5.1.
How long have you been using Ubuntu?
Since middle of 2006.
When did you get involved with the MOTU team and how?
As I got contracted part-time as printing developer by Canonical middle of 2006.
What helped you learn packaging and how Ubuntu teams work?
Before starting at Ubuntu I was full-time employee at Mandriva (mid 2000 – mid 2006) and so I had already a lot of experience with free software developement and RPM packaging. I learned Debian packaging then by the Debian developer documentation and the #ubuntu-devel channel on IRC. I got mainly help by pitti, who did most of the printing development before. I have also been on the UDS in Mountain View.
In my main employment I am manager of the OpenPrinting project at the Linux Foundation, so I have also upstream development experience.
Favorite part of working with the MOTU?
The printing part of Ubuntu. It is not really MOTU, as printing is a core part of the OS and therefore all these packages are in main.
Any advice for people wanting to help out MOTU?
First, report and triage bugs, especially assign the bugs to the right packages, so that the appropriate developer teams at Ubuntu get note of the problems. Second, if you find great software, debianize it (if Debian did no do so already) and suggest it for Ubuntu.
You have been working on a lot of different packages in the last cycles, what are you going to focus on in Hardy?
I will continue with printing stuff, especially continuing the upstream development of system-config-printer, hal-cups-utils, and Foomatic, especially for auto-download of printer drivers, work together with manufacturers to provide auto-downloadable drivers, generally work on making printing “just work”, …
How do you think Hardy will special for our users?
Important things in hardware support will be much easier, especially X Window setup with more than one monitor and/or a projector and also printing due to auto-downloadable drivers, more reliable assigning of drivers to auto-detected printers, easy networked printing with Mac OS X boxes, …
We are moving from the rocket science of structured deposition of ink and toner particles on paper substrates to “just print” …
Behind MOTU 
Nice work! Keep it up…
Till Kamppeter:
(later, Non-network)
(ubuntu 8.10, )The CUPS mini howto was excellent. I followed it very
easily. Indeed, it was only at the end that I wondered but could not
answer “How do I set up to use my HP 670 C for use as a stand alone
local, not networked, printer?.
then I played around and got
root@me-desktop:/home/me/Templates#
cat /proc/sys/dev/parport/parport*/autoprobe*
CLASS:PRINTER;
MODEL:DESKJET 670C;
MANUFACTURER:HEWLETT-PACKARD;
DESCRIPTION:Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 670C;
COMMAND SET:MLC,PCL,PML;
so maybe the box is aware of some stuff
but I’d pay some cash to get my box so I could print on the hp
tell me how much and or if when
such nice work-
busche