Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)

Desk

Screenshot

Age: 19
Location: Come from Malaysia, but currently studying in Singapore
IRC Nick: hyperair

How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
Ubuntu was my first, though I switched to ArchLinux for about 3 months and switched back when I realized that I had ended up customizing my ArchLinux installation to be very similar to Ubuntu.

How long have you been using Ubuntu?
Since Dapper Drake’s release, so that would be.. 3 years and 7 months approximately?

When did you get involved with the MOTU team and how?
It began when the Banshee 1.0 alphas started appearing upstream, but not the Ubuntu packages. I wasn’t a Banshee user yet, but it did look awesome, so I dug out the packaging for Banshee from Ubuntu, played around with the files until a deb magically appeared, and uploaded it to mediafire.com and linked it on a thread on ubuntuforums.org.

Shortly after that, Jorge O. Castro (jcastro) e-mailed me, with the idea of starting up a PPA for new Banshee releases. I don’t really remember what happened next, but somewhere along the line, I began introducing new packages via REVU (revu.ubuntuwire.com) during the Karmic cycle, and when I could not get a sponsor for bansheelyricsplugin, Iain Lane (Laney) dragged me off to #debian-cli (#debian-mono at that time, IIRC). After that, I began co-maintaining Banshee, and handling the syncs and merges of Banshee in Ubuntu.

What helped you learn packaging and how Ubuntu teams work?
I began by playing around with existing packages, mainly to get new upstream versions packaged for personal consumption, because I’m an impatient fellow. I then read some of the packaging guides on wiki.ubuntu.com (the one I used is probably so old it got overridden by the new ones already), the Debian new maintainer guide, and the Debian policy.

As for learning how Ubuntu teams work, I sat around in #ubuntu-motu and #ubuntu-devel as well as #ubuntu-desktop, and either eavesdropped or participated in ongoing discussions there. My first few packages gotten into Ubuntu via REVU gave me quite a bit of first-hand experience working with the MOTU as well.

What’s your favorite part of working with the MOTU?
Is there any part that isn’t a favourite? ;-)

Any advice for people wanting to help out MOTU?
Google is your friend. And whatever Google doesn’t answer, IRC answers. ;-)

Are you involved with any local Linux/Ubuntu groups?
I am a part of the Ubuntu Singapore and Ubuntu Malaysia Local Communities, and a technical director of the NTU Open Source Society

What are you going to focus on in Lucid and Lucid+1?
Banshee, its rdepends, as well as its dependencies mostly. But I will tackle any other bug that annoys me enough and is within my capability to fix.

What do you do in your other spare time?
I love watching anime and reading manga. But when I’m not doing that, I’d probably be surfing the net, chatting, or playing some old games on my notebook.