Interview with Gentoo Developer Markos Chandras (hwoarang)

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http://linuxcrazy.com/?q=node/69
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Markos created a transcript

<Podcast Start>
Hello and welcome to LinuxCrazy Podcasts. Today I am pleased to introduce to all of you, Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Developer. Markos is a busy man, he helps out with Qt, kde, sunrise, sound, and the kernel.

Markos welcome to the podcast.

<interview start>

1) Is Gentoo your first open source project?

As far as contributing goes? Yeah ,even though I am an active linux user for four to five years, this is the first time I am contributing
to a Linux distro.

2) How long have you been a Gentoo user?

I cant recall precicely. Maybe 3-4 years. I guess. Maybe more, I am not sure.

3) How did you come up with the nick (kwoarang)?

Hwoarang was my favorite character in a playstation game I used to play a lot as a child. My imagination is pretty limited,so
I picked this which also reminds me my childhood

4) What has your journey been like with Linux, and how did it start?

Hmm, thats a nice question. Back in 2003 a friend of mine gave me a SUSE Linux 9.0 CD, and since that was my first assosiation with Linux and Unix systems
in general, I simply couldn't follow it, plus I hadnt good adsl connection so I simple dropped it. A couple of months later I tried Readhat 7 or 9,I cant recall.
Anyway, being a newbie in front of a dark terminal was pretty scary so that didnt work either. Then in 2004 when adsl spread in Greece, I installed, Ubuntu, please
dont asky why I did that. I think it was 5.04 version. At first my work was limited to C/C++ development, music and video entertainment, and some web browsing.
But I started gaining a better understanding of the Unix world rapidly. A couple of months later I installed Debian on my fileserver which was a big step for
me. In the mean time my Ubuntu installation got b0rked and a friend of mine said "Hey, just try Gentoo and you will be fine". So this was my first gentoo installation.
I must say that my first installation was pretty smooth. As I was said, I followed the handbook step by step, phrase by phrase and everything went fine.

5) What motivated you to become a Gentoo Developer?

Well, I had been thinking about it for a long time. I had even discussed it with many gentoo developers, all of which pointed out that gentoo development is
a time consuming dedication which is so true. Anyway, due to lack of free time given my university obligations, I couldnt follow this path. However, this year,
my free time was extended so the time felt right for me to do it.
I cant really say that something is specific motivated me. I have always liked the idea of helping the community wherever possible so I just wanted to give something
back to the disto which helped me to learn so much regarding linux.


6) What aspects of Gentoo do you feel the developers and maintainers have got right?

QA for sure. We try to keep high standars on our ebuilds. Thus we use overlays as a playground or development heaven if you like, for that. We do a lot of
underground development on overlays to ensure that our ebuilds will be 100% working when we put them on portage. In my opinion overlays is one of the greatest
tool a gentoo developer can use.

7) What is it about Gentoo you would like to see improved?

What really bothers me is this huge gap between testing and stable branch. To be honest I am not quite sure about the philosophy behind stable branch.
Some people think that stable is meant to run only on servers, whilst others believe that stable is good for average users. If the later, we must stabilize
packages more and more often. Sure I can understand that this might be a heavy load for our arch teams, which are understaffed btw, but if we really
want to maintain stable branch we need to pay extra attention on stabilization bugs. Plus it is well known is really lacking a proper PR presense. We used to have
GMN but this project died. So I really like to see a proper PR team which will handle our presense in Linux universe.

What are some of the Projects within Gentoo that you are contributing to?

My first experience with a gentoo project was sunrise. Last spring I got my password and started commiting ebuilds on it. Tomas and the rest of the devs
helped out a lot to improve my ebuild skills so I need to say a big thank to them. As an official developer, I started on KDE project being
responsible for all the Qt packages with Ben. Later I joined sound herd because I maintain some qt4 application there . In the meantime I spend the rest of my
free time with kernel bugs but I havent really done much there expect 1-2 patches. So, I would say that Qt herd is my first priority on Gentoo right now.

9) Are you now or have you been involved with any other open source projects?

I am actively maintain my first PyQt4 application, pysmssend. This was my first programming experiense with Qt and Python, so I dont want to
see it dies . Plus I wrote a simple plasmoid for kde. But apart from these, I havent done anything else.

10) As a Gentoo Developer what are some of your accomplishments.

Being the first distro that shipped Qt-4.5.0_rc1 was surely a big step. We got a lot of complains about that but still, I consider Gentoo users as advanced users
so each one should be able to choose if an upgrade swites to him or not. I try to keep my personal bug number below 5 and qt bugs
bellow 10 whenever possible. Now, I am about to fire up a Gentoo Screenshot contest but I need to find some free time to finish up the details.

11) What applications would you like to see included within Gentoo.

To be honest, all I need is already on gentoo. Since all I do is programming, I cant complain. There are plenty of programming tools on portage.
Apart from that, I'd like to see dreamweaver or any other descent Web programming tool. This is something that I really miss on Gentoo and Linux in
general.

12) Walk me through the process of creating an ebuild for an application not included in Gentoo.

OK. What I do first it to download the source tarball locally on my home folder. I unpack it and go through the files. In the mean time
I fire up my vim editor, and start setting up the trivial variables such as LICENSE, SLOT, KEYWORDS etc. My next step is to configure that application
and generate the makefile. Next, I investigate briefly the build system so I can understand what is going on. So, then I just compile it to see if it compiles
successfully. Then I fill up the rest of the ebuild as long as I dont need to hack the source code

13) What open source software can you not live without at home and at work?

yakuake . I really really really like this application, and I can't live without it. I am so used to it and for sure it speeds up my development.

14) Which open source programs would you like to see developed?

I cant think of anything. Maybe openoffice which is far far behind from Microsoft Office. So yeah I would really like to see it evolved during time. But
apart from that, I cant think of any other application.

15) What resources have you found most helpful when troubleshooting within Gentoo?

Gentoo official documentation and Gentoo wiki are my number our resources, plus google of course. Rarely I use something else. Everything I need to
solve my everyday issues, is already on documentation.

16) Do you get to do much programming?

For gentoo? It is not required although you have to if you really want to do some patching. Usually, I prefer to write a patch on my own and
send it upstream, rather that waiting upstream to fix it first. I do like programming so hacking the source code is fun for me

17) What would be your dream job?

Something related with my studies. Electrical engineering or software engineering would be really good but still I dont wheather I am gonna find such a job in Greece.
This is why I consider moving abroad next year.

1 What can users do to improve Gentoo?

Filling bugs and provide patches. This will really help us track down software failures and fix them as fast as we can. I always like it when a users provides
a patch. This mean that the user really wants this bug to be fixed, so I raise the priority on such bugs. Also, sunrise project is a nice way for users to contribute.
As I said previously, having your ebuilds hosted on an official gentoo overlay feels nice. Herd testers are valuable to us. They help us
test the ebuilds, fixing them on overlays and provide solutions to various situations. I consider them as a critical part for kde project. Finally, if users want
more and more stable applications, they might want to join their favorite arch team and start stabilizing packages.
Last but not least, users can always join our forums and help out other users. So, see, there are many ways for users to improve gentoo

19) Walk me through your process of setting up xorg-server.

Ha, not much to say here. I came up with a xorg.conf abstract file the first time I installed gentoo. I use the same one plus some additions every time
I need to configure xorg.conf on any machine. I really tend to avoid spend much time on that cause it is so messy. Plus I am not interested in 3D graphics and stuff
so configuring it is pretty much trivial

20) What users would you like to recruit to become Gentoo Developers?

It is soon for me to start thinking about being recruiter or mentor even though I help as much as I can our upcoming developers for qt herd, with their ebuild quizes
and technical aspects. Anyway, all I care about is motivation. We can work on ebuild and technical skills but raising the motivation level is quite hard. So if the
user is motivated, and he really really wants to become a gentoo developer I am sure I wont have any problem mentoring him.

21) Is the biggest hurdle in getting the users and developers working more closely, the time it takes to build trust?

Surely, trust is critical between users and developers but this of course is quite relevant. We can accept patches and fixes from various users without knowing them
but you need to build trust and be sure for their skills before you grant them access on public gentoo overlays. So before you do that, user must prove his
value, and ebuild skills. Of course this process requires time from both sides, but the gain is a user with high ebuild and technical skills, and why not, an upcoming
developer.

22) What are the specs of your current boxes?

So you want to hear about my littile boxes? Okey Well my oldest box is a tiny Pentium II which I use it as an Access Point for patras wireless metropolitan
network. It is running Gentoo and microtik on virtualbox. My fileserver which is located by the fridge (!!) is running MySQL,Apache, FTP server, nfs and samba
shares. It is an old Athlon XP box with half GB or RAM. Of course it is running Gentoo as well. My main development box is running Gentoo on a 5 year old AMD64
cpu with 2 GB ram. I use twin view ( powered by nvidia ) on this machine. This is were I do most of my development. Finally my toshiba laptop satellite is
running Gentoo as well but I tend to avoid doing heavy work on that. It is mainly for university projects. Plus I am taking care of a Phenom II box which is
located ~600Km away back to my island. It is a brand new system, using Phenom II with 2GB of RAM and it is running Gentoo as well.

23) Did the Gentoo Developers played any tricks on you when you were a rookie, new to the developer pool?

To be Honest there is just one habit, to kick you from gentoo-dev channel as a welcome thingie but apart from that , I cant really say that I experienced anything else.
Oh and they always warn you about "Hey dont break the portage " which btw I ve done only twice so far

24) What gives you the most enjoyment within the Gentoo community.

IRC is a nice way to meet new friends and help out users who run into troubles. I really enjoy it, it is a nice break from real life troubles, and I am
surely gonna miss when I join the army this summer.
_________________
http://dev.gentoo.org/~dabbott/