how to help..??

Question is do you want to help for Launchpad, for Ubuntu or for free software ?

About Launchpad, you could subscribe for software you use daily. E.g. if you use "evolution" mail reader, you could subscribe it and answer questions (currently, evolution packet is unsubscribed). What I did is to specialize myself on Grub2 issues (boot, installation and issues related to new kernels). You could choose a subject of interest. E.g. forum needs someone more competent on network and WIFI drivers. But remind you have to choose something which interest you if you want to help for a long duration.

I can help you to use forum's tool.

As you are a programmer, you could also have a look at bug section, and try to solve some bugs. E.g. currently, os-prober doesn't identify properly which Windows partition is main one or recovery one. As you plan to gather hours in the week-end, perhaps bug activity will be better than question answering.

It seems also that some Troubleshoot are not updated.

Don't hesitate to contact me. You can also contact Marco Braida, Actionparsnip, Ubfan, Mycae, Marcus Aurelius and Mycae which are currently very active ( https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+topcontributors )

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On 3/5/2011 3:29 AM, Krish Iyer wrote:
> New question #147882 on Bazaar:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/bzr/+question/147882
>
> I have been using Ubuntu since 7.10.
> I have installed Natty now for reporting some bugs and to provide help testing it.
> I have always been wondering how to contribute.
> I have tried browsing through the forums trying to answer some questions, but I am (almost always) lost.
> I am currently learning Python (have done a couple of simple projects), good at Java, and very good at C.
> I can contribute about 8-10 hrs during weekends to begin with.
> Can anyone suggest how I can help..?
> I would love a mentor who can guide me about this.
>
> Thanks.
>
>

One option is to search the bug listing:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr

You can see on the bottom right what tags are available, you can
consider what you might be interested in. "easy" and "doc" are possibly
things to look at for getting started:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bugs?field.tag=easy
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bugs?field.tag=doc

You can also find us on irc.freenode.net channel #bzr, or on the mailing
list. Usually people will be happy to give assistance if you have some
questions about how things work, etc.

John
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Hello Krish,

I would definitely support the concept that you need to follow your interest. You will have to decide what areas you find interesting -- do you like network, desktop, visualisation, video processing, audio work, CAD, or what have you?

Some of these need different skills. For desktop work (user interfaces), having design skills is equally important to having programming skills. For networking, you need to be familiar with the various protocols, and how they function. For visualisation, video processing, audio work and CAD you need to have good mathematical skills. There are lots of programs that could be made more useful.

The most important thing I think is to join an existing project, rather than trying to start your own. There are lots of half-finished projects out there -- bringing a half-OK project up to a really good project is pretty critical.

I would refrain from joining a project that you have never used, though.

Hello, what did you decided ?