I've been using Gentoo for a little over two years, in a desktop, mobile, and production-server capacity, on both amd64 and x86 architectures. I've had some development experience (and i've written ebuilds and I know my way around bugzilla) so I think I've got a good handle on what the devs have to deal with. My community involvement has been limited almost entirely to irc thus far (#gentoo and others), where I try to help out as much as I can. I certainly don't consider myself to be an average gentoo user (nor do I believe there is such a thing), and there are some things that I haven't delved into yet (locales, internationalization -- not to mention that I only speak English) that I feel are detrimental to my effectiveness as a user representative. However, I have been an elected representitive for diverse groups in the past and feel confident that I would be an effective advocate for Gentoo users.
I've been using Gentoo for about a year as my main desktop and laptop OS and have dabbled in some development work, creating and submitting ebuilds. I also enjoy providing support to other users on IRC and the forums. As a User Representative I look forward to communicating with a wide range of users and some good constructive debates on how Gentoo can be improved. Above all I look forward to learning more about linux and its users, and giving even more back to the Open Source community (users and developers alike) that supports us all.
After starting studying computer science I thought it must be time to learn something about this freak OS called linux. So I installed a SuSE Linux but found it not very attractive. It stayed a few weeks on my PC but finally didn't survived. A year later someone told me about a linux distro called Gentoo and because I got my first trojan on my windows I decided to try it again and installed my first Gentoo on my PC. It was a stage 1 install and it took me about 8 hours to until the first reboot. But hey, it was a lot of fun.
I played around some time with Gentoo and after I learned quite a lot I decided to finally convert my server to a Gentoo linux server. That worked again really well and as time goes by I missed this and that when running this other OS and I spend more and more time in linux on my desktop. Then, after deciding that I don't have the time for playing computer games I deleted these other partitions on my PC and linux became my only OS on server, workstation and laptop. Since this point I'm very happy (most of the time...)!
After my first few problems I started to read in this really great forum and I even was able to help some other guys with there linux problems so I stayed and love this comunity. As a UserRep I want to bring some more fun to the Gentoo forums.
I was first introduced to Gentoo in late 2003 and have stuck with it ever since. During this time I've seen Gentoo grow in terms of flexibility and reliability. I've also seen the birth of the Gentoo Foundation which from an organizational perspective is very important for the project's wellbeing. Whilst I use Gentoo on my Desktop, I've also deployed Gentoo as our preferred server OS at my place of employment where we use it as the base for a critical domain/portal system. So I have experience in using Gentoo in critical environments.
I've also been an active member on Bugzilla and the forums helping out when I can. I think this point is quite important, you learn a lot about the project from what others go through. Often the issues I help with I've never experienced but I know others have so I combine all the available resources to provide a suitable response.
What I can provide as a user representative is a bridge between the end user and the developer. I recognize these two categories are not complete disjoint, I come from a Computer Science background so I can understand both the users concern and the developers perspective. During constructive conflict I can help by discussing the end user's concern with the developers and vice versa and thus reach a suitable, community benefiting compromise.
I'm Brandon (aka cheater-conrad/cheater1034/conrad). I've been using linux for about 4 years now, my first distribution being Redhat 7.0. I later discovered Gentoo Linux, in late 2003 - early 2004. Ever since then, I have been a dedicated Gentoo user. Gentoo is almost perfect in my opinion, I can't say it's perfect, because nothing is. I am dedicated to gentoo for several reasons, a few of those including: customization, stability, security, portage, init scripts, support (community and hardware wise), and the documentation (unbelievably good). I use Gentoo as the dedicated operating system on my desktop and my server.
Some of the people that know me, know me from Conrad Gentoo Projects. This is a set of projects I started, which include all actively maintained, reiser4/media livecd, install guide, kernel patchset (no-sources), install scripts. These were made with user in mind and I have several supporters and users. I believe in making the Gentoo experience more pleasurable, and I do for many people. I also am current maintainer of the kernel patchset: no-sources, I have several accomplishments/achievements with this kernel. Many of them are for user request.
Finally, I think I am good for the posistion of user represenative for the following reasons: 1) My experience and success with helping users - I have tons of experience in helping users thanks to conrad projects, I am pleasurable to work with, and I'll be damned if I don't solve your problem. 2) My experience in gentoo/linux/kernel/programming as a whole - I hold a lot of experience, and I can help wide varieties of problems in the categories of gentoo (emerge/portage problems, etc), kernel (any problem, I write some kernel patches and edit a lot), livecd problems, programming (bash, ncurses, python, c/c++). I don't get into battles with flaming, I help everyone, no user left behind. If you think I'd make a good user represenative vote for me.
I'm a relative newcomer to the Gentoo community having used it for just over a year now. Having just obtained a degree in Engineering, I'm a natural tinkerer and Gentoo provides me with lots of options, bells and whistles to play with. The user experience has been very rewarding and its hard to say whether or not I'd be where I am today without the help of Gentoo and the community. If I ever encountered a problem, I've always found great documentation or people willing to answer questions on the forum or IRC. After my first few months of using Gentoo, I began to look for ways to give something back. I started answering more questions on the forums and on IRC, even wrote a few ebuilds for maintainer-wanted packages.
One day I learned about XGL. Some ebuilds popped up but eventually became stale with the rapid development pace and I literally jumped at the chance to fix them and provide a working set of bleeding edge software for all Gentooers which has grown into the xgl-coffee overlay that is now maintained by not only myself but two others I've recruited. On a daily basis I talk to users addressing various issues, not only regarding XGL but any X related issue. From time to time I talk with the upstream devs and Gentoo devs and give them a technical translation of the user related issues which allows them to rapidly turn around solutions or suggestions. That brings me to what I can do as your User Representative.
In the work place and in the open source community I've been a developer, worked with developers and managed developers. I know the language they speak and what information they need to know to solve the issues. Likewise, I've been a user, worked with users, read reports and bugs submitted by users. I know the language they speak and how to ask questions to get the information thats relevant. The key is translating user issues into development requirements efficiently and effectively and that is where my strengths lie which makes me a good candidate to represent you, the users, so that your issues get solved in a timely and seamless manner.
I first came across Gentoo in late 2003 when my Swedish girlfriend at the time introduced me to a friend who was an AIX, Solaris and HP-UX consultant. I noted that he used Gentoo and said to him that I had been interested in linux for some time and he told me to try an easier linux like Mandrake which I did but I was determined to use what he was so between trying various distros I was always trying to install Gentoo. Eventually I got Gentoo to work and started using it as my main operating system.
Even from the very beginning I was immersed in the Gentoo community, I was also instrumental in some off-shoots of the community (namely gentoo-otw, otw and gentoo-glbt). I also organise Gentoo meetings in the UK.
I feel Gentoo has lost touch with its user base, the users themselves. The users are under-represented, overlooked and have no say in the direction of distribution and for a distro that is supposedly built around choice that is completely the wrong direction.
The developers, while doing an excellent job developing, spend their time arguing amongst themselves and have no wish to go near the forums and never start threads asking what/how/when/why they would like anything achieved and that has meant the gap between the users and developers is widening all the time.
Because the gap between the users and developers has gotten so large there needs to be a solution, a solution that the developers will listen to and that will have a deep knowlege of the community at large and that solution is user-relations. Userrel needs to see these problems and address them as part of a bridge between the community and the developers.
Therefore I think that I am an ideal candidate.
I started using Gentoo somewhere in the fall of 2003. At a time I was dual booting between Windows and Linux. At some point I got sick of rpm hell on my Red Hat installation, and started checking out other distributions. I tried FreeBSD, Madrake, Suse, Debian, Knoppix, and finally Gentoo. I think it was Gentoo 1.4 then. I have sinced dumped Windows and entirely use Gentoo.
I loved it immediatly, both because portage and even more because of community. I loved how things were done, and how users were affecting the development.
Regarding my involvement: to this day I wasn't seriously involved with helping Gentoo, but now and then I try to answer (when I can of course) on "unanswered" posts in forums (because it sucks when people ignore you). I think I wrote an ebuild once, when I really needed it and an official one was really old.
If I were a userrep, I would hope to help achieving the same "fun" feeling I had when I started using Gentoo (I know that a definition of that is a bit elusive), to close the communication gap between users and devs, and mainly to create an environment in which any user can and would address her ideas, issues and problems and be sure that she is not ignored by an organization.
I have been using Gentoo on multiple machines for a little more than two years. I've been on #gentoo for the same about of time, almost daily. I have contributed ebuilds and patches to bugzilla. I've joined the Sunrise project and submitted ebuilds. I would like to be able to provide feedback to the Gentoo leadership based on the issues I have seen occurring among #gentoo users, and the help I've had to give them to solve their problems.
I have been using Gentoo for roughly a year now. I had started using it with a very good base of Linux knowledge, but learned a lot from this distribution, mostly becuase it makes you have to build your Linux system from ground zero and so I learned more about Linux due to that, as compared to have a Linux distribution already being ready to go and not requiring anything of me.
Also I have found this distribution to be the most flexible and highly configurable. I have used it for my own learning so I can build my Linux skills to add to my resume as well as for my own knowledge, and that knowledge it has provided me.
I've been using Gentoo for over two years as my main (and only for a year now) OS. I've been active on the French forums for more than a year and present on the others. I've contributed some documentation on the dedicated French forum. Right now, I'm helping with the French translation effort by translating the GWN and helping with the translation of the Gentoo documentation.
My involvement with Gentoo Linux started November 2004, and so far I have migrated most of my production servers to run Gentoo, except those that are running on FreeBSD which are only about a dozen or so. My production servers running Gentoo run everything from postfix mail, mysql, postgresql, php, apache, icecast, game servers, asterisk, XEN, voice/video servers, hardened kernel, selinux, grsecurity, usb-key entry encrypted file systems using luks "mostly for sensitive data in law/medical businesses" & everything else that my clients require or request.. I am basically a technology addict and my knowledge of systems integration is vast and by being promoted to a Gentoo Linux representative, I would be a great individual to represent the BEST Linux distribution around.
One of my other involvements with Gentoo Linux is contributing to the distribution's support channel on Freenode #gentoo as a support volunteer,.. I know some people are registered on the forums but, I much more prefer to give live help as my time is short and I prefer to receive responses right away. Another contribution is the amount of ebuilds I have submitted to bugs.gentoo.org; of which a lot have been added to the Gentoo's portage tree and a few now are being added to Gentoo Sunrise. I also keep my overlay online and share it with friends who also use Gentoo. This overlay is located at http://weboperative.com/svn . I know a lot of people have asked me why I haven't applied for developer status and my answer is: I would much rather contribute at my own pace as I run a business and my time is short and I don't believe I would be able to contribute 100% of my time, but I do contribute whenever I can in terms of using Gentoo on production servers and contributing new ebuilds to the Gentoo's bugs tracker and support users on irc.freenode.net
I am a non-techie guy (social worker) who was always was interested in computers, since I got my fingers on a ZX Spectrum in the early eighties. I learned about the FOSS movement in the late nighties and after playing with Suse, Red Hat and Mandrake for a while, I read an article about Gentoo. After a couple of tries, I managed to get my system up and running and have been hooked on Gentoo ever since. I am an active member of the Gentoo Forums and am using Gentoo as my desktop OS since I became part of this community.
I've always been interested in making Gentoo more transparent, so that users can take part in decision making and can make proposals for changes and improvements within time. IMO, it is important to be able to see, how decisions are made and which way this community is heading. Another thing that I might be able to help with, is helping to clear up missunderstandings between users and devs, as they seem to happen quite often in bugzilla.
My name's Fabio Erculiani, the SabayonLinux Founder at www.lxnaydesign.net and an old school Gentoo user committed to the "just works" and keep-it-simple-stupid philosophy. Most people could remember the epic Gentoo-RR4 LiveCD that I developed and shared across the Gentoo Forums in 2004/2005, the first that supported the Reiser4 filesystem, KDE, GNOME and XFCE on the same CD. My favorite websites? Gentoo's Bugzilla where I tend to submit every new bug that I find during the release processes of my Gentoo-based distribution, and ... packages.gentoo.org. Do you like the Gentoo scalability and the ease of use of a "just works" environment? Then, vote for me ;)
I started using gentoo about 10 months ago, with 2005.1. I basically stick with it because it does what I need, and very well. Plus the community and devs are pretty friendly. As for what I'd like to do as a userrep.. Well, help out in any way I can :)
My name is Peter Gantner, 30 years old, and living in Graz, Austria. Currently single, no kids, penthouse apartement ;) College dropout (biology), and currently employed as a sysadmin for CAD systems at a large local car manufacturer. Not much Linux there that I can work with, but at least we have a lot of UNIX boxen and I can work on a Sun workstation. Free times interests include scuba diving (which I am very likely to be doing by the time you are reading this), making music, writing poems and songs, taiji, skiing, and hanging out with people my mom wouldn't like at all.
Previous computing I did involved the NES, Amiga, and Macintosh. I installed my first Linux box sometime during 1996 and went from SuSE through RedHat and Debian to Gentoo. I've been toying with Solaris, AIX, OpenBSD and BeOS. *Obviously* vim, KDE and perl rule, all shells suck, all UNIXes are good for _something_ (though only idiots argue in favour of AIX) and x86 *is* the worst of them all. (I hope this convers most of the holy war material.) As for Gentoo, I must admit that I have only installed it about three times. Release 1.4_rc-something in 2002 on my main box, never reinstalled, still running like a breeze. Once on my laptop last year, once on an old Pentium currently acting as a router/DNS/proxy. Compiling really sucks on those. But I wouldn't want to miss the clean and well documented Gentoo way of doing things.
I joined the Forums in Feb 2003 and have been a very active poster the following year. That was the time I like to call the "time of the Old Veterans" because then the forum rank really meant something and overall it was a very friendly, family-like comunity. Looking at current-time OTW it's funny to know that it once was actually interesting discussion grounds... After that first year my posting rate started to decline, mainly because I started working (as opposed to the not-really-studying I did previously). But I still drop by several times a day and try to help on a couple of threads. I am also a lurker on various mailing lists and drop by on IRC from time to time.
Why would I take the job of User Representative? I have been pondering this a bit and I think my main goal should be to make this position obsolete. I think the creation of this position is a symptom of a problem Gentoo has, not an aid or a solution. There is a disconnection felt between "official" Gentoo (devs) and and "the user base" (everybody else) where there should be none. Proposed was a process to improve relations but what should be done is to change the mindset or vision of the people involved to remove that very need. There is no useful or necessary distinction between a dev and a user (apart from bureaucratic or infrastructural titles such as cvs commit access). If you write an article or a howto, post an install guide or file a bug, you are developing Gentoo, official dev or not. If you participate in milelong flamewars or bashing or are bragging about CFLAGS or overclocking stats on forums IRC or mailing lists instead of writing a patch than you might think you are developing Gentoo but you likely are not.
Just like UNIX in general, Gentoo is an idea, a process, a way of computing that many think is a good one. Concentrating too much on single manifestations or implementations is foolish. It wasn't speed, it wasn't compiling, it wasn't the bold new init system or python as a core language that made Gentoo famous. It has always been the community. *We* are Gentoo. Lets try to get that feeling back. All of us.
My name is Simon. I'm a 21 year old student from Uppsala in Sweden. I have summer holiday currently but I will start school again next term with the goal of being able to study at the Uppsala University eventually. Computers and especially Linux are one of my big interests. I'm poltically engaged and a member of the Swedish Piracy Party (piratpartiet). I also like to read and write.
I've been using Linux more or less since 2001. The first disribution I tried was Mandrake. It was buggy and I never liked it much. I then used Suse for a while before I switched to Slackware. Slackware was the first distribution I used as my main operating system. I liked it a lot because of it's simplicity. Then I swicthed to Sourcerer, my first source-based distribution. I've used Gentoo since early 2004 when I bought an Apple iBook. Gentoo was actually the only distribution that would run well on it and since I was used to the compile times it suited me well. I also installed Gentoo on my main system and have been stuck since. :)
My work for the Gentoo community has been helping on the forums and creating various overlays. My overlays have mainly been aimed at increasing performance. Linux is a great kernel and it easily outperforms Windows for tasks like serving webpages or files over a network but there are still areas where it lags behind. Desktop responsiveness for example.
The first overlay I created was for glibc. I found out that some distributions where shipping a special AMD64 optimized glibc. I dug up those patches and brought them to Gentoo. Later I also added other stuff like -Bdirect and CVS snapshots. The AMD64 patches are in portage now but I still maintain this overlay.
Other overlays I have worked on includes; Firefox 1.5 with patches from upstream CVS and bugzilla to fix symbol visibility, qt-copy (a qt enhanced by the KDE devs) and xorg 6.9 (including pre-snapshots) with compose cache. Some if this stuff has been included in portage too, like the firefox patches, so since 1.5-r9 firefox is a bit faster for everyone.
I'm trying to be as active as possible on the Gentoo forums and I hope I can be a good user representative if I'm elected.
I am 55 and have 23+ years of experience in IT, designed and built realtime systems, managed development groups in banking applications, bought, sold and managed big IT projects from the customers side and from the providers side. I've been member of the Chilean official y2k top level team and worked finally also as a consultant to the Chief sales officer of one of the mayor Chilean IT integratores. I have a rather successful experience in mission critical migration of large computer installations from one architecture to another, including fault tolerant systems (Tandem) and large web-sites.
I may say that I know a lot about the issues and problematic of IT, as well as about interactions between users, developers and administrators.
I am now dedicated to biotech, using Gentoo now for about 4 years. I installed and administer our instalations at www.bioscience.cl (There are some other information about me and, by the way, quite interesting world-class R&D for those who like surprising things of life). It's an all Gentoo installation, split horizon djbdns, shorewall, postfix, mysql + phpmyadmin, horde, apache and samba on the internal network, except for the unfortunately still unavoidable Windows workstations. My own workstation dual boots and on Gentoo uses KDE.
The next projects are:
My approach is rather conservative, in the sense that I first investigate thoroughly the issues involved with each prospective package. I DO read the documentation and related information. I am prudent on getting things to work and did not have stability issues with Gentoo.
I read the forums a lot, but did not post many answers or questions, because generally I see that all i need to know or to say is already there. I have some comments regarding user related improvements and I hope in this way to get more involved in that area of Gentoo. I speak fluently English, Spanish, French and German
My name is Pablo Yanez Trujillo and I'm 22 years old. I come from Ecuador but I live in Germany to study at the University Freiburg. My first contact with a GNU/Linux was back on 2002 when I came to Germany. It was my brother who showed me, what "Linux" is and then I installed SuSE Linux 7.0 on my machine. I used SuSE for a couple of months and in December 2003 I was searching for a new distribution with which I would be able to learn more about Linux. A friend of mine told me about Gentoo and I visited the website and gave it a try. It took me 2 tries until I had a fully configured system with which I was able to work. And since then I'm using Gentoo and I think I won't use anything else
Why do I want to join this team? Well, I always wanted to get involved into the development of Gentoo, but I have always underestimated my own skills and because I do not have too much free time during the study I didn't join any team. But now I think it's a good opportunity to get involved and I want to give something back to this great community from which I took so much. I belive in Gentoo and I want to take part of it. That's the reason why I always try to help people on the Gentoo forums and becoming a "User Representative" would be a good step to help more people of my community. So I hope I can do my best here
I'm Patrick, 25 years old and living near Stuttgart, Germany. For 2 years or so I've been an enthusiastic user of Gentoo Linux, which brings me right to the point of saying why I'm "qualified" for the job as a user representative: I think Gentoo is an outstanding distribution, and I'd like to take part in helping to make it even better. Due to the fact that I'm not that good at coding (yet?), I think I can do more as "an interface" between users and coders than through programming. I'm using Gentoo on my PC (which is a laptop) as well as on my rented server (http://patrick-nagel.net).
Currently I'm a university student of Software Engineering, so I am and will be working with software professionally. In my spare time, I love to try things out on my Gentoo system and to hang around in #gentoo.de (the German Gentoo channel which is frequented by roughly 200 people), helping people with problems that come up, discussing about concepts or possible improvements and other stuff that matters, with fellow Gentoo users and developers.
I'm Emil Jacobs, 21 years old, live in The Netherlands and started using Linux about three years ago. I started with Mandrake but quickly moved on to Redhat/Fedora. As Fedora Core 2 came out I was quite shocked at how utterly crap a distro it really was, added by the annoyances I already had with rpm distros in general; I went on looking for something that would fit my needs.
Gentoo wasn't the first choice to be honest, but I quickly geared some more interest in it because of the handsome approach that comes with the distro. I quickly fell in love with portage and the wonders of a source-based distro and I never left. Now, two years down the road, I've contributed my knowledge on issues on forums.gentoo.org, helped people out on IRC and am interested in contributing to the userrep initiative.
I first installed Gentoo in the spring of 2004; the earliest file date in my /etc directory is Apr 24th, 2004. Previously I had been using SuSE for a number of years, and RedHat before that. What first attracted me to Gentoo was the ability to get current software releases more easily. What keeps me with Gentoo is the amount of control that I have over my systems (you never try to stop me from doing something clever...or stupid!), and the fact that I have never had to re-install (emerge -e world notwithstanding), despite changing laptops twice in the last two years.
I've tried to stay fairly active and helpful on -user. It is my (small) attempt to contribute something useful back to the community.
As to what I hope to achieve as a userrep, I have two goals. First, I would like see the updating of a Gentoo system become more automated and easier. The standard emerge -Duv world ; revdep-rebuild ; etc-update works in most cases, but occasionally we need to run python-updater, perl-cleaner, fix_libtool_files, eselect, or something similar, and it isn't always obvious to users when those things need to be run. Even if the ebuilds tell the user to do these things, those messages are easy to miss.
My second goal is more selfish. I want to be challenged to learn more about other uses of Gentoo. I am primarily a laptop user, so I think I know well the issues a mobile or desktop user faces with Linux. But even though I have an AMD64 desktop system, I don't use it much and don't know it well. And I know nothing about using a Gentoo box as a DVR with MythTV, using Skype, using distcc, cross-compiling, using a private rsync mirror, etc. As a userrep expected to be able to represent a diverse group of users, I will consider it my responsibility to learn about and experiment with those things that I do not know about. Yes, I could do this without being a userrep, but there wouldn't be much of a point in that case.
I've been using Gentoo for two years and it has now spread to five computers I maintain (work, home, two servers, linode leased server), soon to my Mom's computer, and I support coworkers who run Gentoo and advocate it in my local Python group. My contact with the Gentoo community is mainly by reading GWN, so my presence on the forums and Bugzilla is mainly limited to things linked from GWN or bugs/problems I encounter. I place a high value on being approachable and clearly communicating. I like Gentoo's straightforward nature, clean configuration system, easy compiles, and I want to do what I can to make sure these things remain and get better and better.
Indirect experience includes being former editor, writer, and Answer Gang member for Linux Gazette.
I'm also a Cheetah developer, and active on the Quixote mailing list.
I have used Gentoo since October 2004. That's also the date when the Gentoo-mania swapped over to my two servers, my daily work laptop and my workstation. The most important thing why i use Gentoo is its flexibility. Before Gentoo I used a SuSE for a long time, Debian and also tried FreeBSD. But I'm not only focused to Linux. In daily business I work with HP-UX, SUN Solaris, Windows 2003 and Windows 2000/XP Machines. So for me there isn't the one and only Operating System. But Gentoo is damn close to it.
For me a User representative has to be a person, that can listen and get out peoples needs and wishes. In my case especially the ones of the German-speaking users, because they often have nice ideas, suggestions or problems which aren't taken to the mostly english speaking devs. This is often because of poor english knowledge or because they simply don't know how to do it. On the other side non-english speaking peoples often feel not involved in development decision, because they only see the final result when something changes or when it is written in the GWN. So here a representative can help the devs to inform the users about planned decisions or similar things and maybe can also help out to motivate some users to give the devs help in some way (Testing, Sugestions etc.)
I have been using Gentoo since version 1.1a and since then it has remained my main desktop (and server) OS. I have long wanted to be of benefit to the Gentoo project and community, however not being a great programmer myself I never found my niche. The position of user representative presents an opportunity for me that I would really like to pursue to help fulfill this desire.
I feel I may suit this position as I have a wide range of experience with Gentoo and the community itself. Since my first install of Gentoo I have been an active member of the forum (user number 70 with 3700 posts), helping others where I can, learning and growing and working with Gentoo on a daily basis.
The pursuit of trying to make Gentoo a better Linux distribution lead me to create the Kororaa install method, which has since become more generally the "Kororaa Project". We started writing an installer for Gentoo as there was none at the time and it grew from there. With the Kororaa project I have been able to introduce thousands of people to Gentoo who would otherwise have given up because it seemed "too hard". I feel this represents my understanding of a desire of the Gentoo community which I then went out to fulfill (though it may not be so required now, due to the official Gentoo installer).
I am a naturally friendly and helpful person and also possess excellent communication skills. I am good and formulating new ideas and offering alternative perspectives. I also have the time to commit to such a position. Gentoo Linux is a huge part of my life and I would relish any opportunity to assist in making it even better.
My real name is Rafael, I live in Karlsruhe/Germany and am a computer science student (meanwhile also employed at an IT company). My adventure with Gentoo started back in 2004. Before that I was using Redhat/Fedora and later LFS. While the latter helped me in understanding how linux really works, it was too much pain to maintain such a system on the long run.
So, there I was, starting as a complete gentoo-n00b(TM) and ricer(R) and then evolving to an average ~x86/-* user, bug-reporter and Gentoo enthusiast. I know many of the Gentoo users are undergoing exactly the same process which someday leads to becoming an unofficial tester of experimental (sometimes also unsupported) software. I think that exactly these users are a little under-represented in terms of having something to say in the Gentoo community (see topics like getting some packages into portage tree, participating in discussions about future of gentoo, and ofcourse the most flamed topic regarding a feature: reiser4), even though they report tons of bugs that help to improve the packages already in the tree.
Maybe I'm not the person who can be a full-time participant but I'll always find some time to keep my contribution constructive, either with a representative opinion or with practical advice/help.
For several years I ran Gentoo in a large production environment, a bank. Security was the most important factor in every thing we did. I chose Gentoo because I felt its very minimal nature lent itself directly to security. While large "Enterprise" distributions felt bloated and took hours to lock down.
The portage system was another key benefit for us, being able to emerge packages and build them with SSL or with out, having that kind of control was fantastic. If I wanted to build a LAN firewall I could build a very secured minimal box all the way from the kernel to the user-land tools, where as if I needed a Desktop Gentoo could scale that way as well. This enabled us to standardize on a single distribution of Linux.
The systems I deployed a few years ago are still in use by that bank, in a large part thanks to being able to upgrade the system with out doing a full re-install.
Today I work for a school district in my home town of Arlington Washington. In the last few months we have deployed several Linux systems mostly all Gentoo (Some Ubuntu as per teachers' request), its exciting to transition to my new job and show my new co-workers how powerful Gentoo is!
Also, I have just recently started a new podcast called, The Linux Action Show! The system I produce the podcast from is a Gentoo Linux system running Gnome, my partner and friend Bryan uses Ubuntu on his MacBook.
I have a bit over 8 years in the SysAdmin field and since early 2004 have spent that time working with Gentoo!
I am using Gentoo Linux for around about four years now. I found myself into Linux in general for over ten years now. I was looking for an alternative to Windows and DOS and I ended up using Linux. What bothered me most on my job as a sysadmin was that none of the distributions I tried so far gave me the flexibility I wanted to have. For a long time I was a happy Slackware user which came quite close to my imagination what an operating system should have but it still lacked the flexibility of Gentoo. Then, after a friend of mine started using Gentoo, I got interested. An Installation on my desktop computer made things clear - I found the distribution of choice.
While using Gentoo I tried giving the Gentoo community something back, hence I contributed writing HowTos. Becoming a userrep represents for me an interesting opportunity to influence the development of Gentoo in a way users would like. I see major problems Gentoo is suffering. Unfortunately these are not well canalized which leads to disaffection on the users side - something that shouldn't be for good.
My name is Caleb Cushing, I am graduating this summer with an applied science degree in Linux / UNIX Systems Technology and am currently working as a systems administration intern. I have been using Gentoo since the 1.4 release. Being new to Linux at that time my first few installs didn't last long. I left Linux for a while and came back when I understood more. This time my installs were more solid. I spent time experimenting with several applications, WMs (Window Manager), and DEs (Desktop Environment); including Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Enlightenment, Fluxbox, etc... I currently use a mix & match of GTK and QT software (OOo, Koffice, Firefox, etc), and Fluxbox as a WM. I have installed Gentoo on i586, i686, and x86_64 architectures. I have also used various technologies for my home setup including MySQL, Apache, Samba, NFS, Iptables, DHCP, etc. I am currently planning on implementing a mail, dns, and possibly an asterisk system.
In the past I have tried to help the community & the developers: report and help resolve bugs as I find them, help out on the forums when possible, submit updates to documentation, push for new documentation where needed, currently attempting to become a more active member on #gentoo, and have contributed to gentoo-wiki.com. when I saw this in GWN, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity able to contribute more back to the community than I have been able to in the past.