Hello,
I just got back to Linux after few years. I'm switching between Linux and Windows every few years, trying to soothe my frustrations previous OS gave me and it's like never ending circle... but I wanted to talk about something else.
I love taking care and fixing UX. I had to set up a lot of things to make Mint both beautiful and useable and I find a lot of useful stuff missing, but even with my mostly webdev oriented skills I should be able to add.
Now, because I see Linux world being all about forking and forking and making hundreds of distros, because everyone wants to do their own thing (mandatory XKCD? Here's a close one: Standards) I want to avoid doing a work that won't be appreciated and will go to waste. I looked at GitHub Contributing section, but it's short and explains nothing about the workflow. What should I do step by step to make Linux Mint / Cinnamon better? Should I first propose a change by opening an Issue and if community (who exactly? how?) appreciates it I should code it and open a PR?
Getting involved... but who's the one to decide?
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Getting involved... but who's the one to decide?
Last edited by LockBot on Mon Jul 03, 2023 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
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tadaensylvermane
- Level 2
- Posts: 88
- Joined: Tue Jun 25, 2013 8:50 pm
Re: Getting involved... but who's the one to decide?
I would highly recommend fixing bugs if you can rather than trying to rework the gui stuff. That is where the problem is with any software. The gui is easy enough for almost anyone to tinker with. But not just anyone can fix bugs in code. If I'm gathering correctly you are talking about implementing features then you would be more useful to the community as a whole if you fix stuff rather than add more potential problems (no offense).
There is all kinds of bugs to be fixed. Some are just documentation stuff. I found missing options for the terminal that elementary os uses in the source that weren't in the man page. Stuff like that. I submitted a patch that I think they just used as a guide or documented things that were missing. Either way I was able to help and helped solve an issue that will hit someone somewhere eventually.
That being said you can do whatever you wish to do and I don't mean to be pushy. If you want to work on UI stuff then you can do that. You can submit your ideas to the admins of the distro but they aren't obligated to entertain the idea. You can however easily create your own repository and host your packages there. It may not be officially supported but it's not wrong to do it either. Admittedly fixing bugs is rarely glamorous. But it's a necessary thing.
There is all kinds of bugs to be fixed. Some are just documentation stuff. I found missing options for the terminal that elementary os uses in the source that weren't in the man page. Stuff like that. I submitted a patch that I think they just used as a guide or documented things that were missing. Either way I was able to help and helped solve an issue that will hit someone somewhere eventually.
That being said you can do whatever you wish to do and I don't mean to be pushy. If you want to work on UI stuff then you can do that. You can submit your ideas to the admins of the distro but they aren't obligated to entertain the idea. You can however easily create your own repository and host your packages there. It may not be officially supported but it's not wrong to do it either. Admittedly fixing bugs is rarely glamorous. But it's a necessary thing.