About
What’s in a name?
Little Blue Penguins are the smallest of all known penguin species, characterized by their stark blue and white coloring.
As I begin my journey into the world of KDE I found my self quickly feeling like a very small fish in a very large pond. Deciding to start this blog as a way to leave a trail for those travelers that would come after me I settled on using the smallest of penguins, the Little Blue, as my mascot. (Neomantra was kind enough to point out I had even inadvertently selected a mascot who’s primary color matched that of KDE perfectly!)
Wouldn’t a more fearsome mascot be better?
Fear not my fellow beginners, for we Little Blues are much larger in importance than our stature would suppose. Getting new developers, contributors, testers, and every day users into the KDE community is the only way to ensure that the efforts of all those before us are put to good use and that work will continue to be added to the project. It is through beginners just like you and me that the continued success of KDE can be achieved.
Speaking of fearsome, let us not forget that it was an adverse encounter with a ferocious Little Blue that convinced Linus himself to select a penguin as the mascot for the Linux kernel! (→)
So, what do I hope to accomplish?
While I covered most of my current goals in my initial “Hello (KDE) World” post, I wanted to reiterate several of them here for the sake of the About page and for when that first post falls out of prominent visibility.
First and foremost I am interested in becoming an active contributor to the KDE project as a developer, however, as a long time Windows user myself I quickly realized that I would first need to spend a not insignificant amount of time learning the system first as a user. It was that realization, and some prodding by Neomantra, that lead to this blog and my new primary goal of documenting my experience so that I can later take what I have learned, focusing on where I struggled, and help to improve the new user experience for those developers and users like myself that want to make the switch and help contribute to the KDE project.
Tangentially related to this goal of course is the fact that I need to relearn C++! Having been trapped in a .NET shop for many years my C/C++ skills from school have been woefully neglected but there’s no time like the present! Parts of this blog therefore will focus on my learning of C++ and where I stumble there too; I figure that much like myself many of the developers coming from Windows will have been long time users of a non-C language as I was so I will try here to help on two fronts.
And finally, what can you do to help?
Read and post! As a beginner I will be looking for any constructive advice or criticism I can get to help me along. I hope that many of you will become readers but more so that you will become posters, not just for my own edification but so that I can later incorporate those comments and thoughts into the documentation I plan to prepare to help make the new user experience a better one.
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