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Comment by ihalip | Hacker News Reader

I'm just a kernel newbie looking at small issues in my free time, but seeing my name in the shortlog feels very rewarding.

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Nice, what did you do and how much time did it take? I've been hesitating to contribute but it would be great to read a blog post of someone just starting to contribute to see what it takes! It might be enough to get over the fear.

I only did some small fixes for building the kernel with the clang compiler.

Probably the most confusing thing when getting started is finding something to work on. There's no real centralized issue tracker/TODO list/ideas list - discussion happens mostly in mailing lists [0][1] for specific topics. If you follow the discussion on YOUR_FAVORITE_TOPIC long enough you should be able to find easy work items, people able to help further, reviewers for your changes etc.

In my case specifically, I found the great people at https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io, which is how I got started.

[0] http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lists.html

Finding where to start was the precise issue I looked to solve by setting up that issue tracker.

And by being patient, leaving low hanging fruit, taking the time to file issues (explain, demonstrate, guide, enable), we've been able to help many people including yourself make their first contributions to Linux and LLVM.

I'm proud of you, Ilie!

Honestly, probably the hardest part of Open source ATM. Contributing to a project is, frankly, super intimidating. Doubly so when it is something as important as the Kernel.

I agree. Finding where to start/how to help, and fear of jumping in/criticism are biggest barriers to open source contribution. Also, time/family constraints and lack of mentors.

Sink or swim!

Thank you for the help!

As an open source maintainer, I can tell you that we appreciate the small fixes and updates that come from people just getting their feet wet.

Even little things like spelling mistakes, or fixing a bug in an infrequently used command line option go a long way towards a better overall product.

As an open source user and (in the past, contributor), I wholeheartedly agree with that. The fact that a software has no bugs is what makes it a product I can rely on.

For example, I'm a KDE user since 20 years. And although it has come a long way, there's always this little bug here or there. Because of that , I can't recommend it to some non IT user who's going to use it alone, I can't 100% trust it.

So OP is right : fixing little bugs makes a incredible difference.

(as far as KDE is concerned, kudo's to Nate Graham who's been looking at small issues for some times now and that really makes a difference)

If you cannot recommend KDE because "there's always this little bug here or there", you cannot recommend anything.

When people prefer Windows over Linux, or macOS over Windows, or Linux over macOS, it's often because they don't want to exchange their well-known set of bugs for an exciting and unknown new set of bugs.

not as simple as that. For example, on debian buster, the Discover search bar doesn't work if used several times; the favorites in the start menu sometimes reappear after being deleted; when I quit kmail by using the windows close button, Kmail complains it exited in an unexpected way, etc. These are not little quirks, these are apparent in a normal daily usage. I use Windows at work and it's past those issues.

But yet, I still prefer KDE because I prefer the whole myth of its creation (I say it's a myth because 1/ there's not much of a story 2/ even if it existed I'm 100% sure I didn't read it). I also prefer it over Windows and OSX 'cos it has things which are better : start menu is very clean, konsole works great, okular is super good, K3B just works,...

So I'm not criticizing the work done by KDE, it's just the end result that is 98% good (which for me, as an experimented dev/user means 101%), not 99.9%.

And while I'm at it, installing the next stable debian is always such an amazement to me. Things improve so much in stability and in those little bugs here and there. Having been a GPL/linux/... follower since almost 30 years, I can measure that. And it's soooooo great now... Can't believe that I've been able to see the whole thing happening. And now the pinephone thing is coming along...

(that was the emotional minute, thx for your attention :-) )

I had to login to my windows once. I had to install itunes to backup my phone.

The button to install itunes was not working. It threw a very generic error message. And that seemed to be the only way to install itunes (Apple's webpages pointed to Windows store).

Took me hours to find and install an alternative third party itunes installer from random untrusted sources.

Windows, quality-wise, is simply unbearable for me in terms of usability, reliability, performance and UX.

Disclaimer: I have had small contributions to KDE.

Oh yeah, by the way, disclosure: Me too. :)

That's pretty awesome I actually remember you, you had contributions on KDE Games. I used to maintain some of the KDE websites including games.kde.org when I was young.

"For Every Bloke Who Makes His Mark, There's Half A Dozen Waiting To Rub It Out" -- Andy Capp

Congrats on being in the former group. When (not if) apes from the latter come to mess you around, tell them to get stuffed.

(edit: typo)

> in my free time

Thank you! To make it even more rewarding for you :) - I remember there was a report mentioning that most of the work on Linux kernel nowadays is done by salaried employees.

> most of the work on Linux kernel nowadays is done by salaried employees.

That's been the case for decades, probably since just after Linus released it.

Why is that probably? What makes it probable?

Because if you're a competent enough programmer to contribute to the Linux kernel, you're probably competent enough to get a job as a programmer.

I believe that by "salaried employees" it was meant as "people that have linux kernel programming" in the job description.

Yes, I think you're right. In that case, it certainly wasn't the case back when Linux started. Intel and Redhat are the biggest contributors according to the Linux Kernel Development Report from 2017:

  Intel 10,833 13.1%
  none 6,819 8.2%
  Red Hat 5,965 7.2%

So, "none", although it's the second biggest category, only accounts for 8.2% of contributions.

A lot of kernel developers hide who pays their bills.

Unless they also falsely declare the employers it should not be more than 8.2%

Didn't he mean people paid primarily to develop for Linux, rather than people just developing also developing for Linux?

I see, and so you assume that that job would be the contribution.

When I contributed to the kernel (in a rather minor way, I hasten to add), I was competent enough to get a job as a programmer but my job had nothing to do with the kernel. As far as I can remember that was typical for the people who contributed during the first five years or so. I didn't pay much attention after that.

I think a straight 'no' suffices. Linux most definetly wasn't a commercial project in the early years.

Because every company that has libraries, products, stacks, customers using Linux sooner or later runs into issues in Linux, that they can't wait around for someone else to fix.

Big orgs have lots of people just working on Linux full time. They start out fixing one small thing, which then needs to be updated, optimized etc etc and then things snowball.

It really depends on how you measure the value of the contributions. Simply looking for lines of code (LOC)? Looking for LOC but without drivers?

But even if: is every LOC to be seen as equal contribution?

Lines of code are of negative value; adding more actively harms the project, all else being equal. Contributions are in terms of what features were puchased with that harm (and some features are harmful in and of themselves, but Linus is pretty good at rejecting those contributions, if not the not-worth-their-loc ones).

It should feel rewarding. You've contributed to and improved one of the most important pieces of software in the world!

Small issues are nonetheless important to many users all over the world, thank you for taking the time and using your knowledge.

Thank you for your hard work!

This made me smile for some reason, congrats and thanks!

Kudos, that's really cool! ;-)

Keep up the important work.

Congrats!

Well done!

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