17 January, 2013

STEPPING INTO THE WORLD OF KDE


As the title of this post suggests, I have stepped into a new World and am here to share my experience with you..


How I got inspired and Got Involved ..

  • Currently, I am doing a project based on Electronics in Texas Instruments Analog Design Contest. Last year, I had done 3-4 small projects based on electronics as well as communication, but none related to computer science or coding. I was once thinking as to give a try in this field also to know my interest before selecting electives for third year and the very next day there was a workshop on open source at our university, which inspired me to be a part of real-world coding experience with FOSS. After searching and discussing for about a fortnight, I found kde as the best possible organization for me and decided to get involved with it..


Looking through a Beginner's lens..

  • My first "Hello" to this new "World" was through kde's mailing list. I think conversation through mail is the best way to get yourself introduced to any such organization. Mails serves as the best communication link. The first glance at initial reply-mails completely scared me and I kept wondering what it actually meant..But gradually, reading it twice, thrice and finding the meaning of each and every word and understanding reply-messages was quite an exciting job.Most of the words I came through during this time period were totally new for my mind. In order to google and understand the meaning of each word I had to google through some other related new words and phrases, and which in turn were dependent on few other new words, and the nested loop continued. In the past couple of days, I have immensely enriched my dictionary and gave me a vision of how vast actually this new world is.!
  • While installing any tool, no matter how simple a thing was, I always encountered an error. Initially, it seemed a little irritating, but banging my head to solve them was really fun. Most of the things I learnt was by cracking those errors. I realize now that if the entire process went smoothly without giving me any trouble, the job would not have been as charming as it seems now. After solving couple of this errors, I also feel increasing qualities like self-confidence and patience in me.
  • The entire journey till now has been full of struggle. I find it like a maze and totally love struggling with pain to get my way out of every difficulties. :)
  • I was planning to start writing my own blog since past many months, but it always got delayed due to some reason or the other. But at this moment, there is a bright spark of excitement which encouraged me to start writing this blog, inspite of having many other priorities.


Some Tips For Beginners:

  • Keep a track of the order in which you open links and open new topic in new browser window. Your browser will quickly overflow with plenty of links opened at the same time.This also helps in understanding the hierarchy and getting smooth flow between the links.
  • Make some small quick notes of every advancement.
  • Maintain a ToDo task-list as you come across a new task,as in the long run, it is likely to get skipped.At many instances, looking at solution of any error, I felt as if I had already gone through solution in past..
  • Last but not the least, it is your mindset, your thinking what matters the most. If your approach is, "haww..its too difficult, I cant do", you can never ever get through it. Instead think, "I Can & I Will".. :)


Lastly, Kudos to Google.!! Without it, I can't imagine to expand so much knowledge in such a short span of time. Also, I would like to thank +MatÄ›j Laitl , +Myriam Schweingruber and +Yash Shah for your excellent guidance.. :)


Thank You for spending your valuable time reading this blog. Any comments or suggestions are warmly welcomed. :)




3 comments:

  1. Welcome to this world of freedom and power! I too have found much to learn, and new ways of contributing. I hope you'll enjoy the community of KDE as much as I have.

    Valorie AKA Linuxgrandma

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    1. Thanks :)
      I have found it much interesting till now..and learning through hands-on is a great experience ..I must say KDE community is very helpful !!.. :)

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  2. Nicely written ... ohh and advice to amateurs .. :D

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