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Re: Working for Linux/Debian

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Quoting Zayd (2021-08-06 00:30:58)
> How did you basically start learning or was it just a process of trial 
> and error?

I did not attend any formal school or training courses, if that's what 
you mean.

If you mean what drove me, then I have always felt that computers lacked 
meaning unless they had some practical use in the real world.  I mean, 
playing computer games as a kid was fun but didn't _produce_ anything.  
And working as an intern at an advertising agency for a year, where my 
job was basically to put out fires all the time, similarly wasn't 
fullfilling for me (despite the huge payment I got).  I wanted my work 
to stick - which lead me to work on education-related tools and semantic 
web tools, and lead me to Debian and to maintaining packages for Debian.

If you mean which concrete types of work I did at the beginning when my 
skills were far lower than my passion, then (as I wrote briefly in 
previous post) I did lots and lots of unpaid volunteer work.  For about 
5 years I mainly (from the top of my head) did...:

Proof-reading texts, photo refining, and desktop publishing for family 
and friends.

Installing and tuning desktop systems for family and friends, and 
consulting in best practices of doing backup and which tools to use for 
which tasks. Later doing same for a small fee for friends-of-friends and 
then strangers: My first source of income when I started my company.

Maintaining workstations, servers, and networking for a small 
non-governmental organisation. Later doing same for small businesses, 
charging a monthly fee for that (crucially *not* charging by the hour, 
to shift attention from fighting fires to getting ahead of them): This 
became my main source of income for 20 years.

Packaging .deb packages for stuff needed for above tasks but missing in 
Debian - unofficially at first, until someone in Debian stumbled upon my 
work online and encouraged me to join.  This work continued as mostly¹ 
volunteer work for 20 years, but made my paid work much much easier and 
therefore (due to the subscription-based approach) more economic.  The 
past few years I am directly paid by Purism to maintain packages 
officially in Debian.


[ in reply to questions asked privately... ]

I don't know any "real" programming language like C or C++ or Rust.  My 
scripting language of choice is Perl, and I also grok shell and make 
(yes, that's a language).  For other languages I can juggle patches, 
needed for the (far too many²) packages I maintain in Debian.

I live in Denmark, where monthly income is DKK 30.000 for a garbage man 
and DKK 25.861 for a taxi driver, according to some³ sources: 
https://www.dekra.dk/blog/lastbil/hvad-tjener-en-skraldemand 
https://www.dekra.dk/blog/taxa/hvad-tjener-en-taxachauffoer

My accounting is at https://source.jones.dk/ledger/tree/data with usage 
notes at https://source.redpill.dk/accounting/tree/USE.md


 - Jonas

¹ with rare exceptions, e.g. Canonical paying for speeding up the 
packaging of a major new release of MoinMoin when Ubuntu started, and a 
cryptocoin developer paying (in that obscure coin which later gained 
significant value) for packaging a wallet for their coin.

² please get in touch if you want to help maintain some of them: 
https://udd.debian.org/dmd/?email1=dr@jones.dk

³ When I tried to locate some sources written in english for this email, 
I learned that numbers vary wildly.

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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Working for Linux/Debian Zayd Ahmed <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-08-04 17:30 +0200
  Re: Working for Linux/Debian Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> - 2021-08-04 20:40 +0200
  Re: Working for Linux/Debian Onildo R Ribeiro - Pessoal <onildoricardo@gmail.com> - 2021-08-05 06:20 +0200
    Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd Ahmed <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-08-05 06:20 +0200
      Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-08-05 10:50 +0200
        Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-08-05 21:50 +0200
          Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-08-05 23:40 +0200
            Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-08-06 00:50 +0200
              Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-08-06 00:50 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-08-06 17:10 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-08-07 16:20 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net> - 2021-08-08 00:10 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-08-08 02:10 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd Ahmed <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-08-08 05:20 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-08-08 09:20 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-08-08 10:40 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-08-08 12:40 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-08-08 12:40 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd Ahmed <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-11-23 17:20 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-11-23 18:30 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd Ahmed <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-11-23 18:30 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-11-23 19:30 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-11-23 20:30 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-11-23 21:00 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-11-23 21:20 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-11-23 21:50 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-11-23 22:00 +0100
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> - 2021-11-23 20:30 +0100
            Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-08-06 00:50 +0200
              Re: Working for Linux/Debian Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2021-08-06 10:10 +0200
                Re: Working for Linux/Debian Agata Erminia Pennisi <agataerminiapennisi@gmail.com> - 2021-08-06 11:40 +0200
      Mail privacy (was: Working for Linux/Debian) Martin <debacle@debian.org> - 2021-08-05 10:50 +0200
        Re: Mail privacy (was: Working for Linux/Debian) Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> - 2021-08-05 18:50 +0200
        Re: Mail privacy (was: Working for Linux/Debian) Parodper <parodper@gmail.com> - 2021-08-05 20:40 +0200
  Re: Working for Linux/Debian Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2021-08-05 06:20 +0200
    Re: Working for Linux/Debian Zayd <zayd.ahmed92@gmail.com> - 2021-08-05 21:50 +0200

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