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How a welcoming community saved me from distro hopping and turned me into a contributor

About you

  • Preferred name: Daimar Stein
  • Do you consent to this story being published on the Fedora Community Blog?: yes

About your Contributor Story

  • Who is your story about?: All the folks on Fedora Discussion, but mainly Joseph Gayoso (@josephgayoso) and Justin Flory (@jwflory)
  • What is/are their FAS username(s)?: josephgayoso, jwf

My Contributor Story

Going back to early 2021, I was in a weird state of being. The pandemic took my mental health to an all time low, college was going as terrible as it could be, I just started living alone and I could barely afford basic needs. During this time Linux was a thing that helped me learn something new and took my head off the heaviest things for a while. But up until this point it was a lonely effort. I was learning by myself, for myself, but kept seeing the online communities talk about the need for contributors. I didn't know anything about programming or packaging so I kept feeling there was nothing I could help with. The community for the distro I used at that time didn't help a lot as well, using really outdated tools and having a gatekeep-y atitude that pushed me away from being an active part of it.

Then Fedora 36 Beta released, and as I was excited to try the new features of GNOME desktop, I decided to switch, and with it, started using Fedora Discussion and Ask Fedora (at the time, two separate forums). And to my surprise, it was a great experience. I could actually engage in conversations with the project maintainers, I could send ideas, I collected badges, and started feeling like this was a place I could not only be in but help maintain.

One day, after seeing a Reddit thread mocking a successful marketing campaign from Microsoft I could only think "wait, we should really be doing something like this instead of hating on it", and started doing market research and learning more about marketing. And to my surprise (again), when I made the post proposing a marketing strategy for the project, it was really well received. And that's when I first met both Justin and Joseph. These two did everything they could from the very beginning to make me feel welcome and to embrace both the ideas I was proposing and the things I'd create. And it's been that way ever since. Now I've completed my second year as a marketing contributor and hopefully will manage to continue for the next years! So thank you!