Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My first contribution to Linux

vkoskiv.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 92 posts

Re: My first contribution to Linux

#71

Post by a96 »

MaKey wrote: post #49
pankalog wrote: post #12

If I had no problem with devoting the time and money, contributing to the kernel (especially in a topic as obscure as making the extra buttons work on a 20-year-old laptop) is at the top of my bucket list, and I am definitely going to be doing it in the near future when my calendar clears up a bit. Exquisite write-up and OP's simple writing has a motivating ring to it, and I'm now on the local used marketplace lookin…

What I did was buy a wifi router with a chipset supported by OpenWrt but with no build target yet. One of the OpenWrt maintainers then guided me in what I had to do to get the info he needed for a patch. I followed his instructions, he wrote the patch and there it was, a new build target. Later I wrote a patch myself to fix the LED control. It was a rewarding and educational experience. Later I even found someone usi…

Nice! That's something I've kind of thought I should try one day. Unsupported routers aren't exactly hard to come by these days.

Re: My first contribution to Linux

#73

Post by VALTIELENTINE »

Fantastic read! I've alas been frightened of contributing to the Linux kernel in spite of my interests, this instills both confidence and inspiration while serving as a simple "guide" on how to even approach debugging a hardware issue. I particularly like how the author expresses his nervousness in submitting the patch as he recognizes the importance of the work of the maintainers

Re: My first contribution to Linux

#74

Post by firesteelrain »

leakycap wrote: post #54
firesteelrain wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a calculator button on my Dell laptop. Some of these keys are just macros.

The calculator button is one of the "standardized" buttons, it isn't even as complex as macro as it turns out! And very handy

Really? I had assumed it was running calc.exe via some hidden command line window

Re: My first contribution to Linux

#75

Post by da_chicken »

leakycap wrote: post #55
fnicfnac wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also looking forward to telling a driver that I never I wanted to be near cars when they eventually run me down.

Did you mistakenly respond to the wrong thread?

I think they're trying to say avoiding a Windows computer is about as difficult as avoiding an automobile, and potentially just as fatal.

I think if they're honestly not being hyperbolic, they should find a less technical career or hobby. If you're afraid of flying, don't join the Air Force.

Re: My first contribution to Linux

#76

Post by glaze »

Nice, torille!

I also got my first and so far only kernel patch submitted years ago:

On my MacBook Pro 2010 with GeForce 320M running any OpenGL application, even glxgears, would crash because it ran out of memory. So I dug into nouveau drm code and found out that some memory related function was using wrong code path for that GPU.

It took some time to figure out how to submit a patch but it felt nice after I got it accepted.

I didn't even know about those patch sanity-checking scripts back then, they look useful for potential future patches!

Re: My first contribution to Linux

#77

Post by fifticon »

rvz wrote: post #10

This is the easiest way to hire engineers with high quality open source contributions with a public track record. All it takes is just to check that the commit shows up in upstream projects such as Linux and anyone can see the code, the reviews and the authors email in the AUTHORS file which verify that this contribution / patch is indeed from the author who committed that change. This is a very old form of social pr…

as others have warned.. a scary counterexample is the npm ecosystem, where people are gaming it with questionable npm package spam, to get the 'astroturf footprint' of being the author of widely installed packages. (which get their footprint by piggybacking on actual useful packages, akin to stapled-together law packages in the us congress).

Re: My first contribution to Linux

#78

Post by npteljes »

henrym wrote: post #50
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #2

This was really interesting! I've often wondered how one would do such a thing. Seeing your name in the Linux changelog must be awesome!

> Seeing your name in the Linux changelog must be awesome! Years ago when I was a teenager I had a couple patches accepted for ksnake and gedit. Certainly not as prestigious as a patch to Linux, but still the idea of code I'd written running on millions of PCs around the world felt amazing.

I'd be very proud of that myself. Nice job!

Re: My first contribution to Linux

#80

Post by leakycap »

firesteelrain wrote: post #74
leakycap wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The calculator button is one of the "standardized" buttons, it isn't even as complex as macro as it turns out! And very handy

Really? I had assumed it was running calc.exe via some hidden command line window

Yep! It's basically just a button that tells the OS "open the system calculator"

~~

I looked it up, the Human Interface Devices usage "Consumer Control" code assigned to "Application Launch - Calculator" is 0x0C0192 or 0x192

This keypress is sent as a scancode/keycode, not an ASCII character. On Windows, this opens calc.exe by default, but you can change which app opens in response to the calculator key by editing the media key mappings in the Registry

Post reply on HN