Hey guys,

Some background: I've been a loyal and contented Macintosh user since early childhood. But the time has now at last come: I know too much stuff (thanks, university!), and Apple has ticked me off too many times. So, I'm migrating to Linux, aware that this is a huge undertaking. All my Mac-specific knowledge and experience and skills are no longer useful, and there's plenty of software I like that I can't bring with me. I'm thinking it's gonna take me a year or even two to gain the same level of comfort I had before, and so this has become my long-term personal project.

I've chosen Fedora and KDE, and the first few days have been fun and exciting. I was very impressed at how customizable KDE is. But I've decided I want to go beyond that, and roll my own appearance from scratch. I expected to be working on one central theme, but have discovered that Plasma's appearance, icons, cursors, splash screen, and widget appearance are actually all separate things. Which makes sense to me, but also makes starting from a point of limited knowledge significantly harder.

So I've resolved to acquire more knowledge by getting involved with KDE and learning things from the inside out. I've read about the forums, mailing lists, IRC, informal mentorships, and other stuff. I figure my next step is to actually interact with people to get more oriented, and so here I am.

I'm interested in contributing to areas of KDE that will teach me how to customize its appearance, as well as teach me about Linux and Qt development in particular and software development in general. Should I reach out to Eike Hein, who is listed on the informal mentoring page as a Plasma developer? Or should I say hello in the VDG or Workspace forums?

Thanks very much,
Daniel

Similarly to you, I've quit the MS cesspool to head for KDE and never looked back.