Ubuntu Power Users Community

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As Ubuntu continues to grow and refine, particularly in bringing excellence in design to the platform, there has been some concern in some parts of the community that it is less attuned to power users who want to tweak many aspects of the system than it once was. I agree. That in my mind is not a bad thing: Ubuntu is focusing on a simple, sleek and refined experience, and sometimes as Mark said recently, less is more.

Despite these subtle changes, this does not mean that we can’t accommodate power users and provide them with a fantastic experience. One of the most wonderful aspects of Ubuntu is that we have many derivatives and sub-communities that build on and change elements of the Ubuntu experience. This got me thinking: why don’t we create a power user community. Earlier I tweeted this, referring to it as Ubuntu Tweakers, but then nixternal informed me a ‘tweaker’ is a meth head. Best use another term then…

So this is my thinking. We should have a community that supports those users who like to take a stock Ubuntu system and hot rod it in every possible way. This community could do the following things (just off the to of my head):

  • produce a central hub of documentation for how to tweak, extend and customize your Ubuntu system. Imagine a fantastic library of wiki documentation for tweaking every possible aspect of your desktop…
  • provide communication channels and support resources.
  • build tools and facilities to provide post-installation facilities for configuring different elements of Ubuntu.

The benefit of this kind of community is that it would provide a home for those people who desire more configurability of Ubuntu beyond it’s default installation, and provide a fantastic way of supporting this community of users.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to build such a community, but I would love to help provide help and guidance to those who do. Anyone want to step up and lead the effort and we can maybe schedule and IRC meeting to move forward?