Markus Koschany

Account nameapo
OpenPGP fingerprint ACF3 D088 EF32 EDEF 6A1A 835F D9AD 14B9 513B 51E4 0 Endorsements
Status Debian Developer, uploading since 2015-10-29

Short Biography

I have been using Debian since 2002 when I discovered it for the first time while I was studying economical engineering in Hamburg. Although my first Linux distributions were Red Hat, OpenSuSe and Mandrake, a couple of friends, and one LAN party later, convinced me to use Debian. I have been using it ever since. I quickly turned several old computers of fellow students into Debian servers and workstations which became the reliable source of contributions to the Seti@Home project. In the same year I could put this knowledge to use when I also became the member of a great online gaming clan and was assigned to administrate our game server.

I have never lost interest in old computers and in 2007 I started a weblog, gambaru.de, mostly about my journey of using Free Software and how I try to breathe new life into old hardware again. I guess the reason for these efforts is due to my dissatisfaction with the way our so-called modern society wastes valuable resources and my dislike of throwing away old but functional hardware.

I own some old laptops myself, namely a Toshiba Portégé 3110CT from 1999 and a Thinkpad 600 from 1998 all running Debian Wheezy at the moment but I also enjoy to think outside the box by using resourceful alternatives which are outstanding in their own right such as KolibriOS, ConnochaetOS, Slitaz or FreeDOS.

In 2012 I started another project, linuxiuvat.de, which combined my desire of administrating a virtual server with another old interest of mine, gaming. Nowadays I host thirteen multiplayer Debian game servers and I am quite happy with the result.

In the same year, after much writing and tinkering, I wanted to contribute something back to Debian in the form of packaging software and bug fixing. One of the most common complaints I have heard from people is that you can't play games on Linux. I believe the situation has much improved over time but there is still a lot of work to do especially in the field of promoting already existing free software games and developer tools. Despite the common preconception that games are less important and second class citizens, I believe that they deserve the same attention as every other piece of software. Making a successful game and packaging one is often a complex and demanding task since it spans a wide range of required programming and artistic skills. For instance I have packaged Bullet, a sophisticated 3D multiphysics library. It is not only meant for game development but can also be used in the field of robotics and I found it quite encouraging when someone from osrfoundation.org contacted me and told me that they use this package for their research.

I have been working mostly in the Debian Games and Java team for the past two years [1] and started to work on the promotion aspect with creating the Debian Games Pure Blend. I intend to create a Live DVD/USB image for games in 2015 and and a more polished website for games will follow in the future. It would be great if Debian became the reference OS for free software games and developer tools. I would enjoy working on this goal.

[1] https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=apo%40gambaru.de

Personal history

Old-style processes
Applicant From To Applying for Progress AM Advocate(s)
apo Oct. 29, 2015 Oct. 29, 2015 Debian Maintainer, with guest account (done) Completed None
apo Sept. 16, 2014 Oct. 29, 2015 Debian Developer, uploading (done) Completed faw onlyjob, vcheng

Advocate history

New-style processes
Started Last Target Applicant UID Status AM
2016-09-03 2016-09-12 DM Kai-Chung Yan seamlik Closed
2018-04-13 2018-11-20 DD, upl. Kai-Chung Yan seamlik Closed joerg
2018-06-24 2018-07-02 DM Phil Morrell emorrp1 Closed
2019-08-30 2019-09-15 DM Carlos Donizete Froes coringao Closed
2021-05-04 2022-09-24 DD, non-upl. Phil Morrell emorrp1 Closed urbec
Old-style processes
Applicant From To Applying for Progress AM Advocate(s)