Interviewing people behind communitheme. Today: Frederik

As discussed last week when unveiling the communitheme snap for ubuntu 18.04 LTS, here is a suite of interview this week on some members of the core contributor team shaping this entirely community-driven theme.

Today is the turn of Frederik, frederik-f on the community hub.

Who are you? What are you doing/where are you working? Give us some words and background about you!

My name is Frederik, I live in Germany and I am working as a java software developer in my daily job.

I am using Ubuntu since 5 years and quickly started to report bugs and issues when they jumped into my face. Apart from that, I like good music, and beautiful software. I also make my own music in my free time.

What are you mainly contributor areas on communitheme?

I mainly contribute to the shell theme but also work on implementing some design ideas in the gtk theme.

How did you hear about new theming effort on ubuntu, what made you willing to participate actively to it?

I followed the design process from the beginning on the community website and was very interested in it. Not only because I love ubuntu but also because I finished my thesis last year, where I needed to read some design books about UX and interaction design. I loved how they created the mockups and discussed about them in a very professional, mature, friendly and yet unemotional way - accepting and rejecting different opinions.

How is the interaction with the larger community, how do you deal with different ideas and opinions on the community hub, issues opened against the projects, PR?

I feel there could be even more interaction and I hope there will be more promotion about this website so more people would share their opinions.

What did you think (honestly) about the decision for not shipping it by default on 18.04, but curating it for a little while?

While ambiance uses very antiquated design ideas, it still represents the ubuntu brand. Of course I was a little disappointed, but that was also the point where I decided to contribute actual code and make PRs. I felt like they need more help.

I think if the snap will be promoted in the software center like for example spotify or skype, many LTS users could try it and then in the end, we got our theme shining on the LTS as well.

Do you think the snap approach for 18.04 will give us more flexibility before shipping a finale version?

Yes - this was a very good idea. I am curious about how it will work out with all the other snaps which fallback to adwaita at the moment.

Any idea or wish on what the theme name (communitheme is a codename project) should be?

My idea would be: Orenji which means “Orange” on japanese, which could fit to our origami icon theme suru.

Any last words or questions I should have asked you?

This sounds like you want to execute me! So why didn’t you ask for my last meal? :)

Thanks Frederik!

Next interview coming up soon, stay tuned! :)