Help the elementary developers

Let’s talk about something different. The whole elementary team is still growing and it needs as much support as possible. Voluntary help is very much appreciated – and it needs yours! In this weekly post, I’ll show you three simple ways mainly for beginners and how to help with filing bugs, updating translations and putting donations on projects.

File a bug

That’s the first way to support the development of elementary and many corresponding projects. Test the latest preview version – discover new and unknown bugs and report them. And here’s how:

1. Go to launchpad.net. This website is the place where all elementary projects are managed and the whole development together with all it’s changes, updates and fixes happens. In the upper right corner you can see a small link, labeled “Sign In/Register”. Click on it and follow the instructions to set up an account on Launchpad.
2. Once registered you are able to support the elementary teams as well as many other Linux software projects. Let’s start!
3. Read the rules for bug reports
4. Switch back to Launchpad and move to elementary on Launchpad
5. Visit the bug section by clicking on “Bugs” below the title
6. Check out if your discovered bug was already reported with the search function. If it was, open the report and click on “Does this bug affect you too?”
7. If not, click on “Report a bug” on the right side and create it applying the guidelines – provide as many details as you can
8. You’ll probably get some answers from developers or other users and maybe your bug will be fixed soon

And this is just what happens everyday and brings forward the progress of the elementary project. When you are on an elementary beta version

Help with translations into your language

You can also help by translating parts of the user interface into your own language. Here’s how to do that:

1. Follow the first two steps above
2. Switch to the “Translations”-section on elementary’s Launchpad site
3. Check out the available projects whether they are already translated into your language or they are not (at least partly)
4. Click on your language
5. Search for untranslated items (“strings”)
6. Suggest a new translation and save your changes
7. Soon you’ll see your suggestion approved or cancelled, depending on how good it was. Most likely they’ll be accepted.

Set donations on projects

Just another possibility to help active developers.

1. Go to bountysource.com and search for elementary
2. You’ll see everything elementary related
3. Search for an issue with which you would agree most
4. Follow the instructions there
5. When the bug gets more and more valuable it is often likely that it gets fixed faster. And by the way you supported the developer with your donation.

Tip of the week – Record your screen

Some elementary developers are on the way to release a screen recording app called “Eidete”. And you can already test it out on Freya. You just need to open the terminal, type “sudo apt-get install eidete” and wait for the installation to finish.

Then you can open Eidete and configure some settings for your first screen cast. As that piece of software is still in a development phase, not all features are available from now, but they get completed with the time.

The program is very simple and will guide you through the most important steps. On my computers it worked very well, even on older ones, the recordings got pretty good.

Try it!