This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Meet Gandhi
Hello reader! I know this is my first blog and you don't know me, but you will eventually (trust me on this one 😁).
But I am just another developer curious about how I can contribute to Ubuntu without any prior experience with open source.
The Background:
I always felt very curious on how Operating systems like Windows work but as luck may have it, Windows is closed source and I cannot dig deep into it. But as my interest in system design grew deeper, I got to know of Linux. And about a month later (to my surprise), having Ubuntu 22.04 on either a VM or on dual boot became a must in the Operating Systems course at my University. That's when I first met Ubuntu, then I explored its command line (which is till date a maze for me). Slowly we were introduced to a ton of OS concepts like scheduling and memory management which just sank into my brain — but I wanted to see them in action. Now, I could make an OS myself using QEMU but then I decided why not tinker with Ubuntu first? After all, I have it up and running and it is open source. Hence I started my blog series on Contributing to Ubuntu, here I show my journey of how much I learn while trying to figure my way out. Plus, I could not find something which can really help me do what I want hence this could also act as a "mini guide" (atleast sort of...) for any other beginner who has a passion similar to mine and wants to start as well.
The goal:
My goal at the end of this series is to develop a good solution for the boring emoji picker in Ubuntu. This is because I use a ton of emoji's in a single sentence (though i have controlled myself too much here) I need something better than this to keep using Ubuntu 🥴
The installation headaches:
So i had Ubuntu 22.04 which after a headache got upgraded to 24.04 (glad ChatGPT is a thing right now)
After upgrading I first installed the build tools which are seemingly necessary to proceed ahead
sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential devscripts fakeroot git
Then I did what a great programmer does — I asked ChatGPT what I should start with as a noob 😁
So after some spiraling talks, I got to the conclusion of tinkering the sl package since it does not do anything (yep, that is the actual reason 🫠)
sudo apt install sl
apt source sl
cd sl-*
But as the saying goes Bugs follow programmers everywhere (which I created a minute ago), I encountered a bug!
meet@Genius:~$ apt source sl
Reading package lists... Done
E: You must put some 'deb-src' URIs in your sources.list
Then I edited the sources.list file in /etc/apt
- Previous file content:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
- Updated file content:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
This finally allowed me to get the source code of sl
sudo apt update
apt source sl
Now I opened the /home/meet/sl-5.02 folder in VSCode. And while VSCode was opening the folder (yes, my laptop is not as fast as your pcs folks!), I typed sl in my terminal in a new desktop and I was flabbergasted! I cannot describe my first time experience but I would recommend anyone reading this Just Try It!.
The code exploration:
After having everything setup (finally!), I started exploring the source code. there were 2 main files I found sl.c and sl.h. the c file seemed normal enough until I opened the header file 🤯
This file had all the train parts hardcoded into it!
After getting amazed the second time I came back to the c file and started dry running the main function. I found that the sl command accepted not just 3 options (I think I read it in the docs), but 4 options, (-a, -c, -F, -l) out of which I loved option -F since it requires a good understanding of what you are doing in order to do such amazing tricks in the terminal. And for 10-20 minutes, I was a bit confused too since I could not figure out what is the use of the constants with the 'C' prefix in the headers, but after seeing this option function I did get clarity on where it is used (it is used in the -c option, which anyone with some common sense could figure out — except me, I had to try it once 😂)
The conclusion:
So thanks a lot dear reader, you have reached till here, I respect you for giving your time here! After exploring the source code I cannot wait to just tinker it, but college assignments demand time hence the tinkering part goes on to day 2 (I hope my Day 2 comes around quickly) where I plan to tinker this code a bit to see how it works internally, maybe even create my own mini walking robot some days later? 🤖 But until then, Sayonara Amigos (I hope i said it right 😅).
If you enjoyed this, drop a 🐧 in the comments — it’ll help me know someone’s reading these and Stay Tuned!
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Meet Gandhi
Meet Gandhi | Sciencx (2025-10-24T05:45:53+00:00) Contributing to Ubuntu — Day 1: When I Met the ‘sl’ Train Command 🚂. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/10/24/contributing-to-ubuntu-day-1-when-i-met-the-sl-train-command-%f0%9f%9a%82/
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