Application - Core-Developer - Alessandro Astone

Community Ubuntu Developer Membership
1

I, Alessandro Astone, apply for core-dev rights.

Contact Information:

  • Name: Alessandro Astone
  • Launchpad Page: https://launchpad.net/~aleasto
  • Matrix username: @aleasto:matrix.org

I am applying because:

  • I often work on areas of the Desktop that are shared with other products or flavours, which are not included in the desktop packageset.
  • I sometimes work on universe packages
    • This is especially true when handling GNOME transitions such as mutter/gnome-shell
  • I’d like to reduce the burden on my sponsors.
  • I’d like to be able to sponsor work of others

Who I am

I am a Software Engineer specialized in operating systems, and more specifically the Linux userspace.

I started getting involved in open-source software around 2018 with LineageOS, the #1 community-made custom Android distribution. There I contributed to the build-system and common system frameworks, and ended up becoming the maintainer of the Recovery OS, as well as a few device ports. This was my first experience being part of and, in some sense, lead a large and distributed open-source community.

Around the same time I started using Fedora Linux on my home workstation, with the KDE desktop. As the little bugs annoy the software tinkerer, eventually they’ll want to try and fix them, and so I did. I started participating in the IRC chats and contributing fixes to the packaging, and eventually I became a member of the KDE-SIG where I help maintain the large KDE desktop stack in Fedora. This is where I gained a large experience with packaging software with what we now call the “traditional” package managers.

I’ve always valued highly contributing my fixes upstream in order to benefit all users of the software, and thus after sustained contributions I became an upstream KDE Developer.

I’m also the primary maintainer of the Waydroid project, which is a container-based approach to run Android applications side-by-side with Freedesktop applications in your Wayland desktop: this is where I gained experience working with the Wayland windowing system.

In June 2024 I joined Canonical, where I started contributing to Ubuntu Desktop and upstream GNOME and related Freedesktop projects. I became a member of the Ubuntu Desktop Team in June 2025 and have been an avid uploader ever since. More on my Ubuntu story below.

My Ubuntu story

My first sustained interactions with Ubuntu must have been around 2018, where I was using an Ubuntu VM from a Windows host in order to compile the Android operating system. Ever since, I’ve been using Ubuntu in VMs or containers for some of my software tinkering.

My second notable interaction with Ubuntu comes from being the maintainer of the deb package for Waydroid, although that’s hosted on a separate APT repository and not in the Debian/Ubuntu archives.

I joined Canonical’s Desktop Team in June 2024, which is when I really started contributing to Ubuntu. It’s been interesting to explore the Ubuntu culture and processes, as someone coming from other different communities. I’ve grown to truly appreciate the attention to detail that comes into every package upload.

In June 2025 I became a member of the Ubuntu Desktop delegated team, which granted me permissions to start uploading packages without sponsorship. I’ve also been using my uploader powers and responsibilities for sponsoring contributions from the community and from my Canonical colleagues.

Today I appear on the topcontributors charts in a few categories.

Examples of my work / Things I’m proud of

[1]: And many more which aren’t tracked in the table because of auto-generated changelogs by gbp

Areas of work

I’ve been working on many areas of Ubuntu Desktop, including: apps, display, input, localization, accessibility, package management, dbus and systemd.

Things I could do better

As an uploader already, I haven’t been monitoring often enough the sponsoring queue: many sponsorships I drove were solicited by either chat messages or email notifications in salsa.debian.org instead.

Plans for the future

General

I’m already involved in Ubuntu at full capacity and I expect that to remain the same in the near future, so more of the same.

What I like least in Ubuntu

I dislike our update testing story.

Most SRUs end up being verified by the author of the patch, because nobody else shows up to test. That doesn’t add much value, as presumably the author of the patch has already verified that it works for them. I understand the value of testing the actual binary package that will end up in the archive, but that is of secondary importance to getting real-world feedback from users with diverse setups and configurations to test for regressions and edge-cases that weren’t caught by the uploader nor SRU reviewer.

In my opinion, the biggest contributing factor to the lack of user testing and feedback is a poor experience for discovering updates that are in testing. The launchpad bug tracker is well suited for tracking an individual bug, but not for generic regression testing. I’m sure we have many tech-enthusiast users who would love to try out updates early, but we fail to present them with the opportunity. Please check out how Fedora does update discovery and testing in bodhi, which I find to be really good!

There is also a lack of automated testing, for the Desktop products specifically: while many players have been using graphical integration testing frameworks like OpenQA for years now, we don’t have anything comparable yet. I would push for a CI architecture parallel to (or integrated in?) autopkgtests which would utilize a graphical testing framework like OpenQA or YARF to automatically test for every update that the main desktop use-cases do not regress, gating the updates from being promoted.

Endorsements and Comments

Ask your sponsors and people that closely worked with you to use the template below, and reply to your application with their packaging endorsement (sponsors) or comments (anyone including sponsors).

## Sponsoring feedback

* Please fill us in on your shared experience.
  * How many packages did you sponsor? A list of sponsored packages can generated [via UDD here](https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi)
  * How would you judge the quality?
  * How would you describe the improvements?
  * Do you trust the applicant?

## Specific experiences of working together

*Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better.*

## Areas of improvement and next steps

What is the journey you see ahead of the applicant, the next steps they should take, the next things they likely have to learn and the next mountains to climb?
3 Likes
2

I endorse Alessandro for Core Dev.

Sponsoring feedback

I have sponsored a handful of packages for Alessandro. In addition to sponsoring, I have reviewed many of Alessandro’s SRUs. I have found his work to be high quality, and he demonstrates a clear expertise in the desktop space. I completely trust Alessandro to be a Core Dev.

Specific experiences of working together

Some uploads I remember sponsoring were for plymouth:

I had done some work in plymouth to be able to drop the old systemd-fsckd patch from Ubuntu, and Alessandro helped with some edge cases and related bugs.

As a member of the SRU team, I have also reviewed many of Alessandro’s SRUs. The work I have seen there is also of high quality, and he always does a good job with the SRU documentation and testing. He frequently does SRUs across the GNOME stack and is making significant improvements to the desktop experience on Ubuntu. Here is just one recent example:

Areas of improvement and next steps

I cannot personally think of any suggestions for improvement at this time. But as with everyone, getting Core Dev is just one step in the journey, so I encourage Alessandro to continue developing his knowledge and Ubuntu packaging skills.

3

Sponsoring feedback

I have sponsored many uploads for Alessandro for the past 2 years. Alessandro’s work is consistently high quality and clearly makes Ubuntu better.

Alessandro has worked to improve what is listed in the ubuntu-desktop packageset but it isn’t possible for that packageset to include all the packages he works on. Core Dev is the right permission set for Alessandro now since it would allow him to handle main packages that aren’t strongly owned by the Desktop team and it allows him to complete transitions (like poppler or evolution-data-server or gnome-shell) without needing a sponsor’s help.

Areas of improvement and next steps

Please apply for Debian Maintainer now and then mark your calendar to apply for Debian Developer several months afterwards.

4

Sponsoring feedback

  • I’ve sponsored a bit over 110 uploads according to UDD but that’s a partial picture since a good part of Alessandro’s work in done directly in salsa/pkg-gnome/Debian.
  • Alessandro
    • demonstrated a solid understanding of Debian packaging accross a range of packages
    • is regularly helping unblocking proposed migration problems (doing the reports analysis by himself)
    • has been actively SRUing fixed to stable series
    • handle several MIR, handling adding of tests and doing package improvements before sending the requests
    • handled soname changes/transitions
    • is working upstream/in Debian when possible
    • is actively engaging with the community and upstream on Matrix, Discourses, Launchpad.
    • showed that he understands the Ubuntu release cycle and processes.
  • I’ve no doubt that Alessandro is ready for coredev and I’m giving it strong +1 endorsement.

Specific experiences of working together

The list of things I reviewed/sponsored for Alessandro is long and it is hard to pick specific example. Just to mentio some

Areas of improvement and next steps

I don’t really have ideas for improvements since Alessandro’s work is already very high quality but I hope to see him use his coredev rights to help with patch pilot, sponsoring and +1 maintenance :slight_smile: