Hellen Chemtai: Internship Highlights at Outreachy: My Journey with Debian OpenQA

Highlights

Hello world . I am an intern here at Outreachy working with Debian OpenQA Image testing team. The work consists of testing Images with OpenQA. The internship has reached midpoint and here are some of the highlights that I have had so far.

1. The mentors : Roland Clobus, Tassia Camoes and Philip Hands are very good mentors. I like the constant communication and the help I get while working on the project. I enjoy working with this team.
2. The community : The contributors, mentors and the greater SUSE OpenQA community are constantly in communication. I learn a lot from these meetings.
3. The women network : The women of Debian meet and network . The meetings are interactive and we are encouraged to interact.
4. The project : We are making progress one step at a time. Isoken Ibizugbe is my fellow intern working on start-stop tests. I am working on live installers tests.

Communication

I have learned a lot during my internship. I have always been on the silent path of life with little communication. I once told myself being a developer would hide me behind a computer to avoid socializing. Being in open source especially this internship has helped me out with communication and networking. The team work in the project has helped me a lot

1. My mentors encourage communication. Giving project updates and stating when we get stuck.
2. My mentors have scheduled weekly meetings to communicate about the project
3. We are constantly invited to the SUSE meetings by mentors or by Sam Thursfield who is part of the team.
4. Female contributors are encouraged to join Debian women monthly meetings for networking

Lessons so far

I have had challenges , solved problems and learned new skills all this while

1. I have learned Perl, OpenQA configuration, needle editing and improved my Linux and Git skills
2. I have known how various Images are installed , booted and run through live viewing of tests
3. I have solved many test errors and learned to work with applications that are needed in the OS installations. e.g. rufus
4. I have learned how virtual machines work and how to solve errors in regards to them

So far so good. I am grateful to be a contributor towards the project and hope to continue learning.