[aur-general] TU Application - Konstantin Gizdov

[Konstantin Gizdov]

Hello,

I am Konstantin Gizdov [1] [2],
(`kgizdov`, `arch at kge.pw`, `kgizdov at gmail.com`)

I would like to apply to be a Trusted User under Baptiste Jonglez's
sponsorship.

A few words about me:

I am currently a Particle Physics PhD at Univerisity of Edinburgh and I
have used Linux since my early teenage years. After I finished
high-school, Linux has been my main operating system. I embraced Open
Source software for a long time ago and contribute to such several
projects [2][3][4]. I have been with Arch Linux since 4+ years ago,
although only more active since 2+ years.

My main work is concentrated on Experimental Particle Physics & the LHCb
Detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. As part of that I have
been involved in the development, upgrade & maintenance of the
High-Level Trigger & RICH systems and LHCb's data flow [3]. I also have
experience with a lot of data processing & analysis - data distillation
& enrichment, machine learning, statistical analysis, etc - and
associated tools. Separately, I maintain several machines - a personal
web server, company server with several VMs, local workhorse server,
personal workstation & laptop (sprinkle around some RaspberryPis and
network devices here and there). This put me in a unique position to
work with many and different kinds of systems and software - ranging
from ASICs & FPGAs, through localized control systems & end-user devices
to large clusters & super computers. Daily, I use popular tools such as
VMs, docker, git, GCC, CUDA, tensorflow, Cern's ROOT, but I also run a
lot of custom and even-self made software [4][6]. All of this has been a
breeze on Arch Linux.

Thus, a couple of years ago, I decide to get more involved and
contribute. I took on the task to maintain CERN's ROOT package [7] and
since then I've involved myself heavily into that, I'm a contributor to
the project and I use it daily in my work. I have been providing this
package for many colleagues in the field, including all of its stack &
complementary tools (Pythia, XRootD & other Python tools). I have
enabled a lot of new features and worked with upstream towards new
functionality, bug fixes, etc. On top of that I have shipped several
other related projects - machine learning packages, SciKit-HEP packages
like uproot, Docker images, GitLab CIs and so on.

I have also been able to develop and publish a machine learning project
me and colleague came up with [4]. This is soon going to be a package in
SciKit-HEP and I will aim to make it package here too. Arch Linux was a
great platform for all of this. I was able to install & configure
up-to-date software easily and what I did not find, I provided for me &
others on the AUR without too much hassle.

Overall, I have to say Arch Linux (and its community) have played a key
role in me being able to do all of these things. I have found the OS
itself to be stable and flexible and the users & maintainers
approachable and direct, which I appreciate a lot. I have met a lot of
people through the Arch Linux community - forums, AUR and just saying 'I
use Arch, too!', haha.

The reason for applying to become a TU is to get even more involved and
give back to the community. If you accept me, I would like to continue
maintaining and improving my current packages as well as bring new
packages. As an AUR maintainer I basically consider it an on-going duty
already.

I would like to maintain/contribute/adopt the following:

  * Packages I would like to co-maintain:
      o python-awkward
      o libafterimage
      o xxhash
      o unuran
  * Packages I already maintain and intend to move from AUR:
      o root & root-extra
      o xrootd
      o simpletools
      o root5
      o python-root_numpy
      o python-uproot
      o python-uproot-methods
      o python-hep_ml
      o pythia
      o llvm50
      o llvm50-libs
      o clang50
  * New packages I would like to add/move from AUR:
      o cern-vdt
      o cvmfs
      o HepDrone [4]
      o python-keras
      o root_pandas (new)
      o histbook (new)
      o decaylanguage (new)
      o pyjet (new)
      o vegascope (new)
      o root_ufunc (new)
      o formulate (new)

I hope to make Arch Linux more versatile and accessible to users in data
science, high-energy physics & machine learning, and possibly as a whole.

Thank you.

-- 
Regards,

Konstantin

1. https://keybase.io/kgizdov
2. https://github.com/kgizdov
3. https://gitlab.cern.ch/kgizdov
4. https://github.com/Tevien/HEPDrone
5. https://github.com/scikit-hep
6. https://gitlab.cern.ch/kgizdov/pdqa-automation
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