In the early days of FedoraForum, there was a core of key enthusiasts who spent countless hours creating the Forum and getting it started on the right path. Some have moved on and others are still with us. This page was created "back then" and is retained in their honor.

Ewdison Then 'ewdi'

As the co-founder of FedoraForum.org, currently Ewdison Then aka "ewdi" is the co-founder of R3 Media LLC, a media company. Ewdi is no longer an active admin on FedoraForum.

Gareth 'Ug' Russell

Gareth has been a Linux enthusiast since July 2001, having started out on Mandrake Linux 7.2, Gareth eventually moved on from Mandrake when Red Hat 8 was released and has stayed with Red Hat ever since. Gareth can normally be found around FedoraForum.org whining about his poor internet connection (a 56k) and how he needs Bandwidth. Luckily for him, that Bandwidth will be arriving some time in August 2004. Despite this however he still manages to post more than everyone else. Gareth's other interests outside of Linux include gaming when he gets the chance, rock music and politics. Gareth is studying Politics at the University of Nottingham since September 2004.

Matt 'mhelios' Hansen

Matt Hansen, aka "mhelios" in the digital world, has been using Linux since mid 2001 when he was introduced to it while studying at university. This lead to obtaining some Red Hat 7.0 discs in order to install Linux at home. This proved so successful that he abandoned the "other" OS he was using in favour of Red Hat Linux. He now uses Linux almost exclusively and is currently a big supporter of The Fedora Project, helping out at places like FedoraForum.org and the Fedora mailing lists. Matt holds a degree in Information Technology (Data Comms) from QUT in Brisbane, Australia where he resides. Outside of computing, he likes to read a lot, play various sports and indulge in his favourite TV series such as Alias and 24.

Max 'Avatraxiom' Kanat-Alexander

Max Kanat-Alexander, aka "avatraxiom", is a musician, writer, and all-around computer engineer. Most of the time, he works for Kerio Technologies as a "2nd Level Support Engineer", which means that he solves everything for everybody, and runs all the servers in the US for the company. :-) Max started using Red Hat 9 one day, and almost never booted into Windows again. He had been using Linux full-time for only two months when Fedora Core 1 was released, but on the days of the first release the questions were coming so fast and furious in the #fedora IRC channel that he wrote the Unofficial Fedora FAQ, aka uFAQ or "artoo.net FAQ" (artoo.net is where it is hosted). Max has been fixing computers since he was eight years old, and has been being paid to do the same for about seven years, now. He very much enjoys coding and writing documentation, when he's not taking apart networks and putting them back together again. When he's not on the computer, Max likes to play his guitar, write songs, and talk on the phone. His life goal is to save the whole world.

Jason 'bana' Knight

Jason 'bana' Knight got his first taste in linux in 1999 with Corel at the age of 12. Since then he has grown to appreciate the open source philosophy more and more and now has a voracious appetite for anything with a GPL or BSD license tagged on at the end. Currently Jason is working on converting anyone and everyone he knows to using various OSS programs and trying to complete highschool to move onto college. There he hopes to pursue an education at Texas A&M University in the fields of physics and business in order to fulfill his lifelong dream of building a space elevator with high tensile strength carbon nanotubes. He enjoys science, RPG's, Formula 1 (BMW-Williams), and tennis. Feel free to drop him a line on anything science or OSS related.

Ilja Kogan 'ilja'

Ilja Kogan had his first unix computer when he was 4 in the beginning of the 90s. It was a unix-plagiat made in Russia, his place of birth. After that time, he allways had a computer and allways enjoyed to use it. When he was 10 his family moved to Germany and Ilja got his first Modem and a budget of 20DM in month for the Internet. That was back in 1997. At that time, he never heard about Linux. Later he began to participate in the German internet community, which in some parts is really in love with Linux. And that brought him to this great OS. Now he uses it as the only OS and enjoys it. He maintains a translation project of the FedoraNEWS.org. In his non-computer life, Ilja tries to get his Abitur in a German Gymnasium.

Sindre 'foolish' Pedersen Bjørdal

Sindre Pedersen Bjørdal, known as foolish in the digital world is a student living in Ålesund, Norway. Sindre has been using linux since a friend handed him some unmarked cds that turned out to be Red Hat 7.3 cds and told him to install it. For some reason Sindre never went back to that other operating system. Today you can find foolish at #fedora or at fedoraforum.org most of the time. Sindre, is currently finishing his last year of upper seconday school and hopes to get into some university to study something some day.

Stephen 'sailorsgh' G. Holt

Stephen is currently employed with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. His job involved updating client cases and administrating medical and food benefits. Stephen is longtime computer hobbiest. He first got the bug in the 80's while working for Datapoint Corp.(a business computer company who built systems and serviced corporate customers). Around the mid 80's a good friend and co-worker there had gotten some old 8088's and later a couple 286's which he got working and taught Stephen the basics of computing. (DOS only in those days). He have pretty much learned the rest on his own. He tried linux several times without success until he stumbled into Fedora Core. While out looking for help he came across this forum and the rest is history. Other hobbies are guitar, songwriting, cooking, photography, gaming and computer graphics. Stephen admit that he probably spend far too much time in front of the monitor and it would please his wife if he spent more time with her.

Matt 'Dog-One' Watts

Limited by imagination and shear energy, Mr. Watts got his first taste of Linux with a Pacific HiTech Turbo Linux Red Hat Edition Version 2.1 CD he found at the University Bookstore while working towards his Computer Science Degree. In the computer field, "been there, done that" fits him rather succinctly. From BSD Unix, VAX VMS, Windows, MacIntosh and any flavor of OpenSource operating systems, Matt has put them all through their paces, with Fedora Core 3 being his current target. He specializes in Artificial Intelligence (genetic algorithms), computer networking and data acquisition/control systems. Currently, he is a Systems Integrator for a small Limited Liability Company that puts together quick, effective and inexpensive solutions for its customers. With Matt's wife an officer of the Armed Forces, staying put and growing roots is something yet to be obtained. He enjoys shooting, online gaming, dirt bikes, NFL Football, NASCAR and tinkering with anything electromechanical.

Ed 'crackers' Graham

Ed, aka 'crackers,' is an old-time Unix weenie, having been forcibly introduced to System 3 in the early 80's ("Read these manuals - you're now the system administrator."). Continually longing for the power of a Unix-based system, he discovered Linux (Slackware) in 1993 and has been using Linux off and on ever since - continually for the past 6 years. He is an Architect and Sr. Developer for an ASP working in the automotive industry. His specialty is J2EE and Enterprise systems. No, he does not have a life, although his wife (affectionately and anonymously known as "the wife") is making every attempt to rectify that issue.

Nil 'ghaefb'Gradisnik

Nil is a student of computer science here in Slovenia. He started with RedHat 5.1 linux, tried Mandrake and some other distributions, but he stayed on Redhat until Fedora came out. He got the ADSL internet connection in the begining of 2004, the same time fedoraforum started. He was a fedoracore 1 user so he searched for comunity/forum and found this place. Nil liked this place so much and spent almost every day helping other less experienced fedora users and got promoted to moderator by ewdi. Nil's other interest are skateboarding and listening to the music. He's really into programming and developing small applications using C++ and GTK.

John 'jcstille' Stille

John Stille has been an open source software enthusiast since early 2000. He quickly jumped as a Lead Developer and Administrator at the FoxServ project. Made the FoxServ project top notch and considered top in it's class. Then he moved on to other projects such as ConceptX, a small non profit organization funding OSS projects, AdvanceServ, a project in the making, allowing remote administration of Apache servers without the use or third party security modules or services installed on the server side. This love of OSS brought him to RedHat and their projects, which led me to FedoraForum.org which allows me to connect to the user community of the RedHat projects. In my free time he enjoy breaking computers so that in his work time he can fix them, coaching high school baseball, and just hanging out.

Gavin Henry has been using Linux since 2001, using Redhat 6.0, 7.0, 7.2 and up. He has also used other distros including; Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, Knoppix, Yoper and others, but settled on Fedora Linux at work and at home. He is a core member of the Aberdeen Linux Users Group organising Aberdeen's first two Linux Open Days, and promotes Linux whenever he cann. He has his own Linux company called Suretec Systems Ltd. Please visit his Services and News pages for more information. He has been also helping with the Fedora Documentation Project. He has just finished an update for it with regards to nXML mode with emacs to show that it is easier to use and learn than pSGML mode. And he likes making RPM's.

Mike Basinger has been a Linux user and System Administrator since 1998 starting with RedHat 5.2. He became a hardcore Gentoo user for a while, but came back to