"A system that works for me" - an anthropological analysis of computer hackers' shared use and development of the Ubuntu system

Based on 6 months of anthropological fieldwork both on-line and in-person among the developers working to develop and maintain the Ubuntu Linux system, this thesis examines the individual and collaborative day-to-day practices of these developers as they relate to the computer operating system that is the result of their labour. Despite being spread across the industrialized world, these ""hackers"" socialise, share their knowledge, and come to depend on each other in their work across the Internet, as well as in their in-person meetings at conferences and summits. I argue that these shared and negotiated on-line and in-person practices constitute a community of practice (Wenger 1998) rooted in a more than 40-year old "oral"computing tradition based on the Unix operating system.
Taking the Ubuntu system as my point of departure, I examine the network of practices, processes and actors in which it has been constructed, and
through a strategically selected constellation of theories drawn from anthropology, philosophy, and new media studies, I seek to describe and analyze the three central dimensions of a community of practice. I conclude by suggesting that it is the possibility to adopt, learn, configure, and even build the system according to their own needs, which opens the meritocratic community of practice for new contributors to scale the steep curve of learning necessary to enter and learn among them. In this way, the Ubuntu hackers come to share more than just the same system, they come to share a common history, and, to a certain extent, a shared identity through their practice.