Want to Help Fedora Suck Less

[Chris Schumann]

Hello all,

I'm a new guy here, but I've been using Fedora since about 3.0, and
used Red Hat Linux from around 5.2. I'm a big fan. I have it installed
on a tower at home, and on my main laptop that I use for work every
day, a Lenovo ThinkPad T60. Obviously, I think it's pretty good to use
it every day, but there are some things that drive me crazy about it,
and I'd like to help make those problems go away for everyone else.

Is this the right place to help with the overall system, even though
the issues I'm having are related to specific hardware? I'm having
issues with video drivers (open source and proprietary), audio drivers
(on a ThinkPad 600X, alsa bug 305, FWIW); but also the default battery
and configuration settings are not very good, causing shortened
battery run-time and battery life, especially for the secondary
battery.

What's the best way to help make sure Fedora becomes even more awesome
on these machines?

I am a software developer by trade, and I have written very low-level
assembly and C code, just not for Linux. I'm happy to learn but don't
have a ton of free time. I'd like to find one or more mentors who will
instruct me on the best ways to nudge developers and maintainers of
existing projects, but getting the latest software, building, testing
and reporting.

How do I start?

Thanks,
Chris