Jonathan Riddell
Software Engineer at KDE neon
City of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
RockstarJonathan Riddell is a seasoned software engineer with 24 years of experience, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, known for deep involvement in KDE open-source projects. He contributes across the stack—from backend build and ARM cross-compilation fixes in Krita to UI and integration work in Kdenlive and Plasma Desktop—showing strong expertise in C++, Qt, build systems and platform portability. As a community coordinator and occasional canoe coach, he pairs technical leadership with grassroots community building and real-world mentoring. His hands-on commits resolving OpenGL and architecture-specific compilation issues reflect a pragmatic focus on shipping robust, cross-platform desktop software. Less obvious is his knack for smoothing developer workflows and configuration boundaries, often improving build/filesystem layouts and locale defaults that quietly reduce friction for thousands of users and contributors.
24 years of coding experience
French, Spanish
Github Skills (18)
c-language10
multiplatform10
cmake10
cross-platform10
ui-design10
desktop-application10
enviroment10
desktop10
localization10
arm10
cprogramming-language10
build-system9
opengl9
video-editing9
qml9
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
KDE/plasma-desktop
Jun 2009 - Jan 2023
Plasma for the Desktop
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:350 commits in 13 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Jonathan primarily focused on refactoring and updating the codebase for KDE Plasma Desktop. They made changes to various configuration files and source code files related to locale settings, file type handling, and application defaults. Their contributions included renaming and updating file paths and binaries, as well as updating versioning and font configurations. They also worked on UI improvements.
electronlinuxc-plus-pluschromeosdesktop
KDE/krita
May 2005 - Jun 2019
Krita is a free and open source cross-platform application that offers an end-to-end solution for creating digital art files from scratch built on the KDE and Qt frameworks.
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:18 commits in 14 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Jonathan primarily focused on fixing build and compilation issues related to ARM architecture, indicating a strong understanding of cross-platform development and build processes. The commits reveal adjustments to `qreal` usage for ARM compatibility, and addressed compilation problems related to OpenGL usage. Additionally, they made contributions to the codebase, including changes in core image processing code.
artend-to-enddigital-artlinuxgui
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