Joining The Family!

Hello! My name is Theo. After countless days and nights of indecisiveness, I'm finally joining the open source family!

About Myself

• 🇨🇦 College student living in Canada. Sorry, Ey?
• 🌈 Queer and neurodivergent. Tech is my special interest.
• 🌲 Loves nature. Heaven is when I'm surrounded by trees.
• 🦊 My favorite animal, as well as my favorite browser!
• 🐧 Linux guy. I guess penguins are my second favorite animal?
• 🔒 Passionate about all things privacy and security.
• 🏋🏻 Fellow gym bro. Re-rack your weights guys!

The Journey Thus Far

I've always had a inseparable relationship with open source. What better way to start than talking about some open source projects I love and adore? I can't possibly list everything but here are some I could think of right now:

Shadowsocks

Link: shadowsocks/shadowsocks

A very simple but effective censorship circumvention tool. There's no way I would NOT put this above everything else. This is where it all began. I was raised in an authoritarian country where the Internet is heavily censored. For the longest time, this tool was my only gateway to the rest of the world. It also got me into learning Linux and basic computer networking.

OpenWRT

Link: openwrt/openwrt(mirror)

A Linux distro for routers (among other embedded devices)! At this point I realized the limitation of running shadowsocks clients on individual devices - If the client doesn't support the platform, it simply wouldn't work. After some researching online, I was introduced to OpenWRT. I read some tutorials and flashed it onto my ASUS router, and I used it to run shadowsocks. Configuring it was a lot of confusion back then, but this is a project I definitely want to revisit now that I have more knowledge in this realm.

Home Assistant

Link: home-assistant

Probably the most powerful smart home/home automation platform in the world. Extremely well documented. When I first moved out of my parents' apartment, I spent all my savings on a Raspberry Pi, a few RGB light bulbs and some sensors. I invested hours after hours on the documentation and configuration. I had an absolute blast! It all felt worth it when everything finally worked as intended.

Nextcloud

Link: nextcloud
An all-in-one solution for cloud storage, file syncing, email, calendar, collaborative work, etc. The best open source alternative for Google Drive/Workspace, or Microsoft 365. It's also very expandable with apps and extensions. It was the very thing that got me into self hosting. Overall a really robust system. However, I find the performance somewhat underwhelming. These days I solely use it for file storage/syncing and it's been working flawlessly.

Immich

Link: immich-app/immich

One may argue that Nextcloud is not good enough to compete with Google Drive, but this project is definitely up there with Google Photos. Immich is a fantastic photo and video management system that does everything you expect it to do. It has a beautiful web interface as well as a mobile app. It supports auto backup and has great performance. This is probably my favorite thing running on my home server!

What's Next?

I've been wanting to get involved with open source projects for quite some time. I love the philosophy. I love the community. I cannot live without the amazing open source projects out there. However, I always worried that my lack of professional skills would make me less qualified somehow. After all, as much as I'm experienced with open source tools, I'm still very new as a developer.

This semester I selected an open source development course, hoping it will kick-start my journey as an open source developer. So far I'm really liking it! The professor actually encouraged us to go out there and contribute to projects regardless of our skill levels. We will learn things along the way through communication, collaboration and making mistakes. Hopefully by the end I will be more active within the community, pick up some more skills, and make friends along the way!