Interested in Getting Involved

So I wasn't sure where to begin posting this topic / question so I figured here was as good as a place as any (and I did not see a thread that covered this) but I have played around as a gnu/linux user for about 3-4 years now (various distributions: Ubuntu and OpenSuse have been the primary Distro's that I have liked) and I've become interested in possibly participating in some small or minor projects. I have not done a lot of coding but I am proficient with C and I have been learning Python syntax and I was wondering if anyone out there could give me some advice on some projects that I could participate in so I can 1. Become a better programmer and 2. Become active within the community.

Any advice would be great, thanks!

JMJ

OpenHatch might be a good place to start.

OpenHatch is a non-profit dedicated to matching prospective free software contributors with communities, tools, and education.

http://openhatch.org/

There is more than just programming. You could get into documentation for a program that doesn't have much. Documentation and official user guides are a current weakness of open-source.

If you want to program, find a little niche! The niche I found was the lack of programs for encoding video for Sony Walkman MP3 players. You can do it with Handbrake, as long as you know the precise settings to use; but my program made it pure simplicity to do. Supports multi-core CPUs too.

Find your niche - it's much better than just another FPS or just another music player.

Here's a little suggestion that would benefit a lot of people.

Thanks for all of the advice. I'll look into Openhatch and the problem that Morgaes has suggested is definently something that could help a lot of people. I don't know much about that problem but I can do some research and see if there is something I could contribute to. However, 3rdalbum I like your suggestion of working on documentation for various programs. I've noticed in the past that many man pages were incomplete and documentation for alot of programs missing. I think I will look more into that and volunteer for some projects. Thank you so much for the suggestions and if you have any more I would be glad to hear them.

JMJ

There's also testing of the new development release 13.10, which will begin in a few weeks time. Just install, try to break it and report the bugs you find.

The wiki is another area in need of some love. Deleting obsolete text is a good beginner's task.

Have you read the 'Getting involved' page on the Ubuntu website?

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/get-involved