What open source projects are best for beginners?

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670 votes tallied
Drupal
6% (41 votes)
Fedora
8% (53 votes)
LibreOffice
30% (204 votes)
PostgreSQL
2% (14 votes)
Python
19% (124 votes)
Ubuntu
24% (159 votes)
Other (tell us in the comments)
11% (75 votes)

Which project would you recommend to a newbie who wants to get started with open source?

While Opensource.com is preparing for our upcoming Beginners in Open Source Week starting February 17, we want to hear from our readers about which open source projects are best for beginners. After you've responded to the poll, mark your calendars for:

Beginners in Open Source Week: February 17 - 28

Call for articles! We are taking submissions and suggestions for stories about the work you do or the work someone you know is doing to help beginners in open source software, hardware, and other areas of openness. Please send your article or idea to open@opensource.com or contact us—from now through February 14.

Throughout the year we plan to continue these sorts of initiatives around dedicated topics, like youth, women, and beginners in open source. Stay tuned, we have a lot more ideas up our sleeves!

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33 Comments

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Ruth | January 30, 2014
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Joomla :)

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Chiara Aliotta | January 30, 2014
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Joomla! (www.joomla.org)

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Robin Muilwijk | January 30, 2014
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Thanks Ruth and Chiara, for suggesting Joomla! I can recommend this project myself, as former member. There is lot's to do like: coding, documentation, translation and more. It's a great way to step into an open source project, and learn.

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Johnny | February 4, 2014
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Sorry, Joomla is deprecated ;)

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Jim Bethancourt | January 30, 2014
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If you're a Java developer, one approach is to check out http://nemo.sonarqube.org/ and see what projects you like that also need some cleaning up.

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Máirín Duffy | January 30, 2014
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Just wanted to put it out there that Dreamwidth is a wonderful open source project for women just starting out. I've personally had great experience with the upstream Mailman project community as well.

The suggested projects in the poll are very large, established projects with huge codebases. While each is a great community and welcoming to newcomers, I do feel like it's less overwhelming to get involved in a smaller project where you can understand the application in depth (because of its smaller scope) and you can get to know a majority of the contributors involved more closely (because there aren't as many since the projects aren't as massive.) You get a more personal touch from smaller projects, and you learn the basic ropes to move onto larger projects if you like later on.

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Jason Hibbets | January 31, 2014
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Where can someone get started with Dreamwidth?

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Robin Muilwijk | January 31, 2014
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I think Dreamwidth can be found here http://www.dreamwidth.org/about

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Taha | January 30, 2014
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Though I voted for Ubuntu, I deeply believe the real soul of Open Source is in Debian project, a pure definition of Open Source and freedom in software, but since contributing in that project is pretty hard, I would suggest Ubuntu project with its real good launchpad contribution portal.

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Marcus D. Hanwell | January 30, 2014
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I think KDE can be a great project for new developers, and is one of the first I contributed to. It is a very large and established project, but it is split into many smaller subprojects that can satisfy most interests from low-level graphics programming in C++/OpenGL, through to plasma and the use of interpreted languages to create useful widgets in a relatively short amount of time. The community is friendly and inviting, they take part in the various programs such as Google Summer of Code to encourage new contributors, and have an annual developer conference.

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Heidi | January 30, 2014
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Joomla!

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Heidi | January 30, 2014
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Joomla has a well developed and helpful community with an active forum. Anyone can contribute on any level or get help for their problems!
http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/contribute-to-joomla.html

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Heidi | January 30, 2014
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Joomla!

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caineslisa | January 30, 2014
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Wordpress. It is easy to get started, and it is a highly popular open source application.

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Michael O. | January 30, 2014
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KDE

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Robin Muilwijk | January 30, 2014
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If you are into mapping, check out Open Streetmap http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners'_guide You might be able to put your own neighborhood on the map.

Or maybe you are into science? Check out open science and open access at http://openscience.com/what-is-open-access-useful-links-for-beginners/

And if you want to work with something concrete, something solid like open hardware, this is fun: http://www.youtube.com/user/RaspberryPiBeginners.

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Jason B | January 30, 2014
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I love the OpenStreetMap suggestion. As a map geek, I love open geodata projects because they allow just about anyone to participate - all it takes is some knowledge of the area where you live, work, and play to made great additions to mapping data.

Keeping the map geek theme going on the developer side, my favorite getting-started-with-open-source suggestions are GDAL/OGR, which have really easy-to-use Python bindings for people who want to try out geographic data manipulation. I also really enjoyed playing with the open source community edition of the OpenGeo Suite stack, which you can get up and running and doing cool things with no programming experience (though a little server configuration background wouldn't hurt).

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John Morris | January 31, 2014
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WordPress! Using and programming.

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Carol Willing | January 31, 2014
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OpenHatch - A project that helps people learn how to contribute to open source. Wonderful outreach through the Open Source Comes to Campus program.

Python is another great community for beginners and newcomers.

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Unidentified | January 31, 2014
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Bodhi Linux

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Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér | February 1, 2014
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For someone who "wants to get started with open source"?
I assume we are talking contributing.
I have put a lot of time into translations, which I still think is a particularly important aspect of open source software. Consider the LibreOffice translations - it is extremely unlikely that this software would ever be translated by a proprietary software provider.
If we are talking about coding, the projects at the top seem like a bit of a learning curve. Wordpress themes, perhaps? That seems like a place to start?

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Display Name | February 1, 2014
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I would say:

<ul>
<li><a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners'_guide">Open Street Map</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.blender.org/get-involved/">Blender</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/">Mozilla</a></li>
<li><a href="http://community.opensourcebeehives.net/">Open Source Beehives</a></li>
</ul>

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jiero | February 1, 2014
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firefox? and open source html5 game?

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Jessica Dunbar | February 2, 2014
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:) Joomla!

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Robin Muilwijk | February 3, 2014
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Whats Joomla? ;) Just kidding of course, great to see you registered. Welcome to Opensource.com!

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Scott Nesbitt | February 3, 2014
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As usual, I'll plug <a href="http://flossmanuals.net">FLOSS Manuals</a>. If you don't have (m)any technical chops, or even if you do, it's a great way to create documentation for any number of Open Source projects. Especially if you can't choose just one project.

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Unidentified | February 4, 2014
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Drupal has a wonderful community and they have active initiatives for getting new people started with contributing, something I've not encountered in another project. Check out http://drupalladder.org/ for an example of something that has been built for helping people to get started with their contributions.

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kriszzilla | February 4, 2014
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I recommend python! =)

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Tobias | February 5, 2014
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Debian.

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smh | February 6, 2014
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hi! why you define joomla in the polls?

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Nabeel Hussain | February 13, 2014
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From a business perspective - Wordpress
Loads of plugins, templates, documentation, easy to learn and manage, but most importantly, there is always someone in your 4 degrees who has used Wordpress.

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Hans Bezemer | February 18, 2014
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If you want to get started in FOSS, start your own project - or start one with friends. You have far more control, do more things and learn the trade bottom up without getting swamped in a large project where everything is doing just fine without you.

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Suba | March 10, 2014
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I got java developer certification, using this like to build more with JSP,Spring and much more J2EE related technologies. How can I improve my knowledge in Java like internship or any beginners project? Suggestions please.....

Thanks in advance..
Suba

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