Linux can be quite intimidating at first and the best way to learn Linux is through some hands-on projects for Linux geeks! In this module, we would go over five such projects that will help you better understand the ins and outs of Linux!
5 Coolest Projects for Linux Geeks
Nothing better than showing off your geeky Linux skills to your friends who love tech! These projects are aimed at starters who have dabbled into Linux a little bit or want to begin!
1. Making Linux Your Daily Desktop Driver
Most of us use Linux in a virtual machine inside a Windows machine, which acts as our daily driver. If so, switching over to Linux as your daily go-to operating system might be the first step you should take. For beginners, Ubuntu or Mint might be the ideal choice.
If you want something more challenging, you might as well try going for Arch Linux, setting up which is a feat of its own, while the ultimate contestants might like to go for extreme challenges like Gentoo or Linux From Scratch.
2. Switch To A WM From A DE
Linux offers some great Desktop Environments but a Window Manager is better in many aspects! They are lightweight and in most cases, you need to manually configure them. It helps you gain a better understanding of the Linux Environment and often you need to write your own shell scripts which are really good practices for learning Linux!
You can find some really cool ideas on this Sub-Reddit.
3. Create Your Own Web-Server
With Linux, you can set up many different kinds of servers very easily. These can be used for anything from NAS Servers to hosting your own website. You can also set up port forwarding rules to allow your server to be accessed outside your local area network.
4. Create A Smart Magic Mirror
In case you really want to really look cool and learn Linux at the same time, this is the project for you! Mirror Magic is an open-source modular smart mirror platform which uses a Raspberry Pi to create a really cool mirror!
Though this may seem very complicated but it is actually very easy to make. Once you have set up a display with your Raspberry Pi and installed Magic Mirror, you can easily configure it to suit your needs. Adding a two way mirror glass frame in front of the mirror would make it look as if the display is emerging from the mirror itself ! This project would also make you look super cool, like something out of a sci-fi movie.
5. Run Linux On Embedded Devices
This is probably the most unconventional and one of the more difficult projects we have so discussed, partially due to the very limited amount of resources available in this regard! In this project, we try to run a Linux-based Operating System on unconventional devices like mobile phones, routers, etc.
Embedded devices mostly have very limited space and memory, which makes it all the way more challenging and sometimes, it may even need some hardware work but the rewards are as great as the rewards.
This can help us to better interact with these devices and hence have a greater control over the hardware components of these devices, thus helping us to utilize them to their fullest. For Android phones, one can try by flashing TWRP ROMs whereas you can look up on OpenWRT for routers to boot a Linux based operating system.
Conclusion
I hope that you find these ideas interesting enough and would consider trying your hand out on them. The unconventional nature of some of these projects are the main reason I chose them because they really aid the learning curve.