How to write your first article

We love using open source software, and we enjoy reading about open source software. And anyone can write about open source software. You don’t have to be an “expert” to write about what you’ve done with open source software; just by using open source software or trying out a new program, you can share an article that is personal to you.

If you want to write about open source software, we’d like to amplify your voice. You can find many starting points for articles about open source software. If you would like to contribute an article but aren’t sure how to get started, check out this list of topic suggestions:

Download a live version of a Linux distribution and try it out

A “live” distribution is a great way to try out a new Linux distribution without actually installing it on your computer. The live image can be booted from a CD or a USB flash drive, and runs entirely from that media, leaving your hard drive untouched.

Experiment with the live distribution, then write an article about the experience. Whether this was your first time running Linux, or just an experiment with a different Linux distribution, we want to hear about it. You might write about “3 things I learned about Linux in a weekend” or “My first experience with Fedora Linux” or “4 things I liked about using the Cinnamon desktop for the first time.”

Experiment with a new application and share what you learned

Open source has lots of great applications to do all sorts of great things. As the saying goes, “there’s an app for that.” Experiment with a new open source application and see what it can do. It doesn’t need to be new to us, it just needs to be new to you.

Install an open source program and kick the tires, then write an article about what you learned. Interesting topics include “What I think about the GNOME Weather app” or “How I used Inkscape to create a simple sketch” or “3 things I learned about using StackEdit to write in Markdown.”

You can also explore new features in an open source application you already use, and share what you discovered. For example, you could experiment with different formatting in LibreOffice and write an article about “How I added margin notes in a LibreOffice document” or experiment with importing old files and write about “4 things I noticed when opening Office files into LibreOffice” or “I loaded a dozen legacy files into LibreOffice, here’s what I learned.”

You don’t have to review a serious app. We like open source games, too! Consider downloading an open source game and writing an article about “Why I love playing Frozen Bubble” or “Playing mini golf with Neverball” or “Retro gaming fun with B.A.L.L.Z.”

Don’t forget that open source is everywhere, on every platform. You can experiment with open source on Linux, macOS, Windows and other systems.

Share a useful script or program you wrote

With a few lines in a shell script or a short program, you can stack commands to automate mundane tasks. If you’ve written a neat script to help you do your work, share it in an article.

Your program doesn’t need to be unique or innovative; it just needs to get the job done. For example, share your 3-line script that resizes images on your web server to a more suitable size, or your 1-line script “wrapper” script that runs QEMU with the options you want, or your 4-line .bashrc script that sets up your terminal and environment the way you like it.

If you’ve written a particularly clever script or handy utility program, explain how it works in an article. You could write about your Bash script that generates a test page of Groff fonts, or your favorite Awk script that converts “straight” quotes to “smart” quotes, or a Bash script that splits an RSS file into individual article snippets. You might also write about your short C program that only prints the tags in an HTML file, or your brief C program to expand tabs into spaces in a text file.

Write about what you like

Whatever you want to write about, you should write about what you know. There’s an audience for almost any topic; if you find it interesting enough to write about, someone else will want to read about it.

Don’t worry if your article is about a topic that’s been written about before. You will bring a new perspective to that topic, and your solution might help someone else who’s looking for that exact fix.

To contribute your first article to Both.org, reach out to our editors at open@both.org. Learn more at Write for us.