Kick Start to OpenSource

(Image Reference:assoc.drupal.org)

Following article gives you on how you can introduce yourself to open-source environment. 
 
The first mandatory requirement is to get a open-source Operating system installed on your machine. Or alternatively, find a problem and set up an suitable environment to deploy.

Firstly, all open source contributors share their code. Where and How?

The famous open-source repositories where you can find open-source projects are: SourceForge and GitHub. 1000's of code repo are available from distinct domains. You can download, install, run and add an improvement.
Follow the links:

SourceForge and GitHub
 

You can go to a specific project and download all available resource. Most of the codes also have manual on how to run them and required environment set up. 

Example: New Command for Xen Scheduler
And there are some really interesting applications having thousand of weekly downloads. That should give a good kick start. Remember, you will have to be the one to explore the requirements. Open-source comes with less documentation, more challenges and hyper learning. You should be ready to explore the environment and really understand how system around us works.

There are numerous ways you can contribute to the open-source community. It could be a patch, code, documentation, theme design, art work etc. 

Find out more details from "Wiki How" .

There are numerous open source tools available. Can you build your own new API or a tool? Here is a exhaustive list of more than required number of tools.

However, to be more specific, your problems should look like:

I want to translate Notepad++ to Kannada and and i got the source Here. Am planning to contribute something to programming language "go" from google. Like report a bug or resolve an issue etc. and Here is where i found the documentation. I want to build my own new mathematical equation editor and Here is my reference.

Well, Enjoy Coding!