Last time I tried to migrate to Podman the first container I tried was incompatible, so was the second, and the third. Turns out at the time Linuxservers.io stuff wasn’t rootless podman compatible. There have since been some improvement according to my most recent Google search just now, so maybe a retry is coming up.

While I’ve never directly used them I’ve definitely seen content hosted by them. I’ve also seen CSAM promptly removed by them (I work for a hosting provider and occasionally will forward a report their way). I’ll drop them some mons.

This consternation is definitely common. It’s hard to apply skills to something with no long term impact of benefit. I’ve improved my skills by finding stuff I can help on in the communities I participate in.

It’s natural to be overwhelmed, so deciding on a project does scope what you can learn, but a hard part is architecting the foundation of that project.

Introducing new features to an existing project is a great way to get your feet wet - it has multiple benefits, for one of you do take a position as a developer in the future, you likely won’t be architecting anything initially, primarily improving on existing projects. So participating in OSS projects is a similar mechanism to that - you have to learn their codebase to a degree, you have to learn their style and requirements, etc.

Even if you don’t ultimately contribute, it’s still a learning experience.