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Open source isn't just for techies. On your desktop (regardless of your operating system), on your phone, and in your business, open source software can help you become better organized, more productive, more secure, and healthier. Best of all, you don't need to worry about the shackles of proprietary licenses.

Throughout 2019, Opensource.com's team of Correspondents and community of writers have highlighted top-notch open source alternatives to proprietary software. Take a quick look at the best 10 of those articles.

This is part 9 in an ongoing series about creating video games in Python 3 using the Pygame module. Previous articles are:

How do you track a wildly popular project like Kubernetes? How do you figure out where it’s going? If you are contributing to the project or participating in Special Interest Groups (SIGs), you might gain insight by osmosis, but for those of you with day jobs that don’t include contributing to Kubernetes, you might like a little help reading the tea leaves. With a fast-moving project like Kubernetes, the end of the year is an excellent time to take a look at the past year to gain insight into the next one.

When Opensource.com launched in 2010, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said the site "is one of the ways in which Red Hat gives something back to the open source community." And that community has always included the growing number of people who are new to open source.

In 2019, we published many articles about the open source way of thinking, choosing hardware, the contribution process, and other topics geared toward newbies. If you're new to open source, this list of Opensource.com's top 10 articles from 2019 about getting started with open source should put you on the right path.

Cheat sheets are perfect for the new coder just starting out on the command line. However, even the most experienced programmers need to lean on references every once in a while. If that pesky keyboard shortcut is just at the tip of your finger, a cheat sheet is perfect to have nearby. Here’s a roundup of our downloadable guides that will set you up for success in 2020.

"The best time to learn computer programming was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
— A computer science proverb, maybe.

Java is still one of the most influential programming languages today. It only recently dropped from #2 to the third most used programming language on GitHub. You may say usage is not everything, but Java also remains popular.

Modern organizations are adopting key elements from open source software. By leveraging the "open" in open source, leaders can help shape a more responsive and productive enterprise. Check out these top 10 articles from 2019 that can help you develop your own path in open leadership.

This year saw a wide range of really helpful Ansible articles. Whether you are just starting out with Ansible or a seasoned pro, there is something for everyone here to learn from.

A good number of these articles are worthy of your bookmarking and perhaps a cron (or maybe a Tower/AWX job) reminder to reread them periodically.

If you are new to Ansible, start with the following articles:

If security is a process (and it is), then it stands to reason that different projects (and contributors) are in different places. Some applications have years of security testing, with design done by people who have worked in information security for decades. Others are brand new projects by developers working on their first open source project. It comes as no surprise that Opensource.com's top security articles of 2019 represent this range of experience. We have articles that introduce basic security practices as well as deep dives into more advanced topics.

Hanukkah famously has eight nights of celebration. The Hanukkah menorah, however, has nine candles: eight regular candles and a ninth that is always offset. It is called the shamash or shamos, which loosely translates to meaning "servant" or "janitor."

The shamos is the candle that lights all the others: it is the only candle whose fire can be used, not just watched. As we wrap up our series on the Zen of Python, I see how namespaces provide a similar service.

I am an avid reader, but I go through periods where I'm so busy that it's hard to find the time to keep up with my reading list. Even during my busiest times, I try to stay up to date on DevOps news since it's one of my areas of focus.

It has been a great year for agile topics on Opensource.com. As we approach the end of 2019, reviewed our top agile-related articles, as read by you, our readers!

A language does not exist in the abstract. Every single language feature has to be implemented in code. It is easy to promise some features, but the implementation can get hairy. Hairy implementation means more potential for bugs, and, even worse, a maintenance burden for the ages.

The Zen of Python has answers for this conundrum.

Python is always evolving. The Python community has an unending appetite for feature requests but also an unending bias toward the status quo. As Python gets more popular, changes to the language affect more people.

The exact timing for when a change happens is often hard, but the Zen of Python offers guidance.

A great deal happened in the world of open source in 2019. Once upon a time, you would have been hard-pressed to find news about Linux, free software, and open source software outside of a small handful of specialist publications. Today, though, news about open source is everywhere; the online edition of Forbes even has its own Linux columnist.

This has been a fantastic year for continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) and the world of DevOps. Opensource.com authors shared how they're moving toward agile and scrum as they focus on seamless, flexible, and scalable deployments. Here are some of the big themes in the CI/CD articles we published this year.

The principle of least surprise is a guideline when designing user interfaces. It says that when the user performs an action, the program should do whatever would surprise the user the least. This is for the same reason kids love reading the same book over and over again: there is nothing more comforting to people than the ability to predict and have those predictions come true.

As we near the end of 2019, it is time to look back at the top 10 articles we published about Git this year.

Using Linux well means understanding what commands are available and what they're capable of doing for you. We have covered a lot of them on Opensource.com during 2019, and here are 10 favorites from the bunch.