My dream is for Linux to become a go-to OS for personal computing, and to have it run well on even the cheapest Single Board Computers under $100. Many things that x86 Linux and Windows users take for granted are not easy or straightforward on ARM Linux, so I try to do what I can as a shell scripter to lower the barrier to entry.

In 2018, when I was in middle school, I was given a Raspberry Pi 3. I knew nothing about Linux or programming. Raspbian was harder to use back then, and I encountered numerous issues, many of which were my own doing. Slowly, through hundreds of Google searches, I began making a list of useful terminal commands to do specific things: copy a file, create a keyboard shortcut, install something, search for a file, make a backup, close an unresponsive program, or recover from a frozen screen. Eventually, my list of commands was getting very long, and that's when I discovered shell scripts - a special text file that runs a list of terminal commands. How useful!

Shell scripting is not suitable for everything, but it sure can get a lot done on the OS level, and it is far more capable than what most people assume. With YAD, you can even make fairly complex graphical applications using only shell script!

So as a child and growing up, I have written numerous shell scripts to make what was one hard, easy. Some of my best scripts are published here on github for everyone's benefit.

• vdesktop - basically VirtualBox but it runs on a Raspberry Pi. This command-line tool was the first RPi-compatible application capable of interacting with the virtual machine's graphical desktop session.
• Pi Power Tools - a suite of tools for creating and modifying Raspberry Pi OS disk-images and SD cards. This was the first application I made with a GUI interface.
• Pi-Apps - the most popular Raspberry Pi app store by far.
• YouTubuddy - The private, lightweight YouTube search engine & player with the best hardware-acceleration available.
• CloudBuddy - The ultimate way to manage your cloud storage on any Linux computer. This is a bash-powered GUI frontend for rclone, and includes built-in support for Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. It's vastly more convenient than any other web interface or tool available elsewhere.
• AndroidBuddy - Manage your Android phone from a Linux computer. Allows complete screen control, file sharing, internet sharing, and much more.
• Update Buddy - a sleek utility to run on startup. It runs sudo apt update in the background, and if any updates are found, it displays a non-intrusive notification, asking permission to install updates.
• WoR-flasher - World's first Linux-compatible tool to install Windows 10 or 11 on a Raspberry Pi SD card. Before this tool existed, you had to use a Windows PC to install Windows on a Pi's SD card, but with this tool, you now can use a Pi to do it all.
• Windows Screensavers - An efficient GUI screensaver manager, preloaded with fourteen classic Windows screensavers that run smoothly on the RPi using Wine.
• Downgrade Chromium - The latest and greatest web browsers are not necessarily the best, or the fastest. This application allows you to easily switch versions of Chromium Browser.

Most of these scripts I have written, released, and left alone to slowly rot. Pi-Apps is an exception. Enough people use Pi-Apps that it justifies the time it takes to keep it maintained and forever improving.
I'm just one guy, a busy college student. If you have read this far and want to help, please reach out! I could use some help with Pi-Apps. Anybody who knows a bit of scripting is welcome to look through the codebase and offer code improvements and new apps. Also, if you want, I would be glad to help you understand how any of my scripts work. Just join my discord server and ask whatever you want.

I have recently fallen on hard financial times. If you would like to donate as a way of saying thanks, I have a GitHub Sponsors profile and a PayPal link.