<p>I am an enthusiastic Linux system administrator with 4 years of experience. Within those 4 years, I have managed Linux systems from all of the Red Hat, openSUSE, Debian, and Arch Linux families. Recently, my interest has shifted to immutable distributions such as Fedora Silverblue/CoreOS and openSUSE MicroOS. I also am certified by <ahref="https://rhtapps.redhat.com/certifications/badge/verify/K7XXRBDBPAV5DXYL763VVGR2EAAEQU3CUPSQX2KSDXT6RW46LQ3T7ULZ55KZZ56SKO7EQ3ETTLYZQ4U5NQYTCNA62RUWOCM34WWBUYQ=">Red Hat</a>, SUSE, and the <ahref="https://www.credly.com/badges/8ccbffe1-6a81-4100-87b7-516fb11712f4">Linux Foundation</a>. </p>
<p>I am also a team member at <ahref="https://privacyguides.org">PrivacyGuides</a>. I am primarily a technical writer, updating the site's content with more emphasis on threat modeling and security. </p>
<p>Being an open source enthusiast, I publish all of the projects made in my free time on <ahref="https://github.com/tommytran732">GitHub</a> and my own <ahref="https://git.tommytran.io/Tomster">Gitea</a> instance. I also contribute to a few Flatpak and AUR packages.</p>
<p>The <ahref="https://github.com/tommytran732/Pterodactyl-Script">Pterodactyl Script</a> is a bash script I wrote to automate the fairly tedious installation process of the popuar <ahref="https://pterodactyl.io">Pterodactyl control panel</a>. It comes with automatic SSL certificate generation using <ahref="https://certbot.eff.org/">Certbot</a>, MariaDB SSL, basic firewall configuration, Fail2ban, and optional phpMyAdmin support. With this script, a 30-40 minutes task for a seasoned system administrator could be completed in under 5 minutes. This is my most popular project to date, with over 100 stars on GitHub.
<p>The <ahref="https://github.com/tommytran732/Arch-Setup-Script">Arch Setup Script</a> is a script that I wrote to automate my Arch Linux installation which mimics openSUSE's setup with BTRFS and Snapper. At the time, there was no other installer that does this nicely because they all use the same flat layout as recommended in the Arch Wiki. The downside of using this layout is that snapper rollback does not work properly and the user has to get into the Arch ISO to manually rollback their system. This could be solved by using the openSUSE's layout for BTRFS, and I forked <ahref="https://github.com/classy-giraffe/easy-arch">Easy Arch</a> to do just that. Over time, I have been adding more security/privacy related settings by default (such as randomized MAC address, IPv6 Privacy, Apparmor, Kernel module blacklist, encrypted /boot). The project is still actively developed, and many of the changes I made are merged upstream as well.</p>
<p><ahref="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pamac-flatpak/">pacmac-flatpak</a> and <ahref="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pamac-flatpak-gnome/">pacmac-flatpak-gnome</a> are forks of the <ahref="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pamac-all/">pacmac-all</a> AUR package. Due to the various issues with snapd (it tracking systems using a <ahref="https://snapcraft.io/docs/snap-store-metrics#:~:text=The%20Snap%20Store%20web%20UI,new%20snapd%20client%20it%20sees.">unique ID</a> with no opt-out option, it requring both AppArmor and CgroupsV1 for proper confinement, etc), I decided to create these forks to remove snap support from the package.
<p>I highly recommend that you contact me via Matrix, so we could take advantage of their <ahref="https://www.uhoreg.ca/blog/20170910-2110">end to end encryption</a>. My Matrix is @tommy:arcticfoxes.net.</p>
<p>I also have a Telegram account - <ahref="https://t.me/tommytran732">TommyTran732</a>. If you do contact me via Telegram, please use the <ahref="https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-secret-chats-different">Secret Chat</a> feature. I am not as active on Telegram as I am on Matrix, since Secret Chat is only available for the Android and not Flatpak client.</p>
<p>If you prefer to reach out to me via email, my address - <ahref="mailto:contact@tommytran.io">contact@tommytran.io</a> - is hosted on the secure email provider <ahref="https://tutanota.com">Tutanota</a>. If possible, please send me an email using a Tutanota account so that we can take advantage of their <ahref="https://tutanota.com/security/">end to end encryption</a> as well.</p>
<p>For file sharing, I have a federated <ahref="https://nextcloud.com">Nextcloud</a> instace. You can safely share any files with me at my federated id Tomster@cloud.tommytran.io (please note that this is a Nextcloud id, not an email address). This nextcloud instance runs on my own colocated hardware with drive encryption, so rest assured that I would be the only one with access to the shared data.</p>
