Github is a bit difficult to find projects on. All of the super active projects are flooded with developers, and everything else is just a single developer doing his own thing.
The best way to get involved is to think about what annoys you when you use the computer. Do you find the notification system to be annoying? Do you wish your mail client had better filtering? Find something that annoys you, and then try and fix it. You don't even have to submit a patch your first time doing this. Just get the source code for the application, and take a look around. See if you can identify where the code is that does what you think should be approved. If it looks easy, take a stab at it, and test it out. If it looks difficult, file a bug report. Ask the developers if one of them is willing to mentor you on the bug. At this point, you'll get one of two responses:
1. They'll tell you no. A lot of projects have developers that won't have time, or won't want to deal with reviewing your unpolished code.
2. They'll tell you yes. Then you can be happy and work on an OSS project.
If you're looking for bugs/features that have mentors available, check out some of the projects on launchpad.net, especially ones associated with Ubuntu. There is a large community of developers there that have specifically signed up to mentor certain bugs.
The best way to get involved is to think about what annoys you when you use the computer. Do you find the notification system to be annoying? Do you wish your mail client had better filtering? Find something that annoys you, and then try and fix it. You don't even have to submit a patch your first time doing this. Just get the source code for the application, and take a look around. See if you can identify where the code is that does what you think should be approved. If it looks easy, take a stab at it, and test it out. If it looks difficult, file a bug report. Ask the developers if one of them is willing to mentor you on the bug. At this point, you'll get one of two responses:
1. They'll tell you no. A lot of projects have developers that won't have time, or won't want to deal with reviewing your unpolished code.
2. They'll tell you yes. Then you can be happy and work on an OSS project.
If you're looking for bugs/features that have mentors available, check out some of the projects on launchpad.net, especially ones associated with Ubuntu. There is a large community of developers there that have specifically signed up to mentor certain bugs.