# A personal knowledge repo that doubles as a link farm for Chinese mirrors > ryan4yin/knowledge is a bilingual title, Chinese only content repository that collects notes on Kubernetes, cloud native operations, embedded boards, homelab hardware, programming languages, music and blockchain, plus a curated list of Chinese mirror sites and reading lists. It is CC-BY-SA-4.0 licensed, one release from 2022, and the author says plainly it is for personal reference and is not a tutorial. **ryan4yin/knowledge** — (Chinese Only)Everything I know: DevOps & CloudNative, Linux, Embedded, Homelab, Music, Blockchain, AI, etc... - Repository: https://github.com/ryan4yin/knowledge - Stars: 543 · Forks: 56 - Language: Jupyter Notebook - License: CC-BY-SA-4.0 - Published: 2026-10-22 · Updated: 2026-10-22 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/ryan4yin-knowledge ## A notebook for one person, published as a repository The repository is described in one line as a personal knowledge base, mainly for the author's own reference. The follow-on statement is the one that should shape your expectations: it is not a tutorial, and correctness is not guaranteed. That framing is unusual and useful, because it tells you what kind of artefact you are looking at. This is a working notebook, not a course, and the value is in the curation rather than in the exposition. The contents are listed in rough order of how much content each area has. The largest section is cloud native operations, and it breaks into Kubernetes ecosystem notes on deployment, configuration and components, networking for both Kubernetes clusters and Linux, notes on AWS, GCP and Aliyun usage, telemetry with Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring, ELK and Loki for logs and tracing, and CI/CD with Jenkins, GitLab CI and Argo Workflows. The second area is electronics engineering, described as a recent strong interest, and it covers playing with various chips and boards including Raspberry Pi, RK3588, STM32 and ESP32, projects such as drones, smart cars, robot arms and robots, operating systems with Linux, NixOS and KVM virtualisation, and a homelab section that records hardware configuration, network topology, purchase dates, purchase channels and prices, PVE cluster work, what the compute is used for such as K3s, distributed monitoring, Home Assistant and NAS, and openwrt router work. After that come programming language notes for Go, Python, C and Rust, music theory, harmonica and flute, voice synthesis and arrangement in Reaper, blockchain and distributed systems, machine learning and deep learning, which the author notes has apparently not started, and everything else. ## The directory names are the index There is no separate table of contents, and the reason is given directly: the folder structure is the document directory, so no extra index is listed. The top level of the repository shows how wide that is. Alongside the named sections above there are directories for 3D graphics and modeling, AI and data science, acoustics, algorithm, astrophotography, blockchain, china, cloud provider, computer science, config management, container, datastore, devops, diving, drawing, dsp, electrical engineering, filesystem, frontend, gamedev, games, git, homelab, infrastructure, kubernetes, languages, linux, math, multimedia, music, natural language, network, neuroscience, os, other, pl, psychology, swimming, telemetry, testing and trading. The primary language of the repository is listed as Jupyter Notebook, which tells you the notes are written as notebooks rather than as prose files, and the topics list container, devops, devops notes, embedded, kubernetes, linux, music and sre. There is also a Notes.md at the top level and a CNAME file, and the repository has a .prettierrc.yaml, a .prettierignore and a .typos.toml, so there is some formatting and spell checking applied. A flake.nix and flake.lock are present, which suggests the notes are also built or reproducible through Nix. One release tag exists, v1.0.0 from 2022-10-11, and the last push was on 2026-07-31. The repository is not archived, so the notes are still being added to even though the versioning stopped. ## The mirror section, which is the part with a shelf life The first substantive section of the readme is about mirrors and download acceleration, and it is the part of the repository most likely to have decayed. The reasoning given is that for various reasons you often need to set a mirror source for systems, applications and package managers to speed up downloads. Five mirror sites are listed with the author's own assessment of each. Aliyun's open source mirror is described as feeling like the fastest in China for downloads, and it provides ubuntu, debian, centos and alpine alongside pypi and goproxy mirrors, so it is the most complete of the list. Tsinghua's source is described as very complete and updated promptly, but slower than Aliyun and sometimes down for maintenance. The Beijing Foreign Studies University mirror is called a sister site of the Tsinghua one, and the author's note is that because fewer people use it, it feels much faster than the Tsinghua source. That is the recommendation the section ends on: the BFSU mirror first, as stable, reliable and fast. The University of Science and Technology of China mirror is also complete and updated quickly, but less stable, with a higher frequency of maintenance stops, and the note mentions that it recently took a pypi mirror offline for funding reasons. The Tencent mirror is described as newly launched and not yet used by the author. That level of detail, including the funding problem and the maintenance windows, is the kind of thing that is genuinely hard to find elsewhere, and also the kind of thing that dates quickly. A mirror that was taken down for funding reasons can be taken down again. ## Tool selection and reading lists, not explanations The DevOps and SRE section opens with a tool selection pointer: in that field you can basically refer directly to the CNCF cloud native project catalogue. Then there is a set of curated reading lists, grouped by what they are good for. For computer science self study there are two repositories, one a personal collection of courses from around the world and one the well known ossu computer-science list. For low-level systems, a personal blog of notes on CSAPP is linked. For systematic SRE and DevOps documentation there are four: school-of-sre from LinkedIn, devops-exercises, test-your-sysadmin-skills and sdn-handbook, plus docker_practice. For SRE and DevOps article collections there are four more, including a stability engineering knowledge base built for the Chinese context, awesome-scalability, awesome-sre and an Aliyun container service favourites list. For distributed system design the links are awesome-scalability again, the ddia repository, and the system-design-primer. And for company and team blogs across different directions there are two, the Alibaba Cloud intelligent infrastructure team and the Meituan technical team. The overall shape is a link farm with a Chinese bias and a point of view, which is what a personal notes repository is for. The links are the value, and the curation tells you which ones the author actually read. ## Teamwork books, and the older generation of programmers Two sections are worth reading for what they reveal about the author's approach. The teamwork section is framed around a stated goal: learning how to collaborate efficiently and improve throughput, with fewer hours and higher quality output. Six books are listed with a short note on each. Domain-driven design is first, with event storming named as the method. The Mythical Man-Month is second, then The Pragmatic Programmer, then Peopleware, then a book on difficult conversations with the note that you must keep the other party's sense of safety in mind and always remember the purpose of the conversation. Refactoring is last. The section on older generation programmers is two links, one of them a collection of musings by Ji Jianqiang, the founder of Geek Time, and the other a blog post on ten years of writing. There is also a short working methods section with a single entry, a Geek Time course on the working habits of a ten-times programmer, and a section on article reposting tools with two recommendations: a GitHub tool that converts a sheet or table pasted from a spreadsheet into Markdown automatically, and turndown, which converts a whole HTML page to Markdown, with the caveat that its table support appears to have problems. That last caveat is a good example of the character of the whole repository. The notes record what worked and what did not, including the failures. ## CC BY-SA, a blog, and a stated intent to move Two things about the future of the repository are stated in the readme. The first is that, to make maintenance easier, the content of this repository may be reorganised and polished once it is complete and then published on the author's blog, and that here only a link will be kept. So the repository is described as a staging area whose contents will eventually move. The second is the licence. Ryan Yin's Knowledge is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, with a LICENSE.md at the root. A share-alike licence on a notes repository means the notes can be reused and adapted, including commercially, provided the derivative carries the same licence and attributes the author. That is a deliberate choice for a personal knowledge base, and it is worth noticing what it permits. A personal knowledge repo licensed CC BY-SA can be forked, translated, restructured and republished, which for a Chinese-language personal notebook is a reasonable thing to want, particularly given the author's stated plan to publish polished versions on a blog anyway. The last push was on 2026-07-31, the single release tag is v1.0.0 from 2022-10-11, and the repository is not archived. There is an AGENTS.md in the root, which suggests the notes are maintained with some kind of assistant tooling, and the .typos.toml indicates spell checking is configured for the content. ## Conclusion Adopt this repository as a pointer list if you read Chinese and want a curated set of mirror sources, DevOps reading lists and homelab references without assembling your own. Do not adopt it as a learning resource in English, since the content is Chinese only and the author states it is not a tutorial and does not guarantee correctness. Before you rely on anything in it, check three things: whether the mirror recommendations still hold, since several of the notes record downtime and maintenance problems at the time of writing, whether the upstream links are still alive, since a list of links decays faster than a list of notes, and whether the subject area is one you already understand, because the entries are pointers rather than explanations. ## FAQ ### What is ryan4yin/knowledge? A personal knowledge base, mainly for the author's own reference, written in Chinese. The author states it is not a tutorial and that correctness is not guaranteed, and it covers cloud native operations, electronics engineering, homelab work, programming languages, music, blockchain and machine learning notes. ### Which Chinese mirror sites does the knowledge repository recommend? Five are listed: Aliyun, Tsinghua, the Beijing Foreign Studies University, the University of Science and Technology of China, and Tencent, each with a note on speed, completeness and stability. The recommendation at the end of the section is the Beijing Foreign Studies University mirror as stable, reliable and fast. ### Does the knowledge repository have an index of its notes? No separate index, because the folder structure is the document directory. The top level holds around fifty directories including kubernetes, linux, homelab, container, devops, telemetry, languages, music and blockchain, and the primary language of the repository is listed as Jupyter Notebook. ### What licence does the Ryan Yin knowledge repository use? CC BY-SA 4.0, recorded in LICENSE.md at the root of the repository. The content is also expected to be reorganised and polished into posts on the author's blog, with the repository keeping only a link, and the last push was on 2026-07-31. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/ryan4yin/knowledge/issues) - [License: CC-BY-SA-4.0](https://github.com/ryan4yin/knowledge/blob/master/LICENSE) - [README](https://github.com/ryan4yin/knowledge/blob/master/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/ryan4yin/knowledge/releases) - [ryan4yin/knowledge on GitHub](https://github.com/ryan4yin/knowledge) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/ryan4yin-knowledge