Allegheny Activism And Fedora

Getting Started with IRC

For the next four weeks, we'll be using IRC as part of our classroom communications. There are two channels you'll want to make use of:

• #fedora-mktg is where the Fedora project marketing team hangs out.
• #allegheny is where we will hang out.

To get started with IRC, you'll want to do the following:

1. Download and install Pidgin.
2. Set up Pidgin for use with IRC. This blog post should help. Ask for help if you get stuck, or team up with a friend to figure this out.
3. Choose a username. Mine is jadudm. You might choose something related to your own username, or something else entirely. (Remember, it is how people will recognize you online.)
4. In Pidgin, choose "Join a Chat" from the "Conversation" menu. It will let you choose a channel to join. I chose #allegheny.
5. See who is in the chat and say "hi".
6. Talk to us a bit about where you are with your project. Fill us in. We'll ask some questions.

Normal IRC etiquette does not demand that you say "hi" as you enter an IRC chat room. There may be 100+ people there, and you don't need to announce your presence. However, in this particular case, the channel #allegheny is probably just "us," so that's a good "safe" place to experiment with things.

After you've said "hi," do the following while you're still there and can ask us for help:

1. While you're there, register your IRC nickname. This means you have to type:
   1. /msg nickserv register <your-password> <your-email> (For example, I used a rather bogus password that I can remember easily (but isn't my email password), and my email address.) You'll get an email that contains an IRC command you need to copy-paste... go look for it.
   2. Next, type /msg nickserv set hidemail on to make sure your email address remains anonymous.

Things to Read

• [April 1, 2010] Mel wrote a blog post introducing you to the Fedora "planet." That is, the aggregator for lots of weblogs about Fedora. We have one as well, as you may recall: the act.ivism pulse.