Communicating and getting help

Fedora has a strong community that is ready to help you. Because users and contributors span the globe, a key element to the project is communication. IRC, mailing lists, and forums provide quick and easy ways to communicate.

Interacting with the Community

Make sure that you understand and follow our guidelines before you start communicating with others in the Fedora community. Some basic guidelines can be found in the Mailing List Guidelines and the IRC How-To.

Helping Yourself

Before seeking help from others, please take a little time to review the huge variety of self-help resources that are available. Check out the Fedora Documentation and FAQs. If you are already using Fedora, man and info pages provide a lot of useful information. You can access these by using the man and info commands. For example, to use man to learn about yum, you would use:

man yum

Press q to quit.

To read the info pages on gcc, you can use:

info gcc

Press q to quit.

There are a number of other documents available on your system under the documentation folder at /usr/share/doc/. The rpm command provides an option to list all of the documentation associated with a particular package. As an example, to list all of the documents available from the "coreutils" package, you can use:

rpm -qd coreutils

While these commands work from a terminal, other easy-to-use tools are also available. Check the menus for your desktop and programs. Don't forget to check the Fedora Documentation.

Providing Feedback to Developers

If you believe you have found a bug or would like to suggest enhancements, use the Bugzilla bug tracking system.

More information is available on the Bugs and feature requests page.

The users mailing list is the place for most questions.

Development discussions happen in the Fedora development mailing list, devel, and we encourage community users and developers interested in Fedora to participate there. You can post in this list for development-related discussions that are not straight-forward bug reports or feature requests. This is not a suitable place to ask general questions. If you are using a test release or the development version of Fedora, post feedback to the test mailing list and bug reports to Bugzilla. Developers do not usually follow discussions in end-user sources since they are high-traffic and not as efficient as a tracker like Bugzilla. For other mailing list options, see Mailing Lists below.

Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are special email addresses which send email to all users who have subscribed to them. Sending an email to a mailing list reaches all users interested in discussing a specific topic and users who are available to help other users with that topic.

To subscribe to a mailing list, follow the appropriate link below and fill out the subscription form, or send an email message to <listname>-request@lists.fedoraproject.org (replace <listname> with the desired mailing list name, such as users) with only the word subscribe in the subject. The mailing lists are hosted at https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo.

If you are using the mailing lists and see a post that is off-topic, you can direct the user to the PostIsOffTopic page, which will provide them with information to guide them in list selection in the future. Please do not be unnecessarily rude, as it hurts Fedora when you offend other users.

NOTE
Certain etiquette is required to help mailing lists work efficiently and smoothly. See the Mailing list guidelines for specific points to follow while using Fedora Project mailing lists.

User Mailing Lists

• users - General discussion and community assistance for users of Fedora releases. If you want help with a problem installing or using Fedora, this is the list for you.
• announce - Announcements of Fedora changes and events. To stay aware of major Fedora news, subscribe to this list.
• classroom - Discussion, Ideas, feedback, planning and announcement of Fedora IRC Classroom sessions.
• package-announce - Announcements of Fedora Package Updates for potentially all Fedora sub-projects. See announcement to learn how to setup filters.
• laptop - For users of laptops running Fedora.
• test - For testers of Fedora test releases. If you would like to discuss experiences using Fedora TEST releases, this is the list for you.
• livecd - For discussion of Fedora Live CD efforts.
• virt - For discussion about virtualization in Fedora.
• virt-tools - Discussions and development for virt-manager, virt-viewer, virt-install, virt-clone, virt-image and virt-convert.
• libguestfs - Discussions and development for libguestfs, guestfish, virt-inspector, and associated tools.
• xen - For discussion about Xen virtualization in Fedora.
• selinux - For discussions about the Fedora SELinux Project.
• games - For discussions about games for Fedora.
• women - For the women that use and contribute to Fedora.
• xfce - For users of the Fedora Xfce Spin.
• lxde - For users of the Fedora Lxde Spin.

Contributors Mailing Lists

• devel-announce - Announcements for developers, no discussions.
• devel - For developers, developers, developers. If you are interested in helping create Fedora releases, this is the list for you.
• packaging - Packaging Committee discussions and questions or clarifications on packaging in Fedora.
• advisory-board - Fedora Advisory Board list discussions. Anyone is free to join the list and participate.
• scm-commits - For CVS change notifications of all Fedora packages. Fedora package maintainers are encouraged to subscribe to this.
• desktop - For discussions about desktop development issues such as user interfaces and usability
• security-commits - Commit messages about changes in fedora-security module
• docs - For participants of the Documentation Project
• docs-commits - For CVS change notifications from the FDP repository. Documentation contributors are encouraged to subscribe to this
• security - For discussions about public issues related to security in Fedora.
• design-team - For participants of the Fedora Design Team (formerly the Fedora Artwork Project; old archives located here)
• websites - For contributors to official Fedora websites and interested Community websites administrators
• perl-devel - For discussions about packages relating to the perl programming language
• php-devel - For discussions about packages relating to the php programming language
• python-devel - For discussions about packages relating to the Python programming language
• java-devel - For discussions about Java-related Fedora development
• fonts - For discussions on fonts and other Fedora text rendering components
• fonts-bugs - Automated issue tracking on fonts and other Fedora text rendering components
• ambassadors - Fedora Ambassadors discussions.
• marketing - For discussions about marketing and expanding the Fedora user base
• infrastructure - For participants of the Infrastructure Project
• buildsys - Discussion of Fedora build system
• triage - Discussion about bug maintenance in Fedora
• music - For discussions about integrating open music and professional audio base in Fedora
• i18n - For discussions about the internationalization of Fedora
• trans - For discussions about translating the software and documentation associated with the Fedora Project
• legal - For public discussions about legal issues affecting Fedora.
• scitech - For discussion between scientific and technical users.
• spins - The Spin Special Interest Group mailing list, Low-traffic list

Architecture Specific Mailing Lists

• sparc - For discussions about supporting Fedora on the SPARC architecture and platforms
• arm - For discussions about supporting Fedora on the ARM architecture and platforms
• ia64 - For discussion about supporting Fedora on the ia64 architecture and platforms
• s390x - For discussion about supporting Fedora on the s390x architecture and platforms

International Lists

• india - For Fedora Indian Users and Contributors
• br-users - For discussions about Fedora in the Brazilian Portuguese language
• de-users - For discussions about Fedora in the German language
• es-users - For discussions about Fedora in the Spanish language
• cs-users - For discussions about Fedora in the Czech and Slovak language
• bangladesh-users - For Fedora Bangladeshi Users and Contributors
• embajadores-fedora-latam - Latin American Fedora Ambassadors
• fedora-ja-list - For discussions about Fedora in the Japanese language
• See Also: http://fedora.jp/mailman/listinfo/users
• lb-users - For Fedora Users and Contributors in Lebanon
• my-users - For Malaysian Fedora Users and Contributors
• fedora-philippines For Filipino Fedora Users and Contributors (NOT FOUND)
• fedora-softcatalà - For discussions about Fedora in Catalan language
• fa-community For Persian Fedora Users and Contributors
• chinese For discussions about Fedora in the Chinese language

Fedora L10N Teams Mailing Lists

• Arabic: trans-ar
• Assamese: trans-as
• Balochi: trans-bal
• Bengali: trans-bn
• Bengali India: trans-bn_in
• Bulgarian: trans-bg
• French: trans-fr
• German: trans-de
• Greek: trans-el
• Hindi: trans-hi
• Italian: trans-it
• Japanese: trans-ja
• Korean: trans-ko
• Persian: trans-fa
• Polish: trans-pl
• Portuguese: trans-pt
• Brazilian Portuguese: trans-pt_br
• Russian: trans-ru
• Serbian: trans-sr
• Slovak: trans-sk
• Spanish: trans-es
• Simplified Chinese: trans-zh_cn
• Traditional Chinese: trans-zh_tw
• Ukrainian: trans-uk

Searching Mailing Lists

• See Communicate/MailingListGuidelines#searchit

IRC

IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a real-time, text-based form of communication. You can have conversations with multiple people in an open channel or chat with someone privately one-on-one.

To talk to other Fedora Project participants, log onto the freenode IRC network.

NOTE
You may be required to register your user nickname (nick) and identify with that nick. Otherwise, you may not be able to join or be heard on the IRC channel. There is a page describing how to register your nick at freenode.net.

WARNING
Some of the Fedora channels ban users that are logged into their system as root. Make sure that you are logged into your system as a normal user and that any ident server you may have running is accurately reporting your username.

To learn how to use IRC, refer to the IRC Tutorial at irchelp.org and IRC HowTo.

User Help

• #fedora - General chat for all Fedora Project participants
• #fedora-eol - End User Support for end of life Fedora versions.
• #fedora-desktop - Fedora desktop discussions (on irc.gnome.org)

Administration

• #fedora-admin - Chat related to Fedora Infrastructure, not end-user discussions
• #fedora-board-meeting - Moderated room for public Fedora Project Board meetings
• #fedora-board-public - Unmoderated room for public Fedora Project Board meetings. Ask your questions here to see them discussed during a meeting.
• #fedora-meeting - Channel used by different Fedora groups and sub-projects for meetings.
• #fedora-meeting-1 - Channel used by different Fedora groups and sub-projects for meetings.
• #fedora-meeting-2 - Channel used by different Fedora groups and sub-projects for meetings.
• #fedora-ops - Administrative chat for all Fedora Channel Operators

Projects and SIGS

• #fedora-ambassadors - Chat related to Fedora Ambassadors Project, not end-user discussions
• #fedora-arm - Fedora on the ARM architecture
• #fedora-art - Chat specifically related to Fedora Artwork, not end-user discussions
• #fedora-astronomy - Chat specifically related to Fedora Astronomy project
• #fedora-audio - Chat specifically related to audio and podcasting on Fedora
• #fedora-bugzappers - Fedora Bugzappers
• #fedora-devel - Chat specifically related to Fedora development, not end-user discussions
• #fedora-docs - Chat specifically related to Fedora Documentation, not end-user discussions
• #fedora-ds - Fedora Directory Server
• #fedora-games - Chat specifically related to anything about games in Fedora
• #fedora-haskell - The Haskell programming language in Fedora
• #fedora-i18n - Fedora internationalization
• #fedora-java - The Open Source Java platform in Fedora
• #fedora-kde - Chat related to KDE in Fedora
• #fedora-mentors - Chat to help new and potential Fedora contributors get started, not end-user discussions
• #fedora-mini - Chat related to a slim Fedora spin based on Moblin
• #fedora-mktg - Chat specifically related to Fedora Marketing, not end-user discussions
• #fedora-ppc - Fedora on the PowerPC architecture
• #fedora-python - Python languages discussions in Fedora
• #fedora-qa - Fedora Quality Assurance discussions (Please report bugs through Bugzilla , not here)
• #fedora-s390x - Fedora on the s390x architecture
• #fedora-sage - Chat specifically related to the packaging of Sage(math) in Fedora, not end-user discussions
• #fedora-science - Chat related to the Science and Technology SIG
• #fedora-security - Discussion on Fedora Security Topics
• #fedora-selinux - Fedora SELinux development
• #fedora-server - Fedora Server discussion
• #fedora-usability - Fedora Usability discussions
• #fedora-websites - Chat specifically related to Fedora Websites, not end-user discussions

Other fun stuff

• #fedora-nightlife - Fedora Nightlife grid computing
• #fedora-social - The appropriate channel for non-Fedora discussions
• #fedora-women - Chat forum for women in the Fedora Community

International

• #fedora-l10n - Fedora Localization (Translation)
• #fedora-cn - Fedora discussions in Chinese (Both simplified and tranditional)
• #fedora-br - Fedora discussions in Brazilian Portuguese
• #fedora-de - Fedora discussions in German
• #fedora-ee - Fedora discussions in Estonian
• #fedora-es - Fedora discussions in Spanish
• #fedora-fi - Fedora discussions in Finnish
• #fedora-fr - Welcome on the French-speaking channel of Fedora
• #fedora-trans-fr - Fedora translation in French
• #fedora-bangladesh - Fedora discussions in Bangladesh
• #fedora-india - Fedora India discussions
• #fedora-ir - Fedora discussions in Persian (کانال فارسی)
• #fedora-it - Fedora discussions in Italian
• #fedora-jp - Fedora discussions in Japanese
• #fedora-latam - Latin American Fedora Ambassadors discussions
• #fedora-lb - Fedora discussions in Lebanon (may be Arabic or English)
• #fedora-newmexico - Fedora discussions in New Mexico, USA
• #fedora-nl - Fedora discussions in Dutch
• #fedora-pakistan - Fedora discussions in Pakistan
• #fedora-pl - Fedora discussions in Polish
• #fedora-pt - Fedora discussions in Portuguese
• #fedora-ro - Fedora discussions in Romanian
• #fedora-russian - Fedora discussions in Russian
• #fedora-cs - Fedora discussions in Slovak and Czech
• #fedora-tw - Fedora discussions in Chinese (Tranditional)
• #fedora-ve - Fedora discussions for users from Venezuela
• #fedora-nepal - Fedora discussions for users from Nepal
• #fedora-uk - Fedora discussions for users from United Kingdom

Several projects are large enough to have their own channels. Individual project channels, IRC server, and channel information are also found on the project pages. See the Projects list.

FAQs

• FAQs-IRC - Frequently asked questions about IRC

Collaboration tool

The text collaboration tool called Gobby can help you to collaborate with other Fedora contributors.

Forums

Forums provide Fedora users with an easy way to get help for any issue that may arise. Most of the forums are extremely active and provide structured access to a number of knowledgeable and helpful Fedora users.

fedoraforum.org is an independent community website and not hosted or affiliated to Fedora Project or Red Hat. It is a platform for users to help each other. Other forums are also available:

• linuxforums.org
• linuxquestions.org

Community Websites

There are many great community websites beyond the Fedora Project that may be of interest to you.

See the Community Websites page.