From Fedora Project Wiki

Revision as of 18:52, 22 November 2008 by Pfrields (talk | contribs) (Communicate moved to Communicating and getting help: Searchable page name)

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/docs/. 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 . You can find information about printed books about Fedora and Linux on the Books page.

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 BugsAndFeatureRequests page.

The fedora-list mailing list is the place for most questions.

Development discussions happen in the Fedora development mailing list, fedora-devel-list , 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 a 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 fedora-test-list mailing list and bug reports to Bugzilla . Developers do not usually follow discussions in fedora-list or other 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@redhat.com (replace <listname> with the desired mailing list name, such as fedora-list) with only the word subscribe in the subject. The mailing lists are hosted at http://www.redhat.com/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 (PostIsOffTopic), 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

  • fedora-announce-list - Announcements of Fedora changes and events. To stay aware of major Fedora news, subscribe to this list.
  • fedora-package-announce - Announcements of Fedora Package Updates for potentially all Fedora sub-projects. See announcement to learn how to setup filters.
  • fedora-list - For users of Fedora releases. If you want help with a problem installing or using Fedora, this is the list for you.
  • fedora-laptop-list - For users of laptops running Fedora.
  • fedora-test-list - For testers of Fedora test releases. If you would like to discuss experiences using Fedora TEST releases, this is the list for you.
  • fedora-livecd-list - For discussion of Fedora Live CD efforts
  • fedora-xen - For discussion about Xen virtualization in Fedora
  • fedora-selinux-list - For discussions about the Fedora SELinux Project
  • fedora-games-list - For discussions about games for Fedora
  • fedora-women-list - For the women that use and contribute to Fedora

Contributors Mailing Lists

Architecture Specific Mailing Lists

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

International Lists

Fedora L10N Teams Mailing Lists

Searching Mailing Lists

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 .


  • #fedora-admin - Chat related to Fedora Infrastructure, not end-user discussions
  • #fedora-ambassadors - Chat related to Fedora Ambassadors Project, not end-user discussions
  • #fedora-art - Chat specifically related to Fedora Artwork, not end-user discussions
  • #fedora-devel - Chat specifically related to Fedora development, not end-user discussions
  • #fedora-kde - Chat related to KDE in Fedora
  • #fedora-docs - Chat specifically related to Fedora Documentation, not end-user discussions
  • #fedora-mentors - Chat to help new and potential Fedora contributors get started, not end-user discussions
  • #fedora-mktg - Chat specifically related to Fedora Marketing, not end-user discussions
  • #fedora-sage - Chat specifically related to the packaging of Sage(math) in Fedora, not end-user discussions
  • #fedora-qa - Fedora Quality Assurance discussions (Please report bugs through Bugzilla , not here)
  • #fedora-websites - Chat specifically related to Fedora Websites, 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.


Also, at irc.gnome.org:

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.

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 of getting help on any issues 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 the forum endorsed by the Fedora Project. It is meant to allow users to help each other. Other forums are also available:

Community Websites

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

See the CommunityWebsites page.

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