General rules
This is a G-Rated channel. We're a family channel and as such you should assume that your language should be kept in tune with your average G-Rated movie.
Please be polite and courteous at all times. Avoid saying
anything which may be offensive to other users. Text conversation is abit
different from normal conversation, it's often hard to know if you're kidding
or not and so things might be taken the wrong way.
Linux advocacy isn't about bashing all non open source
software. There are going to be people that run other products, don't insult
them by making fun of what they run. There is no multi-million dollar marketing
scheme behind Linux, the Linux users are the sole representation of it --
make us look good.
Avoid the use of "annoyance" attributes. These are attributes
that make the text bold, italic, underlined, colored etc. Not all IRC programs
support these tags and they're often hard on the eyes or distracting. You'll
probably get kicked rather fast if you use them anyways. Don't "flood" the screen with multiple lines of text at
once, (more than 4 lines at a time is considered a flood). If you have something
long to say either rephrase it or try to fit it all in one message. It can
be very annoying when what you were reading suddenly scrolls 10 lines up
the screen rather quickly. #linuxhelp rules
We get a lot of questions asked, and it can
get busy and confusing in there fast, to ensure that your question gets answered
quickly we ask that you follow a few simple rules:
Support is provided by fellow Linux users on a volunteer
basis, we may not have all the answers. We learn to fix these problems from
our own experiences, It's difficult for us to answer questions for hardware
and software we've never used. It's easier if you tell us what the problem
you're having with the piece of software or hardware is rather than going
around asking if anyone has a lot of experience with it. Also, remember that
different users are on at different times depending on the time zone they
live in, if you aren't able to get an answer to your question try again in
2-4 hours. We ask that you've at least attempted to fix the problem
yourself. What this means is that you should be at least somewhat familiar
with the programs and terms involved in the problem so we don't have to spend
all our time going over them. The channel can become very busy, the more
time we spend explaining the terminology the less time that leaves for explaining
how to deal with the problem. We are not a software repository, if you're trying to find
an application or module to support a piece of hardware please check http://freshmeat.net/, http://sourceforge.net/search/ or http://google.com/linux first.
If your problem involves an error message be sure to have
the exact text (character for character) written down ahead of time. If your
error message is lengthy please ask people to join #flood, and paste it there.
If you have a question to a particular person please prefix
the message with the person's nickname and a : (colon) which makes it easier
for us to know who you're referring to. On a somewhat related note we'd appreciate
if you kept your nick simple as we'll be typing it each time we address you.
If you have something to ask of the channel you might have
to wait for the conversation to die down abit and ask your question then.
It's almost certain that you won't get an answer right away. Often times
we're abit to busy typing explanations to be able to even acknowledge the
question, but that doesn't mean that we didn't see your question or that
you should repeat it -- simply wait. If more than 15 minutes or so has gone
by with no response it's possible that we missed your question and you may
ask again. Please do not message (/msg) specific persons looking for
answers, if they're around they will see your question. The exception to
this rule is info, our automated response 'infobot'. info and google are bots, a program parses all messages
sent to them and generates a response. Info is able to answer questions written
in plain english such as "Where do I find gnome?" and generate a response,
Google on the other hand takes whatever you message it as keywords and returns
the results of a google.com web search of those keywords. Please refrain
from asking these bots questions in the channel, use a private message instead
(/msg). If your question is taking a lot of time to answer you
may be asked to hold abit while we answer other questions or ask again some
other time. This is to ensure that everyone gets a chance for their questions,
plus the fact that there may be someone more knowledgeable at a later time.
Illegal activities, warez, porn, mp3 trading, hax0r activity and
various types of antisocial behavior are all off-topic and _will_ result in
your being banned from the channel.
We do reserve the right to kick and ban at our discretion
if we feel a user is abusing the service we offer. We do not provide support
for operating systems other than Linux. Be polite, if you get your problem solved thank the people that helped you.
Want to know how to ask a smart question? Read this.
#linuxhelp is composed of mostly english speaking users and most of the ops only speak english. For this reason we request that you ask your questions in english. If you need help in another language, ask if someone can help you in that language and go to a private channel for the conversation.