where to get help?

[Jensen Somers]

Hi,

clement wrote:
> I'm fairly new to the ubuntu community even though I have been using 
> ubuntu for some time now. I found out that there is numerous good 
> places where users can get cummunity support from, mainly:
> - help.ubuntu.com
> - this mailing list
> - ubuntuforums.org
> - answers.launchpad.net
> - irc.freenode.net
> When it comes to asking a question, I'm sometimes not sure where to 
> ask: here, IRC, forums, launchpad... Are there some recommendations? 
> Would be interesting to hear what others are doing.
Both IRC and the Ubuntu forums are crowded with people and might result 
in a faster response than any other support channel. Launchpad answers 
and the mailing list tend to have more concrete solutions sometimes but 
less people use them. Personally, I don't like the forums. They are over 
crowded and the same question can be asked 20 times on a single page, 
people don't seem to be able to use the search functionality anymore and 
you sometimes don't get the correct answers. The benefit of Launchpad is 
that it's tied nicely with the bug tracker so if your question regards a 
bug it can easily be converted into a bug report or linked to other bug 
reports.

Both the Ubuntu wiki and the forums are filled with how-to tutorials 
where people explain in a fairly easy way how to do something.

So, if you are having a problem with Ubuntu, first try to search the 
forum's, Launchpad, the mailing lists or Google to see if anyone else 
had a similar problem. If not, it depends how severe and how difficult 
the issue is. The more severe/difficult, try Launchpad or the mailing 
lists, the more common, try IRC or the forums. If you need help on how 
to do something (e.g.: set up a parallel mono development environment), 
check the forums or the Ubuntu wiki for a how-to. Or Google, there's 
always Google with tons of tutorials on different websites.

Also, it ain't bad to post the same issue on different support channels 
(e.g.: the mailing lists and the forums) but, when you receive a correct 
solution to your issue, try to post the solution on every support 
channel you asked your question on, it might, save other people using 
the same issue.

- Jensen