Communication channels

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The primary OLPC communication channels are mailing lists, IRC channels, and discussion forums.

Mailing lists

see also Community mailing lists See also blogs for a list of OLPC related blogs and feeds.

The full list of mailing lists is at http://lists.laptop.org. Sometimes they multiply when one isn't watching.

Lists can be searched with google.

Starting a list

The best way to start a new mailing list is to begin a discussion on a related list that already exists, and once the discussion becomes active, to ask for a separate list for that topic or that sort of traffic. Then create a page here about the list you want to start, with a brief description. Finally, add a link from this page and leave a note for sj or ivan.

Public lists

General announcements Community-news Weekly community news Devel-machines OLPC Developer Machine mailing list (for people with development machines) General discussion Olpc-open General OLPC community discussion and chit-chat Grassroots A mailing list connecting all the local communities Research Research related to OLPC Country discussions Argentina [no description available] Brasil OLPC in Brasil Egypt-opensource Discussion of open source in Egypt India OLPC in India Nigeria-opensource Discussion of open source in Nigeria Peru [no description available] Accessibility and other end-use issues Accessibility Issues around policy: especially privacy, security, and information-flow (as of Jan. '08, appears only to be a spam-infested swamp)

Software and content development Devel Software development mailing list Sugar Discussion of OLPC design, desktop platform and user experience Etoys Discussion of the Etoys multi-media authoring environment on OLPC Library OLPC content discussions Games Games for the OLPC Localization Localization the OLPC project Hardware and other tech discussions Security OLPC Security Discussion linux-mm-cc Compressed Caching for Linux Networking Networking the OLPC world Technical announcements Bugs OLPC bugtracker mail Commits-kernel Commits list for OLPC kernel; (rumoured to exist. deprecated?) Devel-boards OLPC Developer Machine mailing list (deprecated) Hardware-announce (rumoured to exist, deprecated.)

Chat

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Most OLPC chat takes place on IRC (that's Internet Relay Chat). See also the older IRC page.

IRC

IRC is mainly designed for group communication in discussion 'channels', but allows for personal chat and data transfer as well.

The OLPC Community uses a series of channels in the irc.freenode.net and irc.oftc.net networks. Check {{User irc}} to see how to register your participation in the IRC channels within the wiki, and to find the category where users are registered.

irc.freenode.net channels

General:
#olpc-help	Community help. If you need help using your XO, and you haven't asked anywhere else: try here first.
#olpc	Contact point for all things olpc, and the core hardware development team's own channel. Picture a room where the knowledgeable core people are hard at work. It is a good place for authoritative answers, but people may be out, or too busy to respond, or don't want interruptions at the moment. Consider going to #olpc-help first.
#olpc-content	content related matters and general discussion.
#olpc-meeting	OLPC meeting, developer's meeting room
#sugar	Sugar development.
Primary Community Channels
#olpc-groups	Global channel for all local communities (no language barriers)
Secondary Community Channels
#olpc-es	Spanish language channel
#olpc-pt	Portugese language channel
#olpc-europe	Regional discussions for Europe

irc.oftc.net channels

• #olpc-devel — for core systems and other development, now that #olpc is truly becoming a general discussion channel
• #schoolserver — dedicated to the School server
• #debian-olpc — dedicated to porting Debian to the XO

other channels

How to use irc channels

1. Visit the Live Web Chat If that doesn't work, try ircatwork, with nickname: (whatever you like), server: irc.freenode.net, and channel: #olpc-help (or whatever other channel you're trying to get into).
2. Some helpful resources are here, and this tutorial, which also includes basic commands.
3. Learn about IRC etiquette. Try here, here, or here.
4. Review the software client list. Pick one, download, install. A good all-around choice is Xchat, which works on both Linux and Windows; Linuxchix has a good tutorial.
   • For IRC on your XO, install the latest XoIRC activity.
5. Connect to to the above channels, and say hello. (To do this, choose irc.freenode.net as your server, and then /join a channel... if you're new to IRC, the #olpc-help channel is probably the place you want to go first).
6. Note OLPC growing pains.

Other chat services

If there are any Skype, AIM, or other chatrooms about OLPC, please list them here.

Forums

There are a number of active OLPC forums, including

• http://olpc.osuosl.org, run by Michael Burns and the OSU OSL team
• http://olpcnews.com/forum/ (infrequented by developers)
• http://olpchelp.org - Where OLPC users come for help