Communication channels

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.

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

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.
#sugar	Sugar development.
#olpc-content	content related matters and general discussion.
#schoolserver	Note: irc.oftc.net
#olpc-meeting	OLPC meeting, developer's meeting room
Primary Community Channels
#olpc-groups	Global channel for all local communities
Secondary Community Channels, Channels by language — Usually following #olpc-xx (where xx is a language code).
#olpc-es	Spanish language channel. Mostly OLPC Spanish America.
#olpc-europe	Regional discussions for Europe
Other channels (less frequented)
#olpcaustria	German language channel. OLPC Austria meets here.
#olpc-peru	Peru and OLPC Spanish America subjects (most likely to be in Spanish)
#olpc-brasil	Brazil (note the spelling with the 's' - português)
#olpc-co	Colombia
#olpc-nl	the Netherlands
#olpc-pakistan	Pakistan
#olpcph	Philippines @ irc.freenode.net
#olpc-ro	Romania
#olpc-za	South Africa

defunct and experimental channels

• #olpc-ko - Korea
• #olpc-philippines || [3] @ irc.oftc.net
• #olpc-wiki — geared towards issues or subjects relative to the wiki itself (Created around 20 June.)
• #olpc-l10n — has Localization as its focus (Created around 20 June.) — dropped in october due to low traffic and overlap with #olpc-content
• #OLPC-Dictionary — related to the omegawiki.org children's dictionary for the olpc. Inactive, though MartinMai has been active again recently
• #tam_tam — TamTam Inactive?
• #olpc-de inactive?

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

How to use irc channels

1. Visit the Live Web Chat
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