Frequently Asked Question

1. Introduction

As is FAQs, this document aims to cover the most frequently asked questions concerning the hamara mailing lists (and of course answer them!). The idea is reduce bandwidth and avoid the same old questions being asked over and over again which reduce the quality of the list as well as leads to participants not participating enough. This is to be used alongwith http://wiki.hamaralinux.org/wiki/index.php/FAQs which is geared more towards usage of the distribution and questions along with it.

This document attempts to represent a community consensus, and as such it is not intended to be authoritative but simply a set of guidelines which attempts to help you in finding your way across hamara and being also a good netizen while you are here.

As the FAQ is in the form of a wiki, you are encouraged to participate by signing up, logging in and then rectifying any errors you find in this evolving space.

What is the purpose of the various Hamara mailing lists ?

A mailing list serves two distinct and important functions for the community :-

a. First and foremost, it gives a record both for the community at large as to how certain decisions were arrived at and the reasons for doing so. So, while past decisions can't be questioned, they can be used as a template to understand and make arguments to fine-tune and improve the quality of both the discussions and the product itself.

b. The technical skill-set needed to join and participate is much lesser than say IRC and is not bound by any time-frame.

Who is the audience for the various Hamara mailing lists?

That depends on the scope of each specific list. While some lists would be oriented towards developers, others will be more towards the hamara community. You can find a current listing here for the various lists which make up the hamara community.

Are the hamara mailing lists open for anyone to participate?

Before posting to any list, it is advisable to see the charter of the list. The charter is nothing but the informational page on the mailing list which tells you what the list is about. See for e.g. the charter of hamara-devel and specifically see the About hamara-devel which tries to explain how that individual list operates.

Also, a mailing list is a best-at-effort kind of service so you should not expect that people will respond to your every question or query.

Are the archives of the hamara lists available ?

The archives are available at the respective mailing lists. At times, we may remove a mail or two because it might contain some personal sensitive material shared by mistake by a user. There may be some other circumstances under which the mails may be pulled which would be shared below.

Can the mails be subscribed as one after the other or as a digest or no mail at all ?

All this functionality is available if you look at the relevant mailing list web interface. You will need to sign up and then log in to the Mailman web interface and use either of the options. The features of both the Interface and the features offered may differ as we move towards Mailman 3 and later.

We do understand that some users may choose to only view and reply either via webmail or soon via the web interface only. To have this flexibility only, we are planning to move to MM3 and beyond.

I want to post, what should I do before posting ?

Reading this document itself makes you on the road of being a good netizen. One of the most comprehensive guide on the matter is at catb.org and we would specifically ask you to follow before part quite religiously.

We won't mind if you tried and didn't get the answers, but you have to show you tried. One of the easiest strategies that you could use is try moving the keywords around and even if you do not get the answer, if your query or issue is replicated somewhere else even that would help. At times it is possible that you might not be able to get any info. but if you display that you do usually do some work/thought before asking the question then the possibility of having your query answered would be much more. If however, you need hand-holding on something, you could either go for paid support or try your luck on IRC or the mailing list. We would be putting up some documentation in form of either of entries in the wiki, manuals (paid and otherwise), printed manuals and all sorts of documentation as we move along.

Are there any norms I need to abide in the mailing list

Here are some rules that you need to abide by :-

a. Be respectful to the other person. This means :-

1. No sexist remarks 2. No racist remarks 3. No bullying 4. No calling names 5. No spam or advertising ever.

b. You are supposed to have read charter of each mailing list, which means :-

1. No cross-posting 2. No user questions in developer mailing lists and vice-versa. 3. No off-topic questions in mailing list.