openSUSE 11.3 | SUSE Linux | Beginner's guide to multimedia codecs MP3 DVD 3D nvidia ati wireless

Last updated: July 20, 2010

Appendix E: Getting Involved

openSUSE is developed in the open, and everybody can join in - this means that you can help to create and shape openSUSE. If you wish to participate actively in openSUSE or other free software projects, there are plenty of things to do. Finding something that matches your interests, available time and your skills should be no problem at all.

"I get the question of "Where should I start?" fairly often and my advice is just don't even ask that question. It's more like if you're not interested enough in one particular area that you already know what you want to try to do, don't do it. Just let it go and then when you hit something where you say, "I could do this better" and you actually feel motivated enough that you go from saying that to doing that, you will have answered that question yourself." - Linus Torvalds

E.1 Get in Touch

The first steps to getting involved is to follow the news and getting to know the community.

E.1.1 News and Blogs

Consider following these sources. These and more relevant news feeds are preconfigured in the Akregator RSS-reader which is installed by default and is part of the Kontact suite:
http://news.opensuse.org
http://planetsuse.org

E.1.2 Mailinglists

You should also join some of the mailinglists, this is the primary form of communication for the project, -announce, -project, -kde and -factory are some of the major ones, that most would want to subscribe to:
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_lists

E.1.3 IRC

Consider hanging out in some IRC channels, where much communication and coordination takes place, as well as regular meetings.
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:IRC_list

E.1.4 Weekly News

If you don't have the time to keep up on a daily basis, you can follow the weekly news instead - it's a digest of the most important happenings on blogs, mailinglists etc. for the last week:
http://en.opensuse.org/Weekly_news

E.2 Participating in openSUSE

This is just a brief summary of some of the areas where you can contribute while helping to shape the distribution and having a lot of fun.

E.2.1 User Support

Once you have familiarized yourself with openSUSE, you'll quickly be able to help new users in the forums, IRC or mailinglists. Apart from helping others, you will learn a lot yourself in the process.

E.2.2 Marketing

There's a marketing team working on promoting openSUSE in various ways, which you can join or even become an official openSUSE ambassador.
http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Marketing
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Ambassadors

You can buy merchandise and help market openSUSE that way:
http://shop.opensuse.org/

E.2.3 Wiki Maintanence

The openSUSE wiki is always in need of new articles, or cleanup of existing ones.
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Wiki_team

E.2.4 Translation

Translate the openSUSE distribution and/or wiki to your native language.
http://i18n.opensuse.org

E.2.5 Artwork

If you're an artist you can create icons and other artwork for the distribution, marketing, websites and so forth.
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Artwork

E.2.6 Bug Reports and Feature Requests

You can help test the development versions of upcoming openSUSE releases.

You'll find the roadmap here:
http://en.opensuse.org/Roadmap

Get the latest development version here:
http://software.opensuse.org/developer

Read this before reporting bugs:
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Submitting_bug_reports

You can request new features for openSUSE here, or vote for (or against) existing requests:
http://features.opensuse.org

E.2.7 Building Packages

The availability of as many as possible, high quality binary packages is crucial for any distribution. You can build packages on the openSUSE Build Service and even maintain packages in the official distribution:
http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Build_Service
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:How_to_contribute_to_Factory
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Junior_jobs

E.2.8 Code

If you're a programmer you can contribute code to fix bugs or add features e.g. in YaST or other components developed by the openSUSE project itself - and of course if you contribute code to upstream projects, openSUSE will benefit from this too - eventually. You can find the source code for the various openSUSE specific components here:
http://gitorious.org/opensuse
http://svn.opensuse.org/svn/yast/
http://developer.berlios.de

E.2.9 Mirror Admin

openSUSE needs fast and reliable mirrors to host ISOs and repositories in all parts of the world, to ensure that users have a good experience, if you work in a university or similar, maybe you can help out.
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mirror_infrastructure

Send your comments via e-mail to admin [at] opensuse-guide.org