Interacting with the Linux Mint community

The size of its community is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a distribution. If it has a small community, it doesn't matter how great the distribution is; finding support from fellow users would be difficult and would result in frustration. Thankfully, Linux Mint has a sizable community with volunteers ready to answer your questions. If you experience any issues, you can post a message in the forum, or even chat in real time over IRC (XChat is included in Mint to facilitate IRC chatting out of the box).

Note

To request assistance via the official forum, navigate to forums.linuxmint.com.

For IRC chat, you can connect to #linuxmint-help (or #linuxmint-chat for chatting about Mint without requesting assistance). For more information on how to access IRC channels such as the ones provided for Mint, see http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/12 for an overview of how to connect.

Before submitting requests for assistance in any Linux community, it's important to do your research first. Volunteers may feel as though you are taking their time for granted if you do not first try to find the answer on your own. Typically, it's recommended to perform a Google search for your problem to see if someone else had already posted a similar message and found a solution. Quite often, you'll find that your issue has already been addressed.

In addition to an official forum and IRC chat room, Mint also features a neat community page (http://community.linuxmint.com), as shown in the following screenshot, where you can submit ideas on how the developers can improve the distribution. Ideas are voted up or down by other members of the community. In addition, you can find the status of upcoming releases, post/read tutorials, and track which countries have the most Mint users.

The Linux Mint community home page

The forum for Linux Mint and its community page utilize two separate logins. Creating an account on one doesn't create an account on the other.