Over the years, I have noticed several things happening in Linux forums and even IRC chat rooms. Some are good and some are bad. It's just so sad that there are more negative habits in these forms of communication than there are positive. This lack of balance only makes it harder on the people that practice the positive habits every day. Honestly, I had rarely even looked at chat rooms or forums for Windows support and discussions until after I made the full time switch to Linux. These forums are vicious. I've seen that Windows discussions are usually full of anger when the conversation consists of something that a person has never used. If it's for support, why should someone join the conversation if they have never used what the conversation is about and knows nothing at all about it? It beats me, but that doesn't stop these Windows users. There have been numerous threads on forums that have been about open source software in Windows and someone butts in saying that it's garbage, even if they had never even heard of it outside of the fact that it's open source. These usually consist of the phrase "you only get what you pay for". Any full-time Linux user knows that this can be true to only certain extents, but rarely any of these extents actually consists of money. Sometimes it's something as simple as dedicating a certain amount of time from your life to learn something new. The more time you put into it, chances are, the better your future experiences will be.

Now, since Linux, Ubuntu in particular, has been becoming more popular and people are becoming aware of it, new users are joining the Linux front every day. Don't get me wrong, this is definitely a good thing. The more exposure there is to Linux, the more people will try it out. The problem here is that some of these people tend to carry over their Windows attitude to the Linux forums and chat rooms. Not all, but enough to make it a little more than just annoying. These people carry over their "I want it right here and right now" way of thinking. Where they get it from using Windows? I don't know. I've never known Windows support to be fast. Then there are the ones who think saying "... or I'm going back to Windows" in their forum posts will be effective. Personally, when I see this, it makes me think something along the lines of "if that's how you think, maybe you should." Then again, I might just have a lower tolerance for rudeness. Developers work really hard to get these distributions put together for their release, directly followed by people trying it for the first time and giving what they think are threats.

There have also been some bad habits exhibited by slightly more experienced Linux users. For example, if there is a thread posted regarding something along the lines of their web browser crashing every time Google is loaded, another person will join the conversation saying "I have the exact same problem, except it's OpenOffice.org having fuzzy fonts." Granted, this is an extreme example, but it's quite possible that the conversation can get this far off topic. If the conversation, with this example, goes from being about Firefox crashing to OpenOffice.org fonts being fuzzy, the person with the problem in Firefox might not get the help needed to be able to smoothly browse the internet. Minor deviations from the topic can be acceptable as long as the original problem still gets the proper attention.

Right along with these users are those who will post a question that has been answered a couple dozen times already. I see this quite often really. A popular example of this one is MP3 support in Ubuntu. It's not there in a freshly installed system and has to be added through the use of the ubuntu-restricted-extras meta package. This is rather well known among Ubuntu users, but all too many new users completely pass up the Ubuntu wiki, FAQ, and several posts pointing to the wiki page. Even a simple search on Google of "mp3 support in Ubuntu" will point a person in the right direction. Failure to search causes a lot of clutter in forums with the same question being asked so many times.

So, I have some guidelines for users, which are already usually followed by experienced users.

• Search before asking. For most basic problems like MP3s or other possibly common problems, there is probably already a solution that is easy to find.
• When you post a forum thread, give details about what you have done to rectify the problem already. This will help narrow down the problem, maybe you overlooked something. It also lets others know a little about your technical skill and they will word their responses accordingly.
• Don't be hasty. If you need something in order to meet a deadline, say so, but don't be overly anxious about it. Being in too much of a rush will actually turn these volunteers away from your request, so being hasty will not help your cause.
• Don't make threats. It's disrespectful to the developers and to the community of people volunteering to help you. Threats also will not help your cause. Whatever the problem is, post it without the threats. If someone can help you, they will.
• Don't double post on the same forum. If you post the same question on multiple forums, mention this and give a link to the others so people can see what responses there were on the other forums. This will help get proper answers that have not already been posted on another forum.
• Above all, remember that you did not pay for the support you get from this community of people volunteering their time and efforts to help you. Not everybody will have the answer, but chances are someone can help.

I know I didn't cover all of the bases with this, but it should handle at least some of the worst trends that are seen on forums and IRC chat rooms.