How to Participate

What skills are necessary?

Any skill is useful for the SMESERVER project.

If you are a developer of any kind, we will find something for you to do. Even if you think that you have no Linux skills you can still help. You can tell us if and how you understand the wiki pages, or more precisely, we would like to know what pages you don't understand. Thanks to the insights of new users we can continuously enhance readability of the wiki. Visit Communicate to learn how to contact us.

If, on a top of that, you can write, you are invaluable. We need a lot of articles. There are thousands of Linux programs around, and more are released every day. In addition, new versions of existing applications are released. There is need for a lot of hands to write about them and to keep reviews current. [edit] Be part of the Wiki Team

As long as you edit anything on the wiki you are de facto member of the Wiki Team.

To make edits, you need to log in to the wiki. In order to do this, you will need to open an account. The information that Novell requires for opening an account is very limited and subject to the Novell privacy policy.

After you log in, you will see a toolbar at the top of the page. The toolbar is visible on each page you open while you are logged in. You will see a link in the toolbar that is labeled with your username. This takes you to your "personal page". Use this page to introduce yourself, and don't be shy. Write a word or two about your interests, especially those related to SMESERVER and Linux. If nothing else, tell us how you learned about SMESERVER. [edit] Help Other Users

There are several active communities that help all levels of SMESERVER users. Please have a look at Communicate for an overview. [edit] Suggest New Features or Software

Visit the Wishlists page and pick a category where you can add your suggestion. You can suggest a new application in a special Package Wishlist. Please edit the table there and add your wishes. Only software with an OSI-compliant open-source license will be added to the SMESERVER project. [edit] Improve or Localize a Wiki

This page is built with MediaWiki. The concept of a Wiki is that anybody may add and modify content. Please see the SMESERVER Wiki Project page if you want to contribute to our Wiki. On wiki help, find a quick tutorial if you're unfamiliar with Wikis. Please make sure that you follow the style guide. For more information about translation and localization please look at the translation guide-how to localize a wiki. [edit] Review or Write Documentation, Manuals, and Articles

Visit the End-User Documentation page to contribute or read articles and manuals. If you've got instructions, solutions to common problems, neat tips and tricks, or just a good way to explain something, we'd love to hear from you. [edit] Test SMESERVER and Report Bugs

You can help improve SMESERVER by finding and reporting bugs. Our bug tracking system, Bugzilla, is used for all SMESERVER Linux products. If you have never written a bug report, please refer to Bug Reporting FAQ to learn what kinds of information make the report most useful. [edit] Localize SMESERVER specific applications

Translations of other applications specific to SMESERVER. For KDE, GNOME and different applications that don't belong to either of two, it is possible to find contributors in other Linux communities. [edit] Develop Patches and Packages

The most obvious way, for programmers, to participate in the development of SMESERVER is to post a patch as a suggested solution to an existing bug in Bugzilla. Each package has a maintainer, who will contact you to discuss your proposed solution. You may want to join one of our development mailing lists before you start coding in order to discuss your plans and coordinate with other developers.

For more information about getting source code and building your own packages, read the SMESERVER Build Tutorial.

If you would like to build your own applications on SMESERVER, read the SMESERVER build tutorial to learn how to package your own software.

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