There are many “How To” guides on the internet. For Linux musicians and composers this is not different.

This guide is not about the 'how' and “what” but about the 'who'. Where do Linux Audio people hang out, where can I talk and ask for help or even offer help.

First lets look at the available services. They all have in common that they require an internet connection, but not all of them are websites.

I will not make statements about how many users a service has. This can change in a short time. But some places are really crowded, others are practically dead at the time of writing. I'll include them anyway. The order of listing will indicate the user volume a bit.

Once a year around May there is a Linux Audio Conference, organized by the LA-Consortium. It features talks, workshops and of the course the very important meet-and-greet. There is no entry fee and anybody can visit, not just developers or musicians.

Once a year around November there is the Sonoj Convention which is a weekend about music production with open source software: Demonstrations, hands-on tutorials and workshops as well as social events.

Besides the Linux Audio Conference there are some smaller, but more frequent, meetings dedicated to Linux and Open Source Audio and Music.

• Open Source Audio Meeting Cologne Monthly meeting in Cologne, Germany.
• Linux Audio Users Berlin Regular meetings in Berlin, Germany

There is a google-maps map of users and developers.

You can edit it yourself, so place a marker. If you are concerned about privacy: Don't put the marker on your house but on a nearby park or public place and use your nickname instead of real name. This will still enable nearby-people to contact you to meet in person.

You can reach many people through social networks because special topics are a byproduct of the daily visits to plan social events and chat. The discussion and sharing features are usually not very good and most of the time there is a vendor-lock-in but reaching people is fast and easy.

• Reddit /r/linuxaudio/
• Twitter #linuxaudio tagy
• Diaspora #linuxaudio Tag

Forums are patient, offer categories and layout options and are very comfortable to browse and search. They are very easy to use but you need to visit a certain website. They usually miss the API of a social network or the client-agnosticism of e-mail lists.

• LinuxMusicians.com
• audio4linux (German)
• LinuxMAO (French)

Mailing lists are very convenient because they use e-mails to communicate with each other. There is a central address where to which you can send a message and it will deliver it to all subscribed mail-addresses. This makes them mobile, fast and easy to archive and to search. The following links point you to a place to subscribe and to read the archive:

• Linux Audio User List
• Linux Audio Developer List

Chats offer real-time talks and discussions with multiple persons at once. IRC chats are very popular in the LinuxAudio community. The text-only interface and the minimal requirements as well as the open protocol make them accessible from practically any device. They are robust and flexible. You should use a real IRC client program like xchat, weechat or irssi. Popular channels:

• #lad on irc.libera.chat (“Linux Audio Developers”, but for users as well)
• #opensourcemusicians on irc.libera.chat
• #jack on irc.libera.chat

IMs like ICQ, MSN are practically dead, especially for the Linux Audio scene. There is no real discussion through the peer-to-peer nature and even that was replaced by the chat features of social networks which offers the same funtionality by using open protocols like xmpp so you can use your local clients like Pidgin (even for Facebook and Google+).

If you want a two person dialog choose the irc /query or /message function, write a mail or use the chat/message functions from the social networks.

Many distributions maintain their own forums, social groups etc. Maybe they were unaware of the distribution-agnostic alternatives mentioned here or they wanted to offer a place for technical help which then got “out of hand” by people asking general purpose questions about linux-audio and music in general. A notable exception is KXStudio which uses the popular LinuxMusicians Forum.

If you want to be up to date you can follow various news channels. You can also use them to inform people of your new program or music. Here are various types of news channels. Not included are general purpose wikis like wiki.linuxaudio.org which concentrate mostly on the “how” and “what”, not on the “who”.

• planet.linuxaudio.org
  • An automatic collection of various blogs, also includes the LAA mailing list. Mixes program releases with personal stuff. Highly recommended to subscribe to their RSS or Atom feed. If you have a blog or news-site yourself please get it added here.
• Announcement Mailing list
  • A low traffic announcement mailing list for new programs or media releases. Is moderated. Subscribe and send your news here. LAA mails automatically end up in the planet.linuxaudio feed
• libregraphicsworld.org
  • Despite the name this site also reports, in detail, about the music and audio world.
• Many people post their news in the forums and social networks, be it in a group or via their Twitter account which can then be shared.

If you want to be notified about new music or videos your best bet currently is to follow the normal news channels and social media.

All dedicated Linux Audio media servers are down or were never used frequently.