Help & Support

Below you’ll find a plethora of resources that will make getting help and resolving issues a snap. Getting help with Xubuntu is easy! The currently supported Xubuntu releases are:

  • Raring Ringtail 13.04, until Janary 2014
  • Quantal Quetzal 12.10, until April 2014
  • Precise Pangolin 12.04 LTS, until April 2015
  • Oneiric Ocelot 11.10, until May 9, 2013
  • Lucid Lynx 10.04 LTS, until May 9, 2013

Online documentation

See the official documentation developed and maintained by the Ubuntu Documentation Project at help.ubuntu.com. This site also hosts community-contributed documentation, which everybody is invited to improve!

The latest version of the Xubuntu-specific “Offline Documentation” which ships with Xubuntu is now available at docs.xubuntu.org.

Visit our Frequently Asked Questions, available for Xubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) and onward.

Internet Relay Chat

IRC is a platform for real-time conversations among two or more people. It is often the fastest way to get help due to its live nature. The following is a list of primary channels for Xubuntu on the Freenode IRC network that you can connect to:

  • #xubuntu for community support; click here to join using the webchat
  • #xubuntu-devel for development discussion
  • #xubuntu-offtopic for offtopic discussion (not related to support or development)

To join the community support channel, you can use the link above. To join any of the channels, you can use the XChat IRC client, which is installed by default in Xubuntu. You can find XChat under the Internet category in the applications menu.

Please be aware that while there may appear to be lots of people in the channels, they may not be at their computers at the time; some people leave themselves logged in so they can review questions when the get back. Please don’t be put off if you don’t get a reply straight away. While you are waiting, it is a good idea to look for an answer via other support methods.

Mailing lists

Mailing lists are discussion groups where communication happens via mass email distributions. When using a mailing list, you only send your message to one email address and the mailing list server will forward it to all mailing list subscribers. It is ideal when you want to make sure a specific group (like a development team) receives and is notified of your message, but are not able to use a real-time discussion methods.

The Xubuntu project has two separate mailing lists:

Please note that the Xubuntu-devel mailing list is moderated. This means you will have to be subscribed to the list for your messages to be directly forwarded to other subscribers. If you are not subscribed to the list, a list moderator needs to approve your message before it will be forwarded.

Online forums and answer sites

Forums are discussion areas on a web site where visitors can post questions or make remarks on a given topic to be answered by their peers. The forums are an excellent place to ask for help as well as to find user-written tutorials as well as old threads that may already answer your question.

You can find the official Ubuntu forums at ubuntuforums.org, to get help with Xubuntu try the Desktop Environments category of the forums – use Xfce or Xubuntu as the tag to help categorize your request.

You can also add your support question in Launchpad Answers which is a part of the Launchpad system. Here you can keep your query active until a community member offers an answer which solves your problem. You can also search through all of the other questions which have been asked and answered. You may also ask your questions on AskUbuntu.com.

Commercial Support

Xubuntu users around the world tell us that support and administration expertise are critical in ensuring the success of their Xubuntu deployments. In addition to community support and partner support, Canonical, the company behind this Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution, offers enterprise-class support.

The Canonical Global Support Services team are on hand to support your home, corporate, government and education installations.

For more information about commercial support from Canonical, visit http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/overview.