Chapter 16. Collaborating with Others

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Usenet News Today

• Choosing a Usenet Newsreader

• Collaborating with Wikis

• Hosting Electronic Mailing Lists

• Working with Instant Messengers and Internet Relay Chat

• Linux Videoconferencing

So far we have talked a lot about Linux being network-aware. Perhaps the main benefit of computer networking is to advance the ability of humans to network. When humans work together, amazing things get done. SUSE Linux includes a multitude of tools to help you work with other people, whether your collaborators are on the other side of your office or on the other side of the planet.

Several types of collaboration tools are included in SUSE Linux, but you can break them down into two groups:

• Asynchronous communication Mailing lists, Wikis, and Usenet news

• Real-time communication Internet Relay Chat, instant messaging, and video conferencing

The advantage of asynchronous (that is, the people involved appear at different times to participate) communication is that it shrinks the physical distance between participants. People do not have to be in the same room at the same time to get things done. Someone in New York can post a message on a global mailing list or newsgroup, and some hours later someone in Bangladesh, who was sleeping when the New Yorker posted, can respond.

The advantage of real-time communication is that it shrinks the response time. With everyone (virtually, at least) in the same room at the same time, questions can get answered instantaneously.

In this chapter, you will learn about all these methods. We covered the basics of email in the previous chapter, so you know how electronic mailing lists work from the user's end, but that's not all there is to know. SUSE Linux has two packages that will manage your own mailing lists: Majordomo and Mailman.

Usenet newsgroups have been part of the fabric of the Internet nearly as long as email and took hold well before the World Wide Web was invented. Although Usenet now has an even bigger problem with spam and malware than email, there remain thriving and helpful communities of Usenet readers and writers that can help you get answers to a multitude of questions for the price of a well-crafted question. Tap into Usenet with one of the news-reading tools discussed here, and then consider hosting your own NNTP server.

More recently, a new collaborative information tool has arisen on the Web. Wikis, short for WikiWiki Web, are web pages that any registered user can edit. Wikis can be places for sharing knowledge and brainstorming ideas, within your team or with your audience. You'll learn more about creating your own wiki pages in this chapter, too.

Real-time communication tools have moved from the realm of teenage time wasters into serious collaboration tools for business. Chat and instant messaging technologies are now used to provide technical support for computer problems, confirm whether marketing and development are in agreement about a product, and even engage in complex business conversations and planning. In this chapter, you'll learn about the variety of Linux tools you can use to engage in this activity.

Do you need to discuss some issues face-to-face with an important out-of-town client? It is no longer necessary to hop on an airplane with an expensive last-minute reservation. Arrange a videoconference instead. Both GNOME and KDE have tools to bridge the gap.