Getting help irc

[paxmark1]

I am seeing more and more people going to the #debian irc channel and asking for help.  The thing is Sparky is testing, not stable.  All questions related to the Debian parts of Sparky would belong in #debian-next.  The difficult part here is that just like Kali Linux or Taglu, or any other Debian derivative, it is specifically stated that help is only for standard Debian installs.  If, if you have a problem that can appear to be just Debian related, you come off as competent, you know how to pastebin and not flood the forum, you might get lucky.  Then again you might not. 

Your "ace in the hole" or way out of this is to have the same problem be replicated on a standard install.  I have a testing lxde install in a vm, I can use that as my reference if I have the same problem on both devices and in 2 DE's. 

If the problem is with a specific DE - go to the irc for your DE.  If you have, for example MATE, go to the mate irc,

One very concrete way to get yourself out of problems is to lurk in irc, just watch.  #debian-next and #siduction are good places to lurk at, both on OFTC.  I of course lurk at Freenodes #lxde where the lxqt is discussed (OFTC #lxde is where lxde is).  If you are on kde. mate, gnome, etc., find the correct irc channels, the problems might start 5 days prior to your getting bit. Or others in Debian testing, or elsewhere for the Gnome 3.20 glitches or the recent KDE plasma 5.6 glitches, systemd-320, etc. or even Red Hat or Arch are having the same problem.  This is testing, things will break, but not as often or as hard as on Sid

Two other things  to do before going onto irc is to look at your journald logs and also go online for the the Debian Bug tracking system to see if your bug is listed there.

Remember, ask good questions.