  General relativity can be formulated equivalently with a non-Riemannian
geometry
  that associates with an affine connection of nonzero nonmetricity $Q$ but
vanishing curvature $R$ and torsion $T$.
  Modification based on this description of gravity generates the $f(Q)$
gravity.
  In this work we explore the application of $f(Q)$ gravity to the spherically
symmetric configurations.
  We discuss the gauge fixing and connections in this setting.
  We demonstrate the effects of $f(Q)$ by considering the external and internal
solutions of compact stars.
  The external background solutions for any regular form of $f(Q)$ coincide
with the corresponding solutions in general relativity,
  i.e., the Schwarzschild-de Sitter solution and the Reissner-Nordstr\"om-de
Sitter solution with an electromagnetic field.
  For internal structure, with a simple model $f(Q)=Q+\alpha Q^2$ and a
polytropic equation of state,
  we find that a negative modification ($\alpha<0$) provides support to more
stellar masses
  while a positive one ($\alpha>0$) reduces the amount of matter of the star.
