You can search here on the site with the Search in the top right corner of each page.

If you don’t get the results you need, you can try to search the mailing-list archives. The form for mail search can be found on the Mailing list page at: The List's Archives section

• man: to see information on the ‘man’ command do: man man
• info: to see information on the ‘info’ command do: info info or with GUI
• apropos: to find a command that pertains to the mouse do: apropos mouse
• /usr/doc or /usr/share/doc: within this directory are directories for programs installed on your system. Some will have a section of documentation which may be in html and viewable with a browser. Others may have only a scant README and Changelog within. ’ls <program-name>’ should show you if there is something on your program contained in the doc directory.
  Often, information on software installed by the package-management (RPM, DEB, …) can be found in /usr/doc/packages or /usr/share/doc/packages.
• Use the command’s help: to see help on ‘ls’ do: ls –help. Sometimes the ‘-help’ or simple ‘-h’ switch works. ‘ls’ requires the two dashes before, and it tells you that you’ve done it wrong when you try it with a single dash.

HOWTOs which stands for “how to” (..do something) usually describe complex problems, like the installation of the system, the configuration of TCP/IP etc. The official site of the Linux HOWTOs is the Linux Documentation Project at http://tldp.org/. Find a list of them at: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html

FAQs are collections of frequently asked questions. Mailing lists and newsgroups as well as complex software packages often have corresponding FAQ collections.

These might be found in the above mentioned /usr/doc directory or via a search at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/ It is good to look at the FAQ of a newsgroup or mailing list prior to posting a question. That way you find the answer to your question if it has been asked numerous times previously.

Ask questions directly to other people. LinuxBasics.org has channel #lbo. There are many specific channels for distros and packages. These are normally listed at their website. Xchat is a good program to use for IRC. There is a version for Windows, too, if you don’t yet have your Linux system up and running See: http://www.xchat.org/download/

The basic idea is:

1. Set up Xchat with your chosen Nickname.
2. Connect to a server - irc.freenode.net is good.
3. Join a channel - for example #lbo
4. You’ll see a list of Nicknames of who is there and you can type in “Hello” and go from there.

For more information on IRC see: http://linuxbasics.org/irc.

Also see how information on a distribution can be obtained from IRC bots in IRC channels.

Google News: http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search. Be sure to put *linux* or something more specific like *debian* in the “Newsgroup” block in order to limit your search to those newsgroups.

Gmane: Many mailing lists have joined Gmane which presents a mailing list as a newsgroup on the news server news.gmane.org. You can search these lists at http://search.gmane.org/ Use *linux* in the Newsgroup block to limit your search to Linux related groups.

Google has set up a specific search address for Linux information. Using this address instead of the ordinary google.com will limit searches to Linux related information.

Find FAQs, Support sections, manuals, knowledgebases, mailing lists, and/or forums relating to your distribution. There is often similar information on the homepage of the various programs. If you don’t know the URL, doing a google search on the name and homepage will often turn it up. Such URL’s are also listed in the manpage of a program.

If you did not find the answer to your question doing a search at Gmane, you might need to join a mailing list to ask your question. Be prepared to receive a lot of email if it is a busy list. Go to the archives and scan through the last few days of emails. If they have a search engine, you can use that to search for the answer to your question. If you find nothing, then send your question in to the list. Try to make it short and to the point including error message and what you have found or done so far to try to find the answer.

Then be patient and wait to see if anyone has an answer for you. Sometimes you will not get an answer, because no one has one for you. The people on the list are usually mostly users, but sometimes the author of the program reads the list as well. None of them are paid to be there; so there is no guarantee that you will get an answer. Most lists seem to be very helpful if you have previously made an attempt to answer your question by reading the documentation for the program involved.

You may want to join certain mailing lists on a permanent basis, for example one that deals with your distro of Linux.

Using a newsgroup involves the same basic ideas as using a mailing list. You don’t get email, but rather you get the list of subjects and then choose to read the ones you want to read. You can use most email clients to set up a news server and monitor groups. When you first set up the server and seek to subscribe to a group, it will take quite a while for the group names to download. There are a lot of them. You can also use Google News to post to newsgroups as well as for searching, but using your email client is a faster way of monitoring a newsgroup if you wish to do that on a permanent basis.

Freshmeat is a great place to start. http://freshmeat.net

Have a look on http://lugww.nllgg.nl/ to see if there are linux user groups in your vicinity. These often organize weekly or monthly meetings where you can exchange knowledge or ask questions of other users. They usually have mailing lists.

How to ask a good question by Evelyn Mitchell

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way by Eric Steven Raymond

The idea and much of the content of this page were taken from “Answer-Finding-Howto” by Tomas Pospisek