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Looking for Linux Help When You've Lost Your Way?
ChesireKat asks: "I'm interested in knowing where people go for their Linux help/questions/needs. It seems that most IRC users will laugh at you, kick you, or just make you feel stupid because you're not quite as smart as they are (irc.nullnet.net is pretty good, they are usually willing to help). Forums are nicer about it, but most of the time, no one quite knows. Man pages always work, but it so time consuming, and sometimes after hours of searching, your still just as clueless as when you started. I'm interesting in knowing where other people find answers to the questions you just can't seem to figure out."
general Google searching.
focussed Usenet group searching via Google groups especially (eg,: Has anyone gotten oddball video card X to work?).
LDP. Howto's, mini-howto's. Often the general category has specific mention of caveats and gotchas that commonly plague people.
User manuals that came with your distro.
Bleat to a more knowledgeable local user, if they exist. Don't worry too much about imposing because sooner or later someone else will come to you asking for help. But, as with the newsgroups, it looks better to your local guru if you have a concise question and researched the problem fully, showing your wounds proving that you've already crawled over the broken glass of the TFM.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The first place I look is www.deja.com. There is so much information there that normally can fix whatever I have broken. As for IRC, check out http://www.freenode.net a very friendly helpful network.
comp.os.linux is a good place to start for general Linux questions. alt.linux.suse is a good if you happen to be a SuSE user. If your question is about a specific app, there's likely a group dedicated to it, like comp.protocols.smb for samba.
The Linux Documentation Project is sometimes good, But I often find the info I get there to be either out of date or too specific to a setup that isn't mine.
If I really want to know an app/language/whatever I pony up for the relevant O'Reilly book(s).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Ask an intelligent question and include a little about what you've tried or where you've looked thus far. If you're utterly lost and don't even know where to begin, ask for pointers to things you can read, don't ask for the quick answer.
Any geek worth his DSL line respects and likes helping a body who's making a good and honest effort. But if you come in wanting others to do more work than you've already done on your own, then it's good, honest fun to toy with you a little.
As a bonus: if you take a little abuse without going all non-linear and share a laugh with folks after, you'll probably still get your help in the end. :-)