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How Do You Find the Right Tool for the Right Job ?
Arthur B. asks: "Whenever I try to find a software product, I find myself browsing SourceForge, but it's really hard to find something, when I only know the features I want and not the name of the project. It's hard, once I find a software, to gather information about it's reliability (is it a huge collaborative OSS project, an IT giant driven project or an end of term student project). The same is true about package trees in Linux distros. I'd like to ask the crowd: Where do you pick your software (be it commercial or not)? How do you compare different products? How do you know what a software does exactly before using it? Does a website provide this kind of help? Please let me know your tips and tricks."
But don't stop there. Type the name of the package into Google and look at the number of results that come back. Browse the results and see how many of these are requests for help. Check the answers to see if they make sense, which means that there are knowledgeable people willing to help. Finally, check the date/time stamps to find current queries.
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