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."

Comments

In My Pants, of course

[infonography]

Such a self-serving question deserves a sarcastic response.

Like everybody here I look on slashdot, theregister and google. I ask my friend who in turn ask me on other topics. There simply is no true and absolute source for answers. And to be frank, Slashdot it's really a place to find answers. Too bad slashdot limits the size of you sig or I would have used this;

Linus Torvalds on Slashdot

"Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not."