Google is your best friend!

[LondoJowo]

I've been building computers since 1996 and participating in computer help forums since 1997. I know in the beginning for me I didn't always know where to turn for help when manufacturer FAQ's left much to be desired or were so badly translated that they made no sense.

Yahoo was the first search engine that I used, then shifted to Lyco's but now Google is my search engine of choice. Google seems to come up with more usable results. I'm hopefully going to show you how easy it is to find answers using Google.

I always perform a Google search to see if I can resolve a computer/software related issue before I'll post a question on a forum. Many times if I haven't run across a problem that someone has posted I will perform a search and in many instances I will find the solution. Sometime you'll find just by rearranging the wording in the search will give you better results.

Here's a couple of examples to show the ease of using Google.

Let's say that you need to get information on a DVD drive that's not working correctly and someone mentioned that maybe updating the firmware may resolve the problem. Let's try to find a firmware update for a Sony DRU-710A.

Sony DRU-710A Firmware Update gives us the following results:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

If you notice this was an easy search as the first link is what was needed.

I had problem with Kbear running correctly in SuSE 9.3 so I decided that I would try another ftp client that worked in KDE.

FTP Client KDE SuSE 9.3 gave me the following results.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l....3&btnG=Search

I went through the results and found Kasablanca on KDELook.org it has proved to be a good alternative for Kbear.



There's a Google search engine that's geared specifically for Linux but to be honest I can find the answers just as easily using the standard Google.

http://www.google.com/linux

Linux “How to” searches normally point to several good sites, the following being a really good site.
http://tldp.org/guides.html

RUTE is another good one, it's free to download, and use legally
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html

Feel free to add your experiences or tips

Don't forget Google is your best friend.

[loft306]

Ok now i have a few to add to this:

To find stuff on this site query this way with google < site:linuxforums.org frorum rules > without the <> results in this http://www.google.com/search?hs=7P8&...es&btnG=Search

If you are looking for drivers (im looking for the driver for the sis 190 ethernet card) ..search for them like this < sis190 + driver > with this for the result http://www.google.com/search?hs=KQ8&...er&btnG=Search

Google also now has a wildcard search < what is linuxforums* > with this result http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...s*&btnG=Search


to be continued

If anyone has any great google hacks to add to this thread please PM me

[scientica]

Google got many nice special features which makes searching easier, they keep a list on them here, with explanations and examples:
http://www.google.se/intl/en/features.html

and, they also got a nice lab, well, it's "ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time".
http://labs.google.com/

for instance the google suggest seems promising...