 every once in a while something will go wrong on your computer and this is true no matter what operating system you're using what piece of software you're using sometimes things just break or you don't know how to do something or you get an error or any number of things can happen it's just the way of doing business it's the way of life really and when that bad thing happens or you encounter a situation where you don't know how to do something your number one solution to that problem is always heading to a browser and googling it or using DuckDuckGo or Circs or whatever browser search engine you're using you go search for it on the internet and that is the proper course of action you should always search for the issue first don't head to a forum and ask a question because you're just going to get RTFM'd but search for the issue first because there's a really good chance that if you've encountered a problem someone else has also encountered that problem and they'll either have already asked the question and gotten a solution or they help will have provided the solution in a blog or a subreddit or a forum someplace they'll have provided an answer somewhere and you can just go reap the benefits of them having also had something go wrong in their life now the problem is is that the internet is a vast vast place it's a really hard to navigate space if you don't know where to look now obviously we have tools like Google and DuckDuckGo and stuff like that to facilitate our access to all of this information and the problem with that isn't that those tools aren't amazing in various ways but really that those tools require some skills to use now most people who use the internet have encountered Google I would say that's probably a fair and safe bet but not everyone who messes around on the internet has the skills to properly Google things when it comes to searching for problems so what I thought I'd do today is talk about a few tips and tricks if you will on how to properly search for solutions to your problems when it comes to Linux so the first one is simply describing it accurately now this is a problem and probably the biggest problem overall that people encounter when things go wrong how do you describe something if you don't have an error code if it's just something that you're experiencing like a visual glitch or something like that it can be very hard to describe and it's not even that it's hard to describe it's hard to describe in the way other people have described it so how one person might describe screen tearing might be in you know in one way and how you describe screen tearing might happen in another way and and because the solution to your problem may be described differently than how you would describe it and make searching for it harder and this is especially true when you're searching for things that aren't explicitly error messages right if you have an error message it's obviously really easy to just pop that error message into Google and find out what the solution is if there is one it's probably going to be just pop up as the first result when you don't have that situation where you're trying to describe what's actually going on how everyone described something is going to be different so the best advice I can give you here is to describe it in multiple ways if the first way you describe it doesn't work so it seems obvious but use different words if your first attempt fails don't give up and head on over to the arch forums instead search a second time using slightly different words now usually Google and all the search engines are pretty good at giving you results that are close to what you meant even if it's not exactly what you typed so there's a good chance if you were close to describing it properly you'll still probably get to the best result but if you don't reword your search so that it's in a slightly different way use synonyms and things like that if you can or describe a smaller more specific part of the error so if you're experiencing font problems don't search for something really really broad like just hey I'm having font issues on KDE doesn't really help anything because there's obviously many things that can go wrong with fonts on KDE but if you were to search for specifically hey I'm experiencing small fonts on KDE it's a good chance that you'll find a solution more than if you were searching for a broad one also shout out to hip dad that was his problem and he inspired this video so if you are having issues with searching and describing the best advice I can give you is search it in multiple different ways if the first way doesn't work change the words just a little bit and see if that works and if you're still not getting a proper answer narrow it down a little bit to the point where you're specifically searching for the most narrow problem that you're experiencing instead of something that is really broad because a lot of times narrowing it down is going to give you a more specific search result that's the first tip the second tip that I can give you is don't discount site specific searches so a lot of times people get very focused on Google because Google is all powerful in terms of search right it's the best search engine out there for the vast majority of search queries it's just is even though we hate Google and we don't want to use Google it does seem to do the best job when it comes to searching but people tend to see that and think well if Google didn't give me an answer maybe the answer doesn't exist online that's probably maybe true but don't necessarily think that it's always true don't be afraid to go to site specific searches and actually search there so go to Reddit go to our slash Linux questions and search through that and see if the question has been asked before now Google does troll all those sites so a lot of times those results will show up in a Google search but they'll also bury them because they have a tendency to pack all the Reddit links and results together so you may miss them so if you think that your question might have been asked on Reddit someplace go search Reddit don't just limit yourself to Google search Reddit search through sub-stack search through the Ubuntu help Ubuntu form search through the Arch Linux forms do this specifically and you may have a different result than if you just limit yourself to Google the third one has to do a lot with what we talked about in the first tip and that is honing your descriptive capabilities so that you can describe what's going on and therefore craft a proper search query this is a talent that will develop over time the longer you've used Google and or use a search engine really and this is something specifically that's going to be harder when you're dealing with something that you're unfamiliar with so if you are a new Linux user you may not know what's what you don't know all the terms you don't know what really you don't know anything when it comes to Linux if you're a brand new user or it's possible at least that you don't know what you're talking about so how are you supposed to craft a sufficient search query if you don't know the proper terms or any of that stuff well the best thing you can do is sit down and with a pad of paper and we're going back to the stone age here and write down what you were doing when the problem occurred this has the potential to help you craft your search query because you can use the points that you write down to narrow down the description for your particular problems so let's just say for example you're having a problem setting wallpaper on Ubuntu now this is a very simple problem obviously you could just search for can't set wallpaper on Ubuntu and you'd probably get an answer or a solution but let's just say you didn't know what a wallpaper was I don't know it's a silly example but let's just say that that's true you don't know what a wallpaper is you don't know how to use the settings application so you sit down and you write down what were you were doing when you were trying to set the wallpaper so you probably open up the settings application and you try to load in the wallpaper section in the settings application and it wouldn't pop up so you could then from that information form a search query saying settings panel will not load wallpapers something like that and obviously the more complex the issue you have the more information you're going to get from the things that you've written down there so you will have the information you need to hone in on the exact search query that you're going to need and then if that still doesn't work you can try rewording it a little bit because you still have some information in there the more specific information you have in your search query the better you offer you'll be simply because that's the more information will allow google or whatever search engine to find better results like I said at the beginning the broader your search query the less good your results are going to be especially when it comes to finding technical assistance the last tip that i can give you is a simple one and i've already talked about it and that is if you have an error code use it now i've talked in the past about the five steps you should take if you are troubleshooting and one of those is viewing the logs and i will link to that video in the video description basically what i talked about there is that there are logs of basically everything on your system everything it's basically a black box in a plane it records everything that goes on your system when there's an error it writes it to the logs so if you go view those logs you will find an error code somewhere and that right there is the holy grail the best possible search query you'll ever have copy and paste that search query into your favorite search engine that's going to be the best thing they'll ever happen to you if you have to search for technical assistance because if you have an error code it's tailor made for searching so don't ignore the logs if you have a problem chances are there's an error code somewhere in those logs and you can take that error code plug it into google and possibly find your solution and it's way better than having to come up with a search query on your own so that is the last tip that i have to give you and i'm sure there are probably other ones that i could give if you have thoughts on how to properly search for help when it comes to linux and open source stuff leave those in the comment section below i'd love to hear from you you can follow me on mastodon and odyssey those links will be in the video description you can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linux cast links for liberapay and youtube are also in the video description if you want to support me there thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon and youtube you guys are all absolutely amazing without you the challenges would not be anywhere near where it is right now so thank you so very very much for your support i truly do appreciate it thanks everybody for watching i'll see you next time