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Is there a preferred way to answer questions about not being able to install software on older editions of Ubuntu that are no longer supported? Specifically, this one: https://askubuntu.com/questions/584973/cannot-install-anything-in-ubuntu-12-10-64bits

The reason for the 404 error and the "check internet connection" message is that the repos are no longer there. (I've just pinged the 12.10 ones to make sure). I think that the best advice in this case is to upgrade to a version that is supported (ideally an LTS version).

I assumed that this, or a similar question would have already been asked and I could flag it as a duplicate, but I couldn't find one.

So I answered it as above, and got a comment that it does not answer the question!

I'd rather not have a debate in the comments about whether it does or does not answer the question, so I'm going to ask on here.

Is "You can't install because your Ubuntu is out of date, you need to upgrade" a decent answer, and if not, what is the correct way to answer this kind of question?

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The correct way is to click "flag", "duplicate" and look for a duplicate...

If there is no way of finding a duplicate, "flag" again, "it should be closed for another reason", "Off topic because..." and then click "this is about an end-of-life product".

What I always do is to leave a comment before or right after flagging as the standard comments not always convene the entire message. This is a personal choice and not endorsed nor recommended by the Ask Ubuntu community

E.g.: I will put: "Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! ;-) We're very sorry, but this is not a good place to put another question as the only people seeing your "answer" will be the original poster and a bunch of reviewers trying to review your "answer" for quality... So please first look over the existing answers and if none of them work, ask a new question and refer back to this question and explain what went wrong. ;-)"

Instead of the standard: "This was posted as an answer, but it does not attempt to answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether. "

More info:

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    It's "Ask Ubuntu" ;-)
    – Seth
    Feb 13, 2015 at 15:29
  • Oops... There's quite a few of those around the site... Is there a global Search&Replace?
    – Fabby
    Feb 13, 2015 at 15:31
  • Nah, I just fix it when I see it :-)
    – Seth
    Feb 13, 2015 at 15:32
  • I think it is generally preferred to flag as a dupe over flagging as off-topic. See meta.askubuntu.com/questions/6253/duplicate-or-other-options
    – muru
    Feb 13, 2015 at 16:17
  • @muru: editing: I didn't know either...
    – Fabby
    Feb 13, 2015 at 16:56

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