Here is my opinion which has been shaped from Oli's answer to another question:
There are some processes that are pretty daunting to new users. Boot errors, graphics driver foul ups, random crashes. You can throw them at a 10,000 word generic answer ... but they're left having to follow it. It's not always possible for every level of user.
I'm sure ninety-something percent of questions that might fall into this area probably could have improvements on their existing answers, but sometimes it's easier to help that one person with their specific issue. Get their lsusb, their fdisk -l and apply an existing answer to their situation.
But it's still a duplicate. Closing it against a canonical answer —if it fits— is still the right thing to do too.
At the end, If you think that something is duplicate, then flag it. It's up to community to decide what happens to the question. Almost all the times If I think a question already has a good answer and the user doesn't need any kind of specific guidance, I vote to close.