- Skim the questions in the Related sidebar, sometimes it is that obvious.
- Type a very abbreviated version of the question in the search bar, check the first 2-3 results. This doesn't even need to be a complete sentence or grammatically correct.
- Look for any code/error messages in the question. Copy these verbatim into the search window. If that doesn't work, try removing the parts of the message that are variable (like exact
/dev/...names or packages) - Replace generic terms like
photo viewerwithEye of GnomeorShotwell, and search again. - Check the OP's profile, I frequently find several variants of the same question (not necessarily a bad thing, they are refining their attempts to get an answer by re-posting rather than editing the original).
- Just plain-old remembering very common questions, frequently used as the duplicate to link to.
- Ask in chat. Crowd-source the effort if you are sure it's a dupe but can't find the exact one.
- @Seth's comment above: click flag or close and check the suggestions that come up in the Duplicate dialog, see if the suggested dupes that come up are a match. For a tip on searching there, see How do I quickly find the duplicate questions I'm searching for when flagging/closing?
- Add tags to your search terms using square brackets, eg
[kernel] [RAM] - If you know a particular user often answers questions about this topic, go to their profile so that their userID appears in the search box, then add the tag and/or keyword to the search box, eg
user:93977 [uefi] GPT - Exclude answers from the search using
is:q - Google with
site:askubuntu.con
Tom Brossman
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