For simpler newbie questions, google top pickings usually point to various tutorials which are usually quite valid.

For more advanced questions, they point to discussions like in Stackexchange etc. Since many issues can have several causes, people give varying instructions and people comment to them whether it worked or not for them. You just have to use common sense and try which seems most probable to you. Yes some replies are quite useless and the one replying doesn't even understand the question, but usually the most useful answers end up being marked as the Solution (similarly like on the GOG forum you can pick the best answer as the solution).

I have to google for Linux answers constantly due to my work (and sometimes also at home), and I don't really recall ever ending up in some discussion where it is dismissed as "search google". In sites like Stackexchange etc., at worst someone mentioned "this is a duplicate of question X", pointing to that question. Due to how google works, fortunately usually the most useful discussions come at top because those are where people visit more often; useless instructions like "search google" or "figure it out yourself LOL" probably won't get a good google ranking.

Like now I've had to figure out how to set up local repositories for both Ubuntu and Oracle Linux (from which other Ubuntu and Oracle Linux systems can get their updates). I ended up in various tutorials and finally could follow the best ones, and I am finally getting there with working local repositories. Or earlier I had to set up Active Directory integration for some CentOS and Ubuntu servers, and learned quite a bit about realmd etc. by following a few tutorials on the subject. These are stuff that home users don't have to care about.

The only thing I sometimes wish for is that they would maybe elaborate a bit what is the purpose of this and that command, but I guess that is what the manual pages are for. People tend to just quickly answer "run these commands and you are fine", which is understandable. If one wants to learn more what those commands are and do, one can either google for the command and/or check the manual pages. It is better to learn them by doing when you actually need them, rather than someone lecturing you "this command does this and that that", at least I forget that kind of lecturing right away, but remember when I have actually used something myself. It is like having sex: once you have done it at least once, you don't forget anymore what goes where and why.

But as said, sometimes the manual pages can be quite bad and confusing. The good ones show examples for various common situations.

Sed does a lot more. It's got conditions and branches, blocks, labels (for jumps and loops) and a temporary storage space. That makes it a turing complete programming language.

Here's a turing machine implemented in sed:

http://sed.sourceforge.net/grabbag/scripts/turing.sed

Here's a ray tracer written in sed:

http://funarg.nfshost.com/r2/code/sed/ray/ray.sed

Agree, linux is a huge mess and there are too many versions barely compatible with eachother.
I wouldnt waste my time with linux if not total necessary especially gaming.

Nah that is not ironic at all. Some believe code clearly tells you what that part should do.
Yet it is like handwriting it is nearly impossible to read someones.

Linux is a mess and it is getting more complex each year , it should be redesigned and rewritten already.
Best is the total inconsistency some apps use -r for recursive some use -R total mess.
Makes you have to check documentations all the time if you dont use the scripts daily.
Who dont know "man" they should just stop using linux cause it is not for them , nearly every linux tutorial mentions man on the first page.

Btw gui apps have help pages too .

You do have some points.
Here is something similar with Windows: The shortcuts are different depending on which language you use. I have had to use Windows in at least five different languages and that part got me really mad when I first found it back in the nineties.

Some things should be standardised.

Totally agree with that , i hate how everything is in english when you search on the net and you cant use the same for your localized win. At least english word shortcuts should be in no matter the language.

I'll admit Win10 in this case made me decide to get a Linux Machine.

The First time I was simply playing a game. I thought I had put the active hours to the times I was playing (I did, but for some reason win10 seems to ignore active hours occasionally). Suddenly it decided to quite on me in the middle of the game. NO asking, just bam. Done. It was quite a ways from a save point. An hour or two of gaming...lost.

It soured me greatly.

The next one was when I was compiling video. Win10 apparently does not think compiling a video means that your machine is active, as you aren't moving a mouse or something. So, it decides to do it's install of updates and restart. I was upset...to say the least. A couple times of this occurring...and...I wanted to give something else a try. I literally lost hours of video compiling due to win10's stupid update policies.

I still have a Win10 machine (and a win7 and a win8) but I figured I'd use a Linux machine for many of the things online, and take the other machines offline unless I needed to download something onto them. AS the linux machine may become my main machine, I also want games to use on it.

Thus, why I switched to Linux. It's actually an educational experience thus far, and though I find it a little tougher in some ways than Windows, I also feel as if I have a LOT MORE control over what is happening to my computer than I do with Windows 10.

I've actually had Linux do updates already, but it is in MY ballcourt on when to download the updates, when to restart...etc. I also can choose better WHAT to update on MY priorities, rather than some junkie at an office in washington who may try to install some unnecessary app that's going to break another essential program I already have on my computer.

Windows has some strengths, but I'm finding Linux also has some very strong strengths for those who like to be in control of their computers and want to know more in detail what is going on with it. It's not easy with Linux in some cases, and I have a LOT to learn, but it is interesting, and I like knowing I have more control than some guy in another state or country than I.

I'm still new at it though, and finding out various ways of doing things with LInux, so probably will ask other questions as they come up as they apply to games and such.

Strange how this update thingy never happened to me, it is like it is just made up.

I just don't save all the time. Some games also only have checkpoints at certain times, but this one was simply a matter of me just no thinking of saving. I hadn't really gone into combat or anything else, more of just a lot of conversations and advancing along the storyline like that in an RPG and doing various tasks and missions. Didn't think to save constantly as there didn't seem a huge risk of dying at the time.

Didn't account for SbW10 (suicide by win10) for my characters. Sometimes the computer really does cheat to screw you over...!!!

:)

I save all the time; if a game only lets you save at certain spots, I generally won't go past such a spot without saving. In games that let you save any time when you're not in battle, I'll usually save after every fight (SaGa games and Lennus 2 are examples of this). I'll also save after doing things like equipping characters or passing cut scenes. (Incidentally, I find it annoying when a game doesn't let me save between a boss fight and the following cut scene, particularly if that cutscene is not short.)

Also, I generally won't be playing for over an hour at a time, and I don't like to leave games running when I'm not playing them, so I won't lose over an hour (assuming the game isn't malicious with its save system).

Happened to me too. Made me furious naturally. I think they fixed it as it stopped doing that what I have seen or heard.

Had a weird thing happen that I'm not sure why.

I installed a game and had an icon put on the desktop as well. I started the game (Game was Helium Rain, not sure if that pertains to it or not) and then decided to exit out. It exited out, but did not shut down. It was still running in the background. I could see it in the favorites bar just sitting there. I tried to force close it, to x it out, and even terminal force close it, but it did not want to close.

I figured that it would be forced closed if I logged out, so I logged out. I log back in and the icon on the desktop is GONE.

It's still installed, and I can still get it to run via terminal, but the desktop icon is gone. Anyone know where it may have gone or went?

If I create another one is there going to be some confusion on the desktop or a conflict?

Those explanations are helpful. I think the small useful programs or details for like the | key use and other tools to go with it e.g grep help beginners if they know about them. They might not even know about small tricks where you can use the * or ? to use as general terms in searching.

Knowing the right key phrases or question helps a lot when trying to find a solution to a problem and then the search engine might cause problems itself by trying to manipulate and learn how people are searching and change the results based on that.

It sounds like they mean reverse engineering instead of documentation.

You can even do something like "echo *" in place of ls. I remember reading an account of someone who had to deal with the aftermath of an interrupted "rm -rf /", and having echo as a shell built-in was useful once /bin/ls had been deleted.

Another trick I read about once is that you can write a file to a USB device (or other disk) without a file system just by using redirection; this is useful if you get into a situation where the file would barely fit on the device itself, but would not fit once you factor in the filesystem overhead. (Granted, the situations where you'd need to do this are extremely rare, but it's an option if necessary.)