Much of the volume on comp.os.linux used by questions that have been
answered tens, hundreds or even thousands of times.

Questions like:
  - I have a ACME vga card. Will it work with X11?
  - I have a 100Mb hd and want it all in one partition, but mkfs don't
    like block counts >65535, what do I do? (and you'll also be told why
    this isn't a good idea)
  - Can I have both os/2 dos and linux on my 'puter?
  - Which virtual toppings does Linus like on his virtual pizza?
  - I want to install Linux on my machine. Where do I start?
  - du seem to report double sizes on files, what's up?
  - I just upgraded my kernel, why don't ps work anymore?

Answers on that and a lot more can be found in these documents:

  INFO-SHEET (what is linux, features, hardware, getting linux)
  meta-faq   (linux faq, linux newsgroups, ftp, bbs'es, about which
              files to get when installing linux, mailing lists,
              + quite a lot of other info and pointers)
  faq_<Date> The complete linux faq. Contains answers on: Linux, linux
             instalation, common problems, linux and dos, more problems,
             hints, features, gcc, scsi, X11, networking, and emacs.

Both the INFO-SHEET and meta-faq are posted regularly on comp.os.linux
(recently on comp.os.linux.announce); you should be able to find it if
you search backwards thru comp.os.linux for "INFO-SHEET" or "META-FAQ"
in the subject line.

For some this might work:
  cd /usr/spool/news/comp/os/linux    # or /var/spool/news/comp/os/linux
  grep "Subject: META-FAQ" *
  grep "Subject: Linux INFO-SHEET" *


The faq is _large_ but very well organized, and face it: you have to
read _some_ docs to keep your system running smoothly, and the faq is
a minimum.

The problem is that the people who know the answers grow tired of
answering the same questions time after time and stop answering. This
is not what anyone wants, so please RTFM before asking. The manuals
might be hard to understand, but please make a effort.

If people could start doing this life on comp.os.linux would become
better and maybe we could get rid of all the split posts too :)

Nicolai
--
Nicolai Langfeldt, "Bugs made while you wait"
Internet: janl@ifi.uio.no