Whenever a problem pops up in my use of Linux (full time user for 6 years) I start by googling. The simplest (or most common) issues will usually be cleared right away. If it's not in one of those two categories the advise I find tend to be wrong, misguided, obsolete, and if you ask a question here on "ask" you risk being "duplicated" to some superficially similar question.
Some issues have haunted me for years until I suddenly hit on the actual developer's documentation (or equivalent) which in a few lines explains how to solve my issue, the correct and consistent way.
Whenever that happens I'm always kicking myself: why didn't I just go here to begin with? And the obvious answer is: "I had no idea this was what I was looking for".
And for the issues that this hasn't yet happened I'm banging my head: "This ought to be either straight forward or someone tell me it's not doable"
So my question is: Are there projects out there trying to collect or list this documentation in a searchable/browseable way.
I know there are many very good "if you want this do that" tutorials on Ubuntu but I'm looking for actual documentation. That either are or could be collected in one place (at least conceptually) so that search for information could start in one place.
I'm fully aware this is a broad question but if you approach it as:
Does gnome have a comprehensive documentation project - where do I find it?
Does Ubuntu have a comprehensive documentation project - where do i find it?
For example: how exactly does the mime-type association work in Ubuntu and in xubuntu?
How exactly are menus created (in Ubuntu: quicklists, xubuntu/gnome: the main menu)
How exactly does the rendering process work for compiz/x? (I'm having this issue where windows randomly stops updating until somehow forced to resume (I guess). So for instance where do I look for logs that may indicate the problem. How may I change randr or other settings that may influence this issue.
So my point is to organize exact documentation or preferably to find projects that do this already.
Thanks!
If answers to this question get me started I'm hoping to collect such a list.
