Also remember that Dejanews is a dedicated news searcher that keeps a news spool from early 1995 and onwards. Even though more and more things take place of the web these days, do not forget that there is a lot of information available on the various ftp servers around the world. Some web search engines also index ftp servers but the tool of choice is still the archie servers, systems that regularly scan major ftp servers around the world and keep lists of files. These can be accessed in many ways, either by archie clients like archie or the X11 version xarchie which should be available on any well maintained linux system. Of course you should try to use the server closest to you, and to see the list of current server you can either start the archie client with no arguments or, if telnetting, by querying the server.
Online help is available.
Unfortunately not all servers are synchronised, so you might have to search a few before finding what you are looking for. Recently a more user friendly ftp index server entered the net, the ftpsearch engine, featuring many options and with a rather stark interface, in the best Unix tradition. Most of these offer help on efficient searching techniques, reading this can speed up your searches enormously. Investing a little time here will pay off in the long run. Finally, you might wish to get more information from a person, say an author of a software package.