Stop Forgetting Your Pants

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👇 PULL IT DOWN FOR THE GOOD STUFF 👇

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#ramble #linux #thelinuxcast

[Ex_impius]

I have been using linux since 2004. I forget how to use things i don’t do often all the time! If you don’t use it, you lose it!

[fakecubed]

Great point about how creating a tutorial helps with memory. Probably the best way to learn something is to teach it. Forces you to think about how information should be organized and relayed in a way that is best understood. That process results in better memories of the information. Perhaps a little odd, but a lot of the time when I am learning something new, I will pretend like I'm talking to somebody and explain the important concepts to that imaginary person. I always find it helpful for retention and understanding.

[fakecubed]

Great to hear that comment resonated with you and you've taken meaningful steps to better document things. It was only a couple years ago that I finally started taking it seriously as well. I got tired of messing up somewhere down the line, and needing to start over, but being unable to find the same tutorial or documentation I used the first time. I no longer trust that I'll be able to find such things in the future, or things close enough to my own particular situation. Web searching in general seems like it's gotten so much worse in recent years. So now I make my own tutorials and keep them stored locally and backed up, so that information can never be lost.

Especially as I've gotten into things like Raspberry Pi clusters, and use more VMs, and really *need* to have repeatability, having a specific set of detailed steps is an absolute lifesaver.

To the extent that you are a "Linux influencer", this is one area where being a good role model can do a lot of good for your viewers, so thank you for making this video and getting the word out. I hope it starts some good conversations in the comments as well.

[darthkielbasa]

Good documentation has saved my bacon a bunch. And learning the basics of git to pull or push from a repo saves time. Useful for configs, notes, backups

[frogmanjack]

Hey Linux Cast. I've been in IT in various roles for about 12 years including sysadmin with a fairly large linux infrastructure as well as using Linux as my main os for about 5 years now...my point is? I have to look things up still all the time. There's only so much we can pack into this organic hard disk we call a brain. Great video btw!

[JanLunge]

I used github for this for a bit but i noticed it would only write down very complex stuff, so I now do this in obsidian and its nice that i can tag everything properly. makes searching for things very easy. git is still a very good approach though, well done video!

[markjones]

I've been keeping documentation for myself in a self hosted instance of dokuwiki that runs as a docker container.

[ciscornBIG]

Been taking extensive notes whenever I can be bothered and moreso since switching a main machine to debian. Notes are essential!

[dovedozen]

one of the standard pieces of advice I've been giving to people as I help them switch to linux is to write down any command line stuff they end up needing in a notebook or something, so they don't have to look it up again next time they need it. this exact thing is SO real and remembering to keep your own notes makes your QOL so much better.

[scottb]

Thank you for relaying a simple and great idea. I also think it would be great to put on what ever cloud based storage you possess, so you can retrieve it in case of computer catastrophe or you cannot be at your computer. Good video, one of your best!

[Ex_impius]

Ive been using linux since 2004. I forget how to do stuff i don’t do often all the time! If you don’t use it, you lose it!

[n-o-i-d]

I've been doing this too, it is very useful. The difference is I keep my .md files in my dropbox and have them synced across all my devices. Not saying my way is better, it just suits my needs better. Awesome advice to develop a habit of writing personal documentation.

[EduBM]

Matt having a documentation is really a great idea, but for the use case of switching distros a lot I handle it with ansible scripts, you can set them up to basically do anything for you. Mine I have set up to install all the programs that I need for my working environment for Fedora and for Debian based distros. I just run the script when I fresh install a distro, and bang, everything is where is suppose to be and all my software is installed so I can work, they can do pretty much anything really is a great tool for automating these system tasks that we always forget(I always update them when a critical software to my workflow is installed and keep the script on github so I never loose it)

[fragdq]

An own knowledge base is good to have. There are also good tools/notebook/wiki apps out there to use for this, many of them also encrypted so that nobody can see it, in case you wanna a bit more than only public tutorials.

[KM-svdh]

I was like that too, now I have a documentation folder on my home server synced with both my phone and laptop through syncthing (selfhosted).

You may want to try selfhosting syncthing, and try to learn markdown (or markup, i dont really know the difference) to format your documents.

[MrAlanCristhian]

I also printed some of it. I don't like to look at my phone or laptop to read it if I still don't have a working GUI. For example, to set up BTRFS after set up a partition during the installation.

[ryebread]

I've had a folder full of text files on a remote drive with various little modifications i like to make to my linux systems for awhile now. it is a good idea that more computer tinkerers should be doing (if they're not already)

[jabal_team]

for this i use Obsidian, man it save me a lot .

[jabuci]

A Dropbox-synchronized local text file is also useful.

[Skelterbane]

I have an alias to more or less list my aliases.
A command to show what commands I have made to run my commands.