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When are you no longer a n00b?
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nbittech
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Joined: 05 Feb 2012
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Location: Western North Carolina

PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 10:13 am    Post subject: When are you no longer a n00b? Reply with quote

I have been working with Linux for years, and Gentoo for about three months now, and just now feel that I have reached that point of comfort, when I'm not scared of that unknown error anymore, and want more from everything.

Backstory; I'm an IT consultant and pc-repair tech with a lifetime of knowledge and expeareance with all things electronic and computer-esque. I have owned my own "complete tech solutions" business for about five years now, and am just coming to the painful realization that a jack of all trades is a master of none. I try to learn a little bit of everything, but often fail at something because I spent my time learning about something else, and curse that life is too short, the world is too big, and I'm too far behind.

I just moved my entire home and shop (about 7 computers total) to Gentoo and plan on staying there because I feel the need to innovate with everything and be the best at what I do (speeking from my ego, not my heart). I am just now to the point where I feel comfortable with Gentoo and I'm using things instead of fixing them. I take a look around and realize, everything around me actually works, how boring! I've never been to this point with Windows, or Debian, (or my wife!) I never saw this problem coming! But now I have to maintain seven or eight Gentoo boxes, run a pc-repair and consulting business, keep myself from setting laptop on fire, and somehow find the time for actual work. I'm no longer a n00b, but I'm no expert. Did I just do something really stupid by moving an entire pc-repair shop to Gentoo when almost all my customers PCs use Windows? I'm definitely a trendsetter (or an idiot) in the business. But that's me, I strive to be different and keep quality to the max, even if it means sitting at my desk with six ssh terminals open at 3am on a Sunday while the wife screams at me to come to bed. I hope one day that everything works comfortably and I am no longer a n00b. Ahh, the freedom to Emerge recklessly, and use Windows only in Virtualbox! I look forward to the day.

So at what point am I not a n00b anymore, have I long since passed it, or do I still have a long way to go?
Is there any one thing that if I am able to do, makes me not a n00b anymore?
Even after a lifetime of learning, I, myself, will always be a n00b.
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nbittech
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Joined: 05 Feb 2012
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Location: Western North Carolina

PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 10:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I might also add that installing Gentoo, or building kernels isn't that hard for me, Pappy's kernel seeds, and the Gentoo Livecd with a web browser and Guake is the way to go. Maintenance is the issue for me, GCC versions, Python versions, USE flags, new packages, shitty ebuilds (not often, but it happens), symlinks, revdep-rebuilds, profiles (hardened vs server vs nothing but typing a whole page of USE FLAGS), complete system-rebuilds that fail and die because of one dep that I didn't see, you know the drill. It's all fun though, and I get it. I just hope that one day I come up with a good system to keep track of it all. I sync emerge every day, world update every week, and update my kernel every month or when I see something cool happen at Kernel.org. Gentoo is fun!
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Ion Silverbolt
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 12:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think anyone who can install and maintain Gentoo is not a noob anymore.

That said, the scale of knowledge needed to know everything about Linux is so vast that it boggles the mind. I mean, I can use portage and Gentoo in my sleep, but then I see people posting crazy complicated bash scripts, or finding solutions to problems out of nowhere. It really is amazing how much more there always seem to be there to learn.
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gerard27
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 1:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nbittech,
The "titles" you see under peoples nics depend purely on their number of posts.
Nobody knows what your or my Linux knowledge is.
I know of at least one person on this forum who is an "Advocate" and thus posted a lot.
But judging from his questions he'll probably never will understand Gentoo.
Gerard.
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disi
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 1:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
I try to learn a little bit of everything, but often fail at something because I spent my time learning about something else, and curse that life is too short, the world is too big, and I'm too far behind.


I don't think there is something wrong to learn (except of believes and stuff). As a child, when everyone learned Turbo Pascal, I learned Cobol at a work placement or then did most things actual in Basic :) Now everybody fancies Ruby and I learn Java :roll:

But that's just me, at work I have little to do with Gentoo but rather Linux and Windows in 'heterogeneous' networks, to enable the MS techis* to use AD. The thing is, that you do need to know a lot about MS as well as Linux. For example, if you store an array in the attribute macAddress, AD automatically sorts those, which makes fixed IPs quiet difficult :roll: And stuff like that...

* I don't mean that in a bad way, there is a lot to think about and you do not want to train all the stuff.
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while true
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

khaha, I might not be a noob anymore?

...all I wanted was some free/stable OS... :roll:

I am gnu/linux since 2008, ubuntu 8.4 I believe.
In april it will be 2 years on gentoo, and now a bit over a year on tty/screen and wm
(so my typing has improved considerably. :D )
For my friends I am most advanced computer scientist.


Now I am modifying kernel, restarting services, write bash scripts, modifying all kinds of rc x init conf files, mounting devices....

The truth is, most of the time I do not know what I am doing,
I am highly dependable from this forum, so I will always be newbie here.

I guess all depends from the aspect of the view.
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bigbangnet
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm still a noob and oddly I love it :lol: . I love Gentoo and the way it works compared to other distros (Ubuntu for one). I'll stick with Gentoo cause I feel i learn better with it...again compared to ubuntu. I mean, you click next a couple of times and it works in Ubuntu..wtf. I want to learn the inside out. It's faster too :D

But with your concern, I could give you a couple of ideas but give yourself a goal and stick with it. I could tell you to start programming and/or start or continue some projects on Gentoo ...ebuilds and Gentoo packages for example. Just give yourself a goal or a project and stick with it.
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 8:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nbittech,

An 'expert' is someone that knows more than you do.
You are not a noob when you can answer posts here, that makes you somebodies expert.

I've been a Gentoo user since liveCD 1.4-rc4 (late 2002?) and have a few posts to my credit on the forums.
However, you won't find me responding to KDE questions as I don't use it, so my knowledge is minimal in that area.
You can't know it all - just be content to know well the areas you do use.
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those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.
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Kollin
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 9:41 pm    Post subject: Re: When are you no longer a n00b? Reply with quote

nbittech wrote:

Is there any one thing that if I am able to do, makes me not a n00b anymore?


Yes!
When you start contributing to your opensource community (code, bug reports, forum postings, promoting etc. ) you are not a noob anymore, you are a contributor and member :wink:
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invasivenorman
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:46 pm    Post subject: Re: When are you no longer a n00b? Reply with quote

nbittech wrote:
I just moved my entire home and shop (about 7 computers total) to Gentoo

I love FreeBSD. I would run FreeBSD on everything I have (& my wife's iPad as well), but FreeBSD frankly doesn't suit everything. Which is why I use Gentoo for some machines & my wife uses (*cringe*) Ubunutu.

I don't at all disagree with the feeling that you'll always be learning, but once you stop making decisions from a fanatical attempt to pursue the One Pure Way, you'll be much further from newbie status.

(the sheer amount of time & processor cycles I'm wasting by recompiling stuff from source on this netbook means that I'm not very far along, either ;)
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Chiitoo
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 12:36 am    Post subject: ><)))°ß Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
However, you won't find me responding to KDE questions as I don't use it, so my knowledge is minimal in that area.

/me raises the untrue-flag.

NeddySeagoon @ post 6949468 @ startx fails wrote:
This may not be 100% correct as I'm a gnome user. Make a file called ~/.xinitrc and put a signle line in there
Code:
exec startkde

Now when you do startx, it should start KDE, not twm.

By the by, that is correct. 8)


nbittech,

I am very much a 'jack of all trades, master of none' as well, which I'm actually not too fond of.
It goes with computers, music (as in creating music with instruments and whatnots), cars and other technology like that (mechanic), and the list goes on and on.

I would really like to find something I would really excel at, but I think I'll just have to accept the way it is.

If all your customers use Windows, it would probably not be a bad idea to keep one for yourself, maybe as a dual-boot thing like I have it, though I never really boot into it, haven't needed it after I installed Gentoo a little over a year ago and have been using just that, for gaming, browsing, everything.
I had no Linux experience from before, other than a really short test of Ubuntu, which didn't really teach me anything.
Gentoo, however, taught me lots, and keeps doing it so I don't think I will be moving away from it.

Either way, using Gentoo all the time might make you forget things about Windows, and that would probably be bad for business, heh. Perhaps that's just me, though.

I am, and will be, The Noob Unlimited, who just might know a thing of few about stuff. ^^

As for the forum title, though I don't think this is about it, it is indeed related to the post-count as mentioned already.
Nothing else.
I find the 'Guru' I have at the time of writing this quite 'much' and would rather have the 'n00b' instead (or actually I would rather have 'The Noob Unlimited' but meh).


Just some thoughts~
Glad to have you on board!
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