Fortunately I haven't learned much, so it's easy to remember...or something like that.

I've been told that my brain is like a sponge...unfortunately it's not a very absorbent one

Seriously though, I'm pretty good at remembering things, especially music and other audio-related things (I'm a good mimic, too ). As for Linux-related knowledge, I'd say that I retain most of the basic concepts, but the details get lost sometimes. Although, I don't imagine that's too atypical. For example, I could probably install Arch again, from scratch, and set it up again exactly the way I have it now, but I might have to look up some specifics (like certain command line arguments) on the internet again.

I once had a boss tell me that I had seemed to terabytes of storage in my memory but it seemed sometimes I was using a 286 processor to access it.

not really, i remember what i need to remember, but i've been using linux for 10 years so if a significant portion of what i initially learned when i was first using linux is so obsolete as to be worthless knowlege with current distributions

Mine is too. But I've squeezed it too hard, and it's dried up.

In general, as I become older my memory gets more volatile. I do remember binary opcodes of the 6800 microprocessor which I used 27 years ago, but I often have to look up the syntax for rsync

This is a huge problem as many Linux certification programs require that you know a lot of stuff by heart, and do not allow Google during the exam.

Sometimes I describe real complicated problems in a post on this forum. Not only can I find them again myself but it might even help other people.

jlinkels

Mostly, I do.
Especially if I had some problem and then found the solution.
Of course I can forget some details, but I have a huge 'library' of saved web-pages (that ones which I decided to be really helpful), I also have a [paper] notebook where I make some useful notes (a good tip!). And of course I must say about Google

About four years ago, I decided to create a text file with very short notes, little snippets related to Linux and the command line. That file now is more than 1,000 lines long, but it's very useful. I find things in it a lot faster than anywhere else, because I don't have to plough through the cruft of man pages or Google results. I also get to read it once in a while, when I'm bored. I don't retain everything, but I retain most of it. Reading it from time to time helps me retain the information that I haven't actually used for too long.

Four years later, I even got to delete some lines that I don't need anymore because it's things that I do often therefore I never forget, like options to tar, grep or ssh.

Ad my age ?
No I do not remember any thing .
Teapot is already ending up, in the fridge

In the US, I've often encountered (and used) the term "sieve-brain". According to my wife, the holes in my sieve** are getting larger.


**For those who are not native speakers of English:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sieve

If it's important, I usually write it down somewhere, either in a text file or on here.

I don't actually forget that much, or I do, but I remember it after some effort.

Saving links is frustrating because often when you go back months or years later they aren't there any longer. If I find a web note particularly helpful I'll save the link in browser but also will cut and paste the text from it into an ASCII file.

Also saving paper notes might get cumbersome trying to find the right information later. As I noted earlier in the thread I essentially blog my days into ASCII files. It is a lot quicker to do "grep <whatever>" 20??/*" to search all my notes from this millennium than to try to go figure out which notebook might have had a note.

The way my memory works everything short term (within the last 6 months) seems like "yesterday" whereas everything older than that seems like "a few months ago" even when it might actually have been 4-5 years ago. Often unless I remember where I was when I did it and have some other time reference (e.g. I left that job in Jan 2002) I really don't know when it occurred - just that it did.

I make my notes in notepad (I prefer Textpad editor) and save imp. text and corr. links.

WTF is "imp. text and corr. links"?

From context I'm assuming he meant:

import

corresponding

Expecting him to define his abbreviations without defining your own WTF seems a bit unreasonable.

Though I'd not use notepad for that. I'd use vim even on Windoze. I'd also make sure I had UNIX/Linux core utilities (i.e. Unix utils for Windows or Cygwin) so I could grep quickly.