I consider myself to have kind of an average level of memory, or may be a little more than that.

Im new to Linux but not to computers.. im a tech guy so i know a lot of windows stuff.

The point is that in Linux i am learning a lot of commands, switches and stuff in the terminal.
But at some point, i start to forget things that i learned and used some time ago.
The Linux CLI is so powerful and big that i don't think that the average geek will learn everything in it without forgetting a lot of stuff.
The problem is that by not doing all that stuff in a GUI environment, it gets really hard to just keep in the brain all that information. With something visual on the other hand, you will probably get to remember how to do a task that you did long time ago. It goes like that line that says "Better a picture than a thousand words" i guess...

So i would like to read from you, your experiences in this matter.
I wonder if the forums and the Linux community in general, are an essential part of "knowing Linux" and dealing with it all the time, otherwise, you can not keep up and retain everything you have sucked into your brain. I mean like without those sources, you are missing a very important tool that is a MUST in order to retain all the knowledge you got about the penguin no matter if you are a newbie or a professional. Is this true ?

Lets say that you go to a long vacation a month or so, and then you are back home, you sit in front of a terminal in your screen, and you just start doing all the weird and advanced stuff in it without having to re-read a lot of man pages or asking in forums for things that you did before without complications?

Ok.. i hope you got my point. (my English is not very good yet)

Thanks guys.

It is just like learning a language, if you leave it for a while, you will forget some of it. Some of the Gurus on this forum have forgotten more than I could ever hope to know. What helps me the most, is when I stumble into a problem and get the answer from someone here or that I know, I write the command lines down on a piece of paper or a computer file for future reference. This may not be what you wanted to hear, but at least you know you aren't the only one...

A true user of shells is not someone who can remember all the commands, that is impossible, nore is it someone who can only copy and paste commands. A true user of the shell is someone who knows how to find help in the shell, and with the knowledge necessary to know where to look for that must have command.

There is no way you will ever know all the commands, but there are only about 100 popular packages that contain commands, all you need to know is where to look, and then how to find documentation for what it is you want to use. Overall, there are only a few commands you need to know for everyday things, then there are those extra few commands that you only use when you need them (such as sed and find), plus those applications you use (you be able to remember these!).

Overall, its all pretty easy, the man and info pages, along with the "--help" argument will refresh your memory. I know pretty much every time i build a command chain i read several man pages, no way would i dare try to remember all the arguments when i dont need to. All you need to know is where to look for the tool you want. And this is pretty much experience, with a good dash of curiosity so you explore and get that experience.

Amen---the trick is not to remember details, but to remember where to find the details.

As you get older, the trick is to remember where to look for the place that you need to look to find the details.