In retrospect, I wonder why so many seasoned users have (over the years) recommended me to go for "easy" distros, that have been "scientifically" designed for all users. I wish somebody had told me to go for the "hard" ones. That would have saved me a lot of pain.
My problem with the "easy" distros has been that everything would be fine at the beginning and all I needed to know was point-and-click sequences in order to start working. Maybe some basic...

Problem:
A text file coms with a list comes with the items separated by commas, like:
We need them in column form, like:
Solution:
:%s/,/{[Ctrl+v], then [Enter]}/g

Notes:

1. The % before s, indicates that the range where the replacement is to take place is the whole document.
2. Ctrl and v are pressed simultaneously, and then the character we mean vim to use (in this case Return).
3. The g at the end of the

...

When using a particular distro, I've tried to stick to it, under the belief that my learning process would be easier without different directions to solve one problem. Therefore, my distro of choice (and that has been changing over time) has usually been the "best distro" at the time.
However, much later than other users (apparently), I've come to the realization that there seems to be a certan set of distros better suited for a particular job, and with some basic knowledge of Linux...

The task:
To mount a remote truecrypt volume locally, using sshfs.

The problem:
truecrypt /home/xri/sshfs-mounted-remote-directory/remote-truecrypt-vol /media/truecrypt1
gives an error message with "permission denied"

The solution:
a) Edit /etc/fuse.conf (or create it), and make sure it has this line:
user_allow_other
b) When mounting the sshfs remote directory, use this option
-o allow_other

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I've been looking for a simple and secure ('relatively secure', I should say) online service.

So far, I have my mind set on Amazon S3 for business purposes. A number of experts recommend it.
Another one I can say that drew my attention was rsync.net.


However, for personal purposes, I have settled on this one: SpiderOak. I like it for the following reasons:

1. Automatic backup
2. Privacy guaranteed (I'm not going to store unencrypted crucial data

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