I use txt, odt, html for saving information. And PNG screenshots.

I personally use kjots for keeping notes on all my Linux-based activities (among other subjects). It's quick and light, and it allows you to organize all your pages in a convenient tree-based hierarchy. I have hardware, software, scripting, settings, etc. all laid out in their own sections. I have it set up with a hotkey to quickly call it up and dismiss it as necessary.

I just discovered that there appears to now be a web-based clone of it, if anyone's interested.

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Kjots is cool! Thanks for advice!

vim/vi don't require you to add software (except to M$). Most UNIX variants come with vi and most Linux variants come with a vi clone like nvi or vim. Since vim is also available for M$ it is easy to use on 99% of things out there.

As I read it Kjots is a KDE add on. If you don't use a GUI (as I seldom do when on UNIX/Linux) it isn't quick and dirty like vi/vim which can be used at CLI. (Vim does also have a Gvim GUI if one is so inclined.)

I'll have to concur with the idea of using plain text and Vim. I was a Windows user until 2006, I used a program similar to Kjots to take notes. It was very feature rich. Now I remember that finding stuff in it was not as quick as it is now with my plain text file. I had to open the program, then launch the search mechanism. Adding new data was even slower because I worried too much about under which node/folder it was supposed to be filed. Then I moved to Linux and realized I had been saving data in a proprietary format, although the application was free and runs on Wine. With the plain text file, I can run grep or even make a script just for searching that file. And plain text will work on any platform. I've also realized that I don't need no stinking folders, I just need the information to be there, one empty line is fine for separating it from the next piece. Whenever I need to find it, I just need to remember some key word.

In the first years you are keen and it is easy to memorize low-level information like command line options. But as your your knowledge grows and such information is replaced by concepts, you then cannot remember low-level info and do not want to remember them either.

So computing jobs are like prostitution - you can only do well in the first decade or two.

Some people LIKE "mature" um... prostITutes

I do not remember most of what I have learned ... or, maybe I should say, I don't remember that I do.

Therefore, "I know where to find it." When I write software, I stuff it full of comments, and I keep a "running log" (diary...) as I work.

Yes. Ask me that question again when I have acquired some substantial understanding of Linux.

With Linux - All is change as time progresses, so does everything else but I go back to the days of red hat 4.1 and 5.25 floppies.
Now of course everything is some form of network install.
I suppose the most import thing I remember as I was something of an expert at NT 3.51 at the time, when hired as a OS installer at Intel.
and worked on P6 sub code to try to block OS blue screen of death scenarios at the core of the processor - Wintel was real.
I somehow knew that Linux would become the dominant OS of the world in 1994...
why - because Intel wrote Processor flags to try and prevent errata blue screens on Windows by preemptive prediction of failure to come, by split seconds...
...that is why - MS windows was toast and it ran better on Intel because of premonition code within the CPU by feedback of processes warnings within windows as it was about to blowup.
Linux was crude then... but far superior in what it did and always was.
Now of course its game over for everything but the marketing superiority of MS windows (Just a power-play as MS Windows is just what it is...)
NT was the best they ever had and it was not accepted until it became XP and what a can of worms it was.
Linux Is what runs planet Earth today. The desktop is the only holdout due entirely to preinstalled software on consumer computer gear.

(ten year old thread)

Certainly not. There is too much to know.

What I do remember is how to research things.

I'll give an example. Just recently I needed to set up a shared directory between a VM and host. It's been probably five years since I've had to do that, so I had to look it up. What I didn't have to do, though, is read the whole howto. A brief skim brought it back to me.

An ancient thread but a good question. I've never tried to remember such things. I keep a file of things I've done and I have bookmarks to hand for useful places on the internet, like the Arch wiki and the Xfce documentation.

Same. Once in a while I'll run into a problem that I think I've encountered before but forgotten the solution to. Then I do a search on LQ and find an old thread -- that seems like it'll solve the problem -- that I started. Sort of lucky that LQ has a longer memory than I sometimes have. [heh]

I try to forget everything I learned. To learn something new. Routine kills everything.