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View Poll Results: When does a newbie cease to be a newbie?
After compiling a kernel
0
0%
After fixing a code error in their distro
2
6.90%
After creating their own distro
2
6.90%
After compiling a kernel for their car stereo
4
13.79%
When posting more replies than questons to this site
Well. I think in some ways, all of us are prone to newbish behavior. Gurus simply hide it more. So a 'newbie' never really escapes being a 'newbie' from his own perspective. Others may see him advance further, but basically, we're all fairly new to this anyway. None of this is all that old, or ancient, unless you start talking about sendmail :P
It's not possible to know EVERYTHING about every distribution and every problem and issue. There can be fundamental problems that even gurus have a hard time with their system at times - resorting newbish behavior. The further you get into it, the more complex you get, the more out-of-depth you are, requiring more and more research and taking more and more time. You won't get a chance to look back, things are moving so quickly. It's those who stop and look back who declare themselves gurus - it is those who keep going without looking back who become the supreme beings
But, less of a philisophical answer is: once you know the command line back to front and know how to write scripts and solve problems effectively.
In my opinion its someone who can answer his own questions.
Not necessarilly (sp?) via his knowledge, but he knows to use rescources that are available to him.
i.e. man pages, the internet etc.
When you can put down on your resume that you created 'Linux' and only one person can do that...
I agree with chu though, I don't really consider another person a newbie if they can find the answers themselves with little or no help from others, but by reading docs, manuals and so on.
But there are so many different levels really though. One person may know everything about apache but then know nothing about zeus, so he could consider himself a newbie to zeus but a guru in apache.
And as for the replies, I'd want to see
"posts helpful replies" in several areas
rather than just going by quantities ;)
I mean, there might be people here
who specialise in posting
Option Protocol "IMPS/2"
Option ZAxisMapping "4 5"
all the time, and end up having
answered that a 5000 times ;)
That makes them helpful, but not
necessarily a guru :}
I think you stop being a newbie when, besides knowing how and where to look for documentation, you begin to see how you can make the various parts that make up a *nix system work for you the way you want.
Of course the jump from newbie to guru would be more than one step.
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