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Comment by silentbicycle | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. If you don't know these "tricks", you don't know Unix. That's probably why it says "tricks you need to know".

This probably comes from learning Unix via graphical interfaces, such as GNOME on Ubuntu, OS X, etc., and blog posts by other people with the same background.

Kernighan and Pike's _The Unix Programming Environment_ is probably still the best place to learn this stuff.

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I think most people don't know Linux now. I'm basing this on the nose-diving quality of replies to technical Linux questions and problems over the past couple of years.

Normally it goes something like this:

A: I have problem X with Y.

B: Oh I don't know anything at all about Y, but if you migrate to Z I bet you won't have the problem any more.

A: Okay I'll do that. Thanks!

or:

A: I have a problem X with Y.

B: Oh did you try (completely unrelated irrelevant thing)

A: No, but I will. Thanks!

Seriously.

On average, the BSD community is quite a bit more clueful. Not because the Linux community is dumb, but because Linux is quite a bit more visible - Complete newbies are dramatically more likely to use a newbie-friendly Linux distro such as Ubuntu than FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. (The BSDs seems to get more users who already have experience with Linux or commercial Unices.)

Unfortunately, Linux newbies searching for help may run across bad advice from people with barely more experience, creating a feedback loop.

s/tricks/fundamentals

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