There is a point in time where things change, where a balance tips, ever so slightly, from one side to the other. Where a moment in time, even so briefly as a day ago .. seems like an eternity. Where tomorrow becomes today and yesterday becomes a long time ago. Today I feel, is such a day. After toying around with linux for a few years I get the distinct feeling that something has changed. Up until now I have been thinking in terms of " Things I can do with Linux and things I can’t do with Linux" Even though I have been tinkering and fiddling with the whole operating system for a few years now, i’m mostly a command line noob skirting the fringes of Linux’s true potential. Mildly intimidated by the myriad of commands and switches that lurked beneath the console, I looked for gui alternatives, workarounds and "other operating systems" when it came to solving my problems. There where a lot of things I didn’t know about Linux and it felt like I would never be able to learn it all. So i just waddled and waded in the shallow waters of my experience, not daring to peek down the deep end.
But over the last few months that has started to change. Advocating Linux at my new workplace meant putting my money where my mouth is and letting linux do things. I’ve spent more and more time in the command line. At first copy-pasting manuals from the forums like some scriptkiddy, but gradually (through the process of making the same mistakes 100 times over and following the same manual an equal amount of times) the code mumbo jumbo started to make sense. Where I steered away from a tar.gz file in favor of a .deb installer.. I know ever dare to unzip it and try to do "make install" by myself. Its not that I have gathered a great amount of knowledge overnight, its more that the ‘Fear, Uncertainty and doubt" is fading away. Instead of saying " These are the things I can do in Linux, these are the things I can’t" I now dare to say ‘These are the things I CAN do with Linux.. These are the things I can’t do .. yet"
Somehow that intricate system of commands, folders and pipes hold the "possibility of being mastered" instead of the complexity to scare me away. So I think i’m taking another small step in the world of understanding and using Linux. Sure it’s not done all at once .. but somewhere along the way, you tipp the see-saw and the whole thing changes.