The overall message of this post is great, I've wasted plenty of time learning a shallow amount of "cool" tools.
One thing I wish I knew starting out was how to create a basic VM. I shudder to think of all the time wasted thinking I was a sysadmin genius for dual booting Linux and later doing something stupid to my hard drive. VMs give me my Linux environment without the pain from those moments when I think to myself "maybe I want to be a kernel developer."
One thing I wish I knew starting out was how to create a basic VM. I shudder to think of all the time wasted thinking I was a sysadmin genius for dual booting Linux and later doing something stupid to my hard drive. VMs give me my Linux environment without the pain from those moments when I think to myself "maybe I want to be a kernel developer."