That’s a big question, but I’ll try my best to answer without getting too deep in the weeds.

I’ll probably sound like a fanatic, but I use my PKMS for notes, logs, journaling, project and task management, snippets, and documentation. They all have their own structure and flow. It’s a Gall’s Law kind of situation where I started simple and worked, so it was extended and slowly evolved to reach it’s current complexity.

The beauty of PKMS over a notepad is the loose set of basic features (Wiki-links, tags, templates, etc) that be used in a personalized way to quickly capture, organize, and retrieve info that works best for you and no one else.

As a simple, but detailed example, in the context of learning linux, i might make a “linux” note and dump info there. I put everything in my own words unless I use md quotes (> quoted text) and I add useful links that I also bookmarked in my browser. When the “linux” page gets bloated, I migrate clusters of info into new notes, wiki-linked in the “linux” note. For example a “distros,” note which might have some high level comparisons. I favor making new notes over md headers so it’s easier to find and open notes by name (a “quick switcher” hotkey as it’s called in obsidian). When I settle on a distro I might make a note for it to contain wiki-links of default components EG “apt (package manager),” “gnome (desktop environment),” “x (windowing system)” and dump relevant notes there. If I try wayland, I’d make a “wayland” note but also a “windowing system” note that both wiki-links “x (window system)” and “wayland,” and is wiki-linked in each of those notes.

It could get very meticulous, and some folks setup is too much for me, and I’m sure mine is too much for others, but start simple, experiment, find what works, and add to it. In the beginning I had dedicated time just to developing my PKMS. The important thing is quickly recording and retrieving info.

Sometime i do have crazy scrawlings where i just need a notepad to dump info during a deep dive. That would be loosely zettelkasten style with a time-stamped name, sometime with a few extra works for context/search. Sections could be extracted into their own note later. The note itself could be linked to more organized, related notes.

As a more complex, but shorter example, to show how similar tools can be used in a different manner: I’ll make a note for a command line program, for example, cat. I have a CLI template with a Useful Flags (options) section. Kind of like a personalized tldr. I’ll also have specific notes for complex snippets (AKA one-liners. Real note example: “list-and-sum-all-audio-file-durations”) and if it uses cat, i’ll tag it #cmd/cat. The CLI template also has a Snippets section that uses dataview to automatically list, in this case, all notes with the #cmd/cat tag. I also have a “command line programs” note that uses a dataview query to list all notes that used the CLI template. Also, a Snippets note using dataview to list all pages created with the snippets template.

There are tools specifically for snippets and personalized tldr, and I may migrate to those eventually-- especially after I have my install script up and running with linked configs-- but the simple tools in PKMSs are really adaptable and make it easy to customize and integrate. Plus it’s all md files in a folder, so it’s easy to sync and access on multiple machines, including mobile.

I hope that’s not TMI. Starting linux can feel overwhelming and I don’t want to add to that. Quiet the contrary. I started my PKMS right before my last, permanent switch linux and I think it helped it stick, and 3+ years later I still use it all the time. As I said before, the simple tools that turn a notepad into a PKMS can add a personalized structure to the insane scrawings, making it quick and easy to navigate, find, edit, and add info. You just have to start simple and take your time. I hope that helps. Good luck with the switch!