@chimay I remember those time (I started with Linux in 1996). The main problem was the lack of documentation. When Gentoo came out, I learnt a lot of things, but the FreeBSD handbook has been my manual for Unix and Unix like systems as many things could apply to any of them.
@stefano we have now plenty of good docs and wiki !
From what I've seen so far on freebsd doc & man pages, examples are often available, which is a good starting point when you discover sthg new.