Windows Sys Admin to Linux Sys Admin --- I'm scared.

technogoat

Sleep with photos of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman under your pillow

After you learn Linux, bully Windows users since they are vermin who never seen a CLI in their lives or even understand how an OS functions

LittleBIT

technogoat wrote: »

Sleep with photos of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman under your pillow

After you learn Linux, bully Windows users since they are vermin who never seen a CLI in their lives or even understand how an OS functions

This literally made me LOL.

Every Linux person I've talked to had this boujee elitist attitude --- makes me want to be one of them haha.

Since I'm updating; I've gotten through half of the LFCS course, it's been really fun and the CLI is getting easier to use. Downloaded a study guide with all the commands. It's really just repetition, repetition, repetition.

I'm on my way!

Can't wait to re-start my AWS training, but that's for another time.

technogoat

Sorry,

already encountered Windows users who been with the OS for decades have no clue how to make a simple script to automate a repetitive task

anyways,

Why not pick a distro you think suits you and use it daily instead of Windows

You can stick with one with GUI then day-by-day learn CLI

slowly, you'll learn how Linux works and also make your own scripts

it also will give you transitions skills with Power Shell

LittleBIT

Unfortunately where I am at, its all Windows. Whats even worse is I get 1 day off. Spend 12 hours a day at work. (Overseas contractor).

Maybe once I return home and return to the land of fast internet, Ill use it more and more. Ive been using centos and ubunut server for labbing. Id use Ubuntu as an everyday, I actually did for a few months and just ran VMs for windows stuff. I liked Ubuntu. Maybe Ill compromise and just get a Mac, an elitist, above all.

blargoe

technogoat wrote: »

Sleep with photos of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman under your pillow

After you learn Linux, bully Windows users since they are vermin who never seen a CLI in their lives or even understand how an OS functions

I have thankfully altered this perception at my workplace. We (as an industry) are still paying for the sins of the easy paper-MCSE path to a mid-senior level admin position that was so prevalent 15 years ago. These folks are now middle-aged wizard-clickers who somehow continue to survive and drive down expectations for the "Windows" skillset.

Though, I would strongly advise anyone getting into IT administration or who has gotten into IT in the past 5 years to pick up both Windows and Linux basic operations skills, and become fluent in either on their path toward whatever specialization they choose.

Panther

Nice! You can try to find out how to do these in Linux or Windows, goals in themselves.

Add:
Backups
Disaster Recovery
Anything else a company would do
etc.

phatrik wrote: »

Personally I gave myself goals like:

- Setup a webserver
- Setup a webserver capable of virtual hosting
- Learn how to setup an SSL certificate
- Setup a mail server
- Setup a mail server capable of doing virtual hosting
- Use iptables (Back then it was ipchains) to share my highspeed internet connection with other computers (high speed internet was a new concept and fairly expensive, my dad was still on dialup until I decided I'd figure out how to share the connection)
- setup a nameserver with reverse DNS for my local server (and the fake websites and e-mail domains)

I never gave myself a goal of learning linux inside out.. instead I picked broader goals like webservers, mail servers, DNS servers and firewalls and everything else just kind of followed along. For me that was a lot more interesting than sitting there and thinking to myself "ok, now I have to learn all these shell commands" There's nothing wrong to use targeted learning for the stuff that doesn't fall within any of your broader goals (i.e: at some point I told myself it was time to learn about user management) but IMO giving yourself some sort of little project is a much more fun way to learn.

Last but not least: avoid dual booting. If you don't have dedicated hardware then download VirtualBox and run some VMs, that way you get to keep your desktop and you can always refer to online information (google searches) when you're stuck.



PS: As you've already said it yourself, everything is a text file. If you actually intend to work as a Linux admin, spend all the time you need to learn 'grep' and a little bit of 'awk'. You'll even want to look at Regex at some point. This will make your life much easier when it comes time to search log files for specific events/when troubleshooting.

PPS: If you're learning Linux for work reasons, at least here in Canada, 99% of the job postings I've seen ask for RHEL or CentOS. Debian is great but it's rarely mentioned in any of the job postings I've ever come across. My recommendation is that you spend time learning CentOS. Also, don't waste too much time on CentOS 6, bite the bullet and move on to CentOS7/systemd.