What is the best Unix/Linux/*nix for IT professionals?

So I know people can go on and on forever about their favorite distro that’s not really what I’m looking for. Really what I want to know is what distro has the most transferable skill set for IT? Particularly for the IT professional that doesn’t want to focus solely on *nix, but wants a good well rounded understating of major OS’.

Or in other words if you’re a Windows user primarily and want a good *nix that is going to be widely accepted by employers which do you pick?

I currently have Fedora as my second home OS and use Knoppix or DSL as my live OS.

Should I switch to Solaris/OpenSolaris?

What *nix have you used in the workplace?

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Comments

Mishra

Unix and Linux are too separate beasts in my opinion.

Unix always equals Solaris when talking viability.

With Linux I would stick with a distro that uses more package management techniques instead of compiling. Red Hat/Debian/Suse are all respected about the same.

sthomas

I have always liked Ubuntu for the Desktop and Server. A buddy of mine is a Linux Admin and he likes to use Ubuntu server edition. He says it is not bloated like other distros. Ubuntu is based off of debian and does not install the GUI by default. Another good distro would be CentOS since it is basically RHEL without the RedHat name. You probably could not go wrong with Suse either. You may also want to check out FreeBSD, and a good way to learn Linux would be to try out Linux from scratch.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

undomiel

Red Hat has the most brand recognition on the server side of things for Linux and Ubuntu for the desktop side. Solaris would be great to learn for Unix itself plus you get the joy of ZFS! Most of what you learn on one system would be transferable to any of the other *nixs but of course there will be things that are specific to one particular distribution i.e. Red Hat is rpm based. Gentoo is great though if you want to get the feel for something that is source based. Learning how to bootstrap is a useful skill I personally believe.

liven

My 2 cents:

Ubuntu for desktop

Fedora, Redhat, Centos, Suse are all great enterprise server distros

as far as Unix:

Solaris seems to rule the roost these days. And is by far the most different beast out of all the listed operating systems.

However if you really learn one well you will have a good head start on all the others.

sprkymrk

When speaking about Unix don't leave out the BSD's, like FreeBSD. Agree on Solaris, but BSD is more unix-like than Solaris really.

Linux distros you're probably talking one of the Red Hat clones for best all around.

ally_uk

I have Windowx XP as my Main O/S with Ubuntu running via Vmware, My second machine hooked up to the lan is running Debian,

I would say Ubuntu for desktop use and Debian for server use.

Slowhand

Which distro is "best" is an objective thing, really. The best thing you can do is learn about the basic types that are out there, particularly the "big three": RPM-based (Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva, etc.), Debian-based (Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, etc.), and 'bare-bones' (SlackWare and your 'from scratch' distros). That way, you'll have covered all the basics of the curve-balls that most distros will throw at you. LPI does a good job of breaking down the distinctions between the "three basic flavors" and why it's important to understand them, in their exam-guidelines.

On Unix, as already mentioned, it's good to know a BSD operating system and Solaris. Once you understand the distinction between them and the fundamentals of how they work, (aside from supporting most of the same basic CLI commands,) you'll have yourself pretty well-covered.

The key here is to understand the fundamentals of Linux and Unix. That way, you can make an educated decision about what you and your company needs when you go to make a recommendation about software. There are lots of distros and flavors out there, most of which have their own unique features and sets of pros/cons. The more you know about "what *NIX should be", the easier it is to navigate the open-source waters.

As for what I've personally used in the workplace: Red Hat Enteprise Server 4 and 5, FreeBSD 6.2, Solaris 10, SuSE Enterprise Server 9, CentOS 4.1, Debian (too many versions to count), and one of the first Gentoo releases.

marco71

In Unix world, things are clear, organizations are divided by the owned hardware and software and are using AIX (IBM), HPUX (HP) or Solaris (SUN), or even enterprise-linux (Red Hat Ent, SUSE/Novell Ent, Mandriva Corporate), with paid support. Smaller companies, which cannot afford a real Unix, only some limited commercial support, will use linux and will choose a distro based on their needs and
supported by the owned hardware (an enterprise distro is prefered and in some rare situations, a community-based distro, stable-known, like Slackware or Debian, or even CentOS, will be used). Of course, tiny companies which know too little about linux but heard about its potential, will choose a linux distro according to their sysadmins preference/knowledge, and chances are: Fedora, Mandriva (free ed.), ubuntu or even gentoo (don't know why gentoo was mentioned as debian-based, because is a source-based distro - like rock-linux, source-mage, sorcerer, linux-from-scratch... - , with its own package manager -portage- and other specifics -emerge, stages, compiler's aggressive flags, etc.- , while debian is a binary-distro with its well-known package management -apt and distro-specific tools for sys-init configuration, kernel building, re-configuration of the system/packages, etc). Chances for other distro not too much known, like PLD-linux for example (although a good distro imho), to be used, are minimum. Those last-mentioned organizations could even have no dedicate resources at all for linux, instead a 3rd-party organization (ISP) will take care of it and will choose a specific distro.
Worth to mention the enthusiast sysadmin/netadmin who choose a free bsd-unix variant (openbsd, netbsd or even freebsd) for organization, or a less user-friendly but powerful linux version (for example arch-linux -with its 'pacman' package manager or rPath -with its 'conary' management system-), but the risk for company is to hardly-find another talented person, in case of admin's replace, in order to
maintain the existent O.S. infrastructure.
To conclude, I must say that is best (imho) to know all three major linux distributions (specifics), Redhat (rpm/yum), Debian (deb/apt) and Slackware (tgz/_), because hundreds of other distributions are only variants to one of these (despite its popularity, dont know why ubuntu is often mentioned as
major distro, because is in fact just a debian fork). Alternatively, is good to know at least one popular rpm-based distro, like opensuse (yast), mandriva (urpmi) or a free RedHat Enterprise clone (centOS, StartCom), and one popular debian-based distro (Mepis is my recommendation -I dislike ubuntu- ), better one more to know if has a different management system (I strongly recommend Slackware or a derivate -vectorlinux, zenwalk- ) and even better if is LSB (Linux Standard Base) compliant.

Slowhand

marco71 wrote:

don't know why gentoo was mentioned as debian-based, because is a source-based distro - like rock-linux, source-mage, sorcerer, linux-from-scratch... - , with its own package manager -portage- and other specifics -emerge, stages, compiler's aggressive flags, etc.- , while debian is a binary-distro with its well-known package management -apt and distro-specific tools for sys-init configuration, kernel building, re-configuration of the system/packages, etc.

You're absolutely right, I screwed up in rambling off Debian-based examples there. Gentoo shouldn't be on that list.

One thing I can expand on, regarding the statements about enterprise Linux (and Unix) vs. community software is that there is one major difference between the two that companies have to consider: support. Sure, community-developed software has support from the community, itself, but you have to dig pretty deep to find real solutions to your day-to-day issues. A lot of the help offered to users of free versions of Linux falls into the realm of software development; you'll get lots of help if you plan on hashing out some code to fix the issue.

If you're looking for customer support, help with patches and installations, if you need a hotline to call when things don't work as they should from an administrators' perspective, enterprise Linux gives you that kind of support. (That's what you're paying for, more than the cost of the software.) Red Hat, SuSE, Solaris, and a whole slew of others have great reputations for providing customer support. Like Microsoft, Cisco, and any other company selling a product, you have a company taking responsibility for errors in the code, problems with software, etc. That kind of support can be the difference between a company that "uses a few Linux boxes", and a company that runs a truly Linux-only environment. . . reliably.

UnixGuy

For servers, I unquestionably recommend Sun Solaris, it's widely implemented and trusted, go for it. Certifications are SCSA : Sun Certified System Administrator. SCNA: Sun Certified Network Administrator, and SCSECA: Sun Certified Security Administrator. However, the most popular (and useful) one is SCSA. Study the material, have hands-on experience, and then get certified, it will open many doors.

If you finish Solaris and looking for a next step, from what I see, the next widely used Unix distro in server side is IBM AIX. I think there are certifications there, but I don't know about them, I am still struggling with Solaris, but IBM AIX is my future target.