Linux Experience

nb-

Hi

I'm a danish IT-Supporter student, at school we just finished 3 weeks of our first linux classes.

We worked with CentOS, and learned the basics, like how to navigate, edit files, create and moderate users and groups etc.

We've installed and configured the following services whilst working with linux:

DNS
DHCP
FTP
APACHE
Samba
Mailserver
Webmail
Firewall & IPTables

Ive kinda fallen abit in love with linux, and would like to study further. Having been through the past 3 weeks, i wouldent consider myself a complete newbie, but i don't consider myself experienced either. What kind of certificates could i take? What would the price be etc.

Are there in general any reading material you could suggest me to read? I dont wanna start from scrath learning the stuff i already know bur instead build further on the knowledge i already have.

Regards
NB-

log32

Hi
Any book for beginners will start off with the basics, File hierarchy standard, partitioning, file editing, log viewing, commands, so on and forth.
I think that if you have the basics to navigate in a system and know how the system is built from the moment you press power button until the GUI is loaded (Runlevels, init scripts, grub loader, etc) then you're set to start with a Linux certificate if that is what you're passionate about.
you have 2 popular certification roads.
Red Hat & LPI.
Red Hat locks you to a specific vendor (Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution) - and their exams are hands-on and not multiple answers (also - abit more expensive)
LPI is not vendor specific which means you will be tested on Ubuntu/Debian & Red Hat systems together but their exam is a multiple answers exam unlike red hat's.

Red Hat's road consisting of: RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator, Exam number is EX200), RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer, Exam number is EX300) and specialty exams like RHCSS and more which are irrelevant for you at this very moment.

LPI's road is from beginner to expert level : LPIC-1 (Level 1), LPIC-2 (Level 2), LPIC-3 Core (Level 3) , and specialty exams after you finish the LPIC-3 Core exam (and they're optional) : Virtualization & High availability, Security or Mixed Environment)

people say Red Hat exams are harder, hence it is more respectable in the market - I tend to agree with that. ( and I'm an LPIC-3 Core)

you may use Red Hat's website to find out your ability to handle their exams according to the level of knowledge you are at here: Red Hat | Training skills assessment

If you pick LPI's road you can start off by reading Sybex LPI-101 & 102 (for LPIC-1) or "Linux in a nutshell" book.

if you pick Red Hat's you can use RHCSA/RHCE by Michael Jang (which i am using atm and can say it's really good) but it will require you to know more than just basics imo.

good luck.

antielvis

If you want to follow a certification path, I'd suggest you take Linux+ first. It's two exams and upon completion you can also apply to the LPI for your Level 1. These exams will make you a competent Linux user/technical support guy. I am former Linux system admin (long time ago) and I am looking at the Red Hat exams. While I haven't taken the exams, I suspect these exams require some pratical experience

For studying, many of the manuals are online. If not, acquire a cheap Kindle and buy digital books. They are much cheaper. If you can't afford a kindle, use Kindle for PC. You can find good solid Linux books for $10-20 dollars.

Learning Linux at home and supporting it are two very different beasts. The learning curve for anything *Nix is long..and employers understand that.

If you are looking to get some practical experience in the field, I would recommend you try small ISP's & webhosting companies (anything internet). They are most likely to have Linux running. They are excellent places to really get to understand this stuff.

Good luck.

brownwrap

I always like to push Linux From Scratch : LFS Project Homepage

I have gone through LFS twice, or to be more to the point, LFS and Beyond Linux From Scratch. I am actually on my 2nd go round on BLFS. LFS gets you a bootable Linux, but you only have a terminal set up. BLFS move on. I worked quite a bit to get X11 up. Once that was running, it only gave me xterms and clocks as apps. I then installed XFCE and now I have a desktop. Working on KDE now. There is no package management. You need to download the sources, their requirements, config, compile, and install each piece of software. Go through a few times and you'll learn Linux. Here is my blog: LinuxFromScratch: LFS 7.0

paul78

LFS is a great way to really learn the in-and-out of how a Linux or how most Unix OS's are put together. I would second brownwrap's suggestion.