Learning Server Operating Systems

I've become pretty comfortable with Windows Server environments. While Linux/Unix server are only 15-20%(» Enterprise server OS market shares: Windows – 65-70%, Linux – 15-20% @ IT Facts) of the market, I feel I should start looking into them as I might get more jobs down the road if I can manage them.

Do System Administrators typically only follow one OS in their career to admin, or do most people learn both?

Learning Red Hat and other OS's seems pretty daunting right now as I have no access to them and don't use them at all.

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Everyone

It depends on the size of the environment. Larger environments, you'll probably be either strictly Windows, or strictly *nix, not both, and you'd be highly unlikely to ever cross over. Smaller environments, you're much more likely to be both.

It is beneficial to know both when you have a mixed environment, regardless of how big or small that environment is. As a Windows Admin, you may need to help a Linux Admin troubleshoot why his Linux box can't join an AD domain. Or as a Linux Admin you may need to help a Windows Admin troubleshoot why a Windows box can't access a SAMBA share on a Linux server, etc.

Don't try to become an expert in both though. Become an expert in one, and learn some about the other. For me, I'm an expert in Windows systems, but I'm probably intermediate at best when it comes to Linux systems.

Mc5ully

Thanks for the info.

Any specific Linux/Unix OS I should focus on first.

AKA, what's the most common OS, Red Hat?

Everyone

Yes Red Hat is probably most common, then maybe SuSE, which is pretty similar. They both use the same package manager. CentOS and OpenSuSE are probably your best bet for free versions to learn on. RHEL and SLES are really the only Linux I've seen in Enterprise environments. I'm sure other distros are used, an actual *nix person could tell you better.

For Unix, Solaris is a big one, so OpenSolaris or OpenIndiana for that. Wouldn't hurt to learn a little FreeBSD. Again, someone who's made their career out of *nix could probably tell you better.

lsud00d

I'm a newly appointed Sys. Admin. I work in a majority nix shop, mixed in with some 2k/03/08 win servers. Our major enterprise linux OS is SLES so my desktop at work is SLED. On my home machines I use CentOS and Backtrack, for various purposes.

At the higher ed institution I worked for previously, our few linux servers were RHEL, although it was mainly the academic departments using them for various purposes, not the main IT dept.

You can easily get buy in a *nix environment by learning around 20 commands to do the basics as far as installs and updates. If you want to get into more advanced administration, like shell scripting, then that will take a more holistic approach to the underlying OS.

Slowhand

When I was the designated "Linux monkey" for the datacenter I worked for, we saw our fair share of different distros in both our location and those of our partner-companies. Red Hat Enterprise Linux was what we would give our managed clients, along with the occasional install of FreeBSD. SuSE was very common to see in the co-located cabinets, in the servers that customers had set up for themselves. There was a mix of other random flavors, mostly Debian-based, along with a smattering of Solaris UNIX.

As for what path to take, that's really up to you. It's difficult to learn "everything", most of us usually follow either a Windows or *NIX path and then learn a little bit on the other side of the fence to make sure we're not completely clueless. If you're going to jump into Linux/UNIX administration, I'd suggest focusing on something based on Red Hat to start with, since you're very likely to see either Red Hat Enterprise Linux or its clone, CentOS, in the workplace. For the time being, since you're trying to focus on servers, I'd stay away from things like Ubuntu and other user-friendly distros, you'll be working "under the hood" anyway and don't need to worry too much about graphical tools and end-user programs.

UnixGuy

Becoming an expert in any OS (specially *NIX) requires a lot of effort, experience, opportunity, and continuous work. People aren't expected to be experts in both, but it's not difficult.

PS: you shouldn't trust online magazines survey's, there's no way they could know the number of Windows servers deployed in the world or the number of linux (what distor?) deployed. Just learn what you like, and work with whatever opportunity you get.

protocl

I thought, Linux market-share surpasses Microsoft?
Even Steve Ballmer admitted that Windows-Server is below Linux, in-terms of usage and deployment.

vCole

Like others have said it really depends on the environment. I've worked with Windows, Mac, Linux (all different types of distros), Solaris and FreeBSD. I started out in Window and kinda just accumulated the knowledge over time and experience. Like Everyone said CentOS and OpenSuSE is a good route to go to learn the basics. In my experience for enterprise environments I've seen RHEL, CentOS, and SuSE mainly.

Mishra

Learn 1 operating system when getting started.

Unless you are interested enough to learn both. If you are going to learn both, you need to put extra home effort into learning the suite. Don't let your personal main OS practicing lack because you want to try and learn everything.

Zartanasaurus

lsud00d wrote: »

You can easily get buy in a *nix environment by learning around 20 commands to do the basics as far as installs and updates. If you want to get into more advanced administration, like shell scripting, then that will take a more holistic approach to the underlying OS.

I'm curious about what these 20 commands are.

jmreicha

I'm going to go against the grain here and suggest that you learn Linux by using Ubuntu, the server release if at all possible. Ubuntu powers a lot of cloud based services and at this point is robust and stable (sorry don't have any evidence to link here). In my experience, package management in Debian based OS's is the best and makes doing things a little easier. A Linux admin should be in CLI mostly anyway, so really it doesn't matter which OS you choose, as long as you learn CLI and a bit of scripting.

lsud00d

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

I'm curious about what these 20 commands are.

The 20 was a generalized guess in my head, but lets see...this might be around 20, just listing off the top of my head for the generalized basics of *nix admin'ing...

ls
cd
rm
mv
cp
vi
chmod
chown
less
grep
su
man
whereis
tar
dpkg/rpm/yum/apt/zypper (OS-dependent)
top
kill
ssh
df
du
free
make/make install