Posted: 2/9/2016 7:46:49 PM EDT
| Had a couple of used HP servers from eBay and have a contractor at work that is awesome at Linux helping me. Watching videos and rewatching then trying out what I learned. CentOS is the distro I am using since it is so close to Redhat gonna see if I can convince the boss to send me to training at some point. Want to eventually try for the RHCSA. |
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I'm a big fan of Linux Academy. You can get a discount with this link.
You can spin up different versions quickly and they have a great selection of training. In addition to Linux+ and LPIC they now have RHCSA. You can also learn stuff like AWS and OpenStack. |
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It's a good skill set to have. I spend easily 50% of my time in Linux (Ubuntu Server, CentOS, and Helion) OpenStack, and SDN controllers/apps. Had I not already had years of experience I would simply not be able to really excel in that environment.
My advice would be: if you are going to learn Linux, LEARN Linux. Do NOT install any window manager/GUI software. I don't care if it's Gnome/KDE or something like Webmin. CLI only. Too many people (including the vast majority of the "install Linux! Screw Windoze and Apple" crowd in GD) install something like Ubuntu workstation a few times and think they are Linux admins and open source evangelists. In the real world, that will lead to derision, mockery, and dismissal. Not necessarily in that order. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
| I installed CentOS 7 with GUI but everything I am doing is CLI so far. Slow and steady wins the race. I have some videos I got off the web but the instructor is Dutch and I have a hard time understanding him sometimes. He speaks English but still has that thick dutch accent. Will look into Linux Academy. I have been in a windows server admin role for years and know that I really need to learn newer skills. |
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Start there before spending a lot of time on canned course material. Think of all the things you might have to do as part of routine maintenance, user, disk, file system, service, troubleshooting, application, and hardware tasks (to name a few) and get familiar with their command and argument equivalents (if any) in a Linux environment. Get familiar with all the common servers and databases like httpd, Nginx, PostgreSQL, isc-dhcp, iptables, sendmail/postfix, ufw, named, smbd, nfsd, and so on to name just a very few.
You'll find it to be a rabbit hole, albeit a very interesting one! 
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I installed CentOS 7 with GUI but everything I am doing is CLI so far. Slow and steady wins the race. I have some videos I got off the web but the instructor is Dutch and I have a hard time understanding him sometimes. He speaks English but still has that thick dutch accent. Will look into Linux Academy. I have been in a windows server admin role for years and know that I really need to learn newer skills. |
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Do useful, real world things. That is how you are going to learn. Setup a firewall. Share files on the network. Setup a webserver. Break shit (that will come naturally if you do the former) and learn to fix it. I am not a big fan of the RHCSA as its more helpdesk/enduser type stuff. The RHCE is nice to have on a resume. But you have to have one to get the other, which is why I stopped bothering with it now that you have to renew every other release. (Linux admin/engineer of 10+ years) |
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Do useful, real world things. That is how you are going to learn. Setup a firewall. Share files on the network. Setup a webserver. Break shit (that will come naturally if you do the former) and learn to fix it. Quoted:
Do useful, real world things. That is how you are going to learn. Setup a firewall. Share files on the network. Setup a webserver. Break shit (that will come naturally if you do the former) and learn to fix it. This is exactly why I like LA. Sure you can setup local VMs etc to play around but as a subscriber you can get up to 6 servers running in different configs. Screw something up? Blast it and restart. They have stuff on firewall configuration, SAMBA, rsync, etc. If you want to learn I really do think it's the best bang for the buck. I am not a big fan of the RHCSA as its more helpdesk/enduser type stuff. The RHCE is nice to have on a resume. But you have to have one to get the other, which is why I stopped bothering with it now that you have to renew every other release. Interesting. I didn't realize that. I've never been big on certs but my ultimate goal was RHCSA and possibly RHCE. One difference is that these are live exams as opposed to tests. You have to accomplish your admin tasks and the server has to survive a reboot. |
| Gents I appreciate the info and encouragement I am signing up for a Linux academy subscription and will start with the mastering the command line courses first then move on from there. I wasn't aware that you had to recert every time a new Release came out for RedHat (Money making machine). |
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If you really want to get into it, build a low power esxi host and do all of this yourself. I have multiple centos, debian, gentoo, and funtoo distributions running on a host at home that are used for various services in and out of the household.
Realistically all of these services could be running on a single *nix variant but it is more educational to have them spread across multiple distributions. The segmentation also prevents a failure on one of the systems from taking down all of the services. I am running Plex, Subsonic, openvpn, openmediavault, owncloud, UNL, pfsense, alienvault, and tails on different virtual machines. Some of them are appliance style OVAs that you just deploy and some have been built from source. This would also do well to teach you some virtualization basics. |
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As many have said, well worth learning Linux and not a GUI. The beauty of Linux, there is a ton of (archived) support out there that can help you as you go. I had a RAID 0 software array drive crater on me for my Ubuntu Server (which is on a small Proliant N54L server) and man...it's been tough as it happened in the middle of a cross state move and I haven't had time to repair and reinstall. However, since I installed that OS 3 years ago when I was just learning Linux I've really gotten into Arch (love pacman) so I'll probably reinstall with Arch.
Been fun to learn. Done some nifty things with a Raspberry Pi (N64 emulator is what I play with at the moment but I've done a lot of SDR stuff as well). Helped me out a lot with understanding Apple file structures. |
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Gents I appreciate the info and encouragement I am signing up for a Linux academy subscription and will start with the mastering the command line courses first then move on from there. I wasn't aware that you had to recert every time a new Release came out for RedHat (Money making machine). Red Hat RHCSA and RHCE are good for 3 years. If you get your RHCE you can extend your cert eligibility by earning certain "Certificate of Expertise". The only thing that matters about releases is which current exams are available. |
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This looks like an interesting way to dig into Linux once you have some basics under your belt : http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
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Quoted: This looks like an interesting way to dig into Linux once you have some basics under your belt : http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ Very good practical learning tool. Back in the day building a kernel was pretty common, not so much anymore. If you do it, you will have a far better understanding of what is under the hood. Same goes with the the 'from scratch' Gentoo builds. Though I don't think you can do them as low-level anymore. Its been years since I have looked though. |