Ask Slashdot: How Did You Become a Linux Professional? 298
First time accepted submitter ternarybit writes "By 'Linux professional,' I mean anyone in a paid IT position who uses or administers Linux systems on a daily basis. Over the past five years, I've developed an affection for Linux, and use it every day as a freelance IT consultant. I've built a breadth of somewhat intermediate skills, using several distros for everything from everyday desktop use, to building servers from scratch, to performing data recovery. I'm interested in taking my skills to the next level — and making a career out of it — but I'm not sure how best to appeal to prospective employers, or even what to specialize in (I refuse to believe the only option is 'sysadmin,' though I'm certainly not opposed to that). Specifically, I'm interested in what practical steps I can take to build meaningful skills that an employer can verify, and will find valuable. So, what do you do, and how did you get there? How did you conquer the catch-22 of needing experience to get the position that gives you the experience to get the position? Did you get certified, devour books and manpages, apprentice under an expert, some combination of the above, or something else entirely?"
Mmmmm the other white meat! (Score:4, Funny)
I ate a penguin!
Re:Mmmmm the other white meat! (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay seriously:
* Started to play w/ Solaris on a sparc station at uni while learning C programming which got me interested in *nix.
* Installed Slackware Linux at home and really liked what I saw during my uni days.
* Spent time modifying hardcode on MU** servers and doing basic administration.
* Started working at another college where a bunch of us decided that Redhat Linux was the choice for some services we wanted to host.
* Started supporting a Linux based installation that acted as the firewall for the college I worked at.
* Started setting up Apache web servers and SMB shares for a few local companies.
* Did some side programming projects that involved dealing with some real time application needs under Linux.
While I was never a dedicated Linux admin or coder I keep those skills in my skillset arsenal. That is how I got in to Linux and I run a couple Gentoo boxes at home to support some of the stuff I am doing. I found during the Sysadmin part of my career keeping multi-OS skillsets honed was useful and during the programming part of my career (current part of my career) I spend most of my development in the .NET/MSSQL environment (it pays the bills really well) with the odd side project in Linux here and there.
So it all comes down to what you want to do when you grow-up; I scope my career based on what interests me - I have gone in to job interviews lacking a skillset they were wanting but ended up getting the job because I told them how I would learn it and I also gave an eager competent professional impression that I treat my job seriously and will learn whatever needs learned. I would conclude that while an impressive resume is always nice, the short comings can be made up by the soft skills.
I know not the exact answer you wanted...
Tes
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Do it the way Linus did. Write your own OS and then convince the rest of the world to use it.
Re:Mmmmm the other white meat! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty reassuring, thankyou. I've worked in the same job since I left Uni, and any time I've looked at job listings each job seems to require experience in some random framework that I'm not likely to use at my current job, and it feels like working with it at home won't really "count" on a resume. Especially when they often want years of experience with said framework..
I've always refused to use MS languages/.NET , but I guess it is the easiest route to getting a job.. it just would make me feel so dirty..
Let me clarify my statement: It depends on what they are asking for; if you are applying for a Sr .NET Developer position and you have zero experience, then yes they will most likely not get the job. But if you are applying for a position that requires JQuery experience and you only have used MS AJAX toolkit but can demonstrate an understanding of JavaScript you have a shot.
The current job I just accepted a few weeks ago they were hoping I had MVC experience, but alas my previous gigs were all ASP.NET Webform, WinForm and Web Service development. But I was able to turn up to the interview, tell them I had no experience about MVC but discuss some of the aspects of the design approach and ask them some pointed questions about it. That peaked their interest, along with being able to answer the gambit of other technical questions they had correctly and they shrugged, “You’re a pretty decent .NET developer and SQL developer from looking at your resume, the code samples we asked you to write and questions you answered learning MVC while will take some time we know you are capable of it.”
And that is exactly it – it is not about impressing them with bullshit answers and responses, it is about demonstrating that you have technical skills, you have the ability to learn quickly and that you very least are familiar with a major design pattern out there. The fact of the matter is, in our field we will learn so many new technologies, frameworks etc throughout our career and we have to be willing to do so. That to me is the key, I have interviewed candidates that basically are: “I have always done it this way” attitude. Guess what? I have never offered them the job.
Do not feel dirty about doing .NET/MS SQL Server development; we were all young an idealistic and while you can still build a decent career without using the Microsoft stack why limit your options? In the end to me programming is programming, if I like what I am be tasked to do I don’t care what platform it is under and ultimately I am looking to pay the bills :)
Tes
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Also I never did finish my degree ;) 15 years in to the field I am finally going back to complete my bachelors not because I am at a dead end in my career, but because it is an incomplete personal goal that is bugging me personally and not professionally :)
Let's also state my bill rate is >40/hr...
Tes
That's why (Score:2)
Let's also state my bill rate is >40/hr...
The reason why is:
I am finally going back to complete my bachelors not because I am at a dead end in my career, but because it is an incomplete personal goal that is bugging me
You're making more than $40/hr and you are going back to school because it bugs you leaving something undone? You're the right sort of IT person. The sort of person who knows a job isn't done until it's DONE.
You're probably worth every penny.
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Thanks for the clarifications. And not to be an asshole, but the words you're looking for are "piqued "and "gamut" :p
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You are right - I knew it to when I submitted my reply. Gosh I am lazy today :)
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Agreed - when I'm hiring I'm not looking so much for specific skills but for the right attitude, the ability/desire to learn, and a base technical foundation to build on. Where I set the bar obviously depends on the role, and I'm going to be much more focused on specific skills for consultant/temp roles than employee ones - where I'm looking for someone to train up for a long term career.
And I'd also question whether the MS stack makes it easier to get a job - certainly having a broad experience of a lot of
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Do not feel dirty about doing .NET/MS SQL Server development; we were all young an idealistic and while you can still build a decent career without using the Microsoft stack why limit your options? In the end to me programming is programming, if I like what I am be tasked to do I donâ(TM)t care what platform it is under and ultimately I am looking to pay the bills :)
While that is true I've found that if you just let your career drift and take on whatever work someone offers you or is most easily available then you rarely end up going where you wanted. You do this one bit because even though you're not interested you can grok it and you're available, then the next time you're the most qualified and before you know it you're stuck with it and you get passed up for doing the job you really wanted to do. If you want to work with Linux, then really you should work hard to g
Hopelessly addicted to Linux (Score:3, Funny)
I blame it on Mr. Linus Benedict Torvalds.
I was doing just fine with DOS and Windows
I was happy with the BSOD when Mr. Torvalds message, the one he posted on the comp.os.minix newsgroup appeared on my screen
Since then, I am hooked, addicted, and couldn't shake it off, no matter how I tried
I even had gone cold turkey, only to end up phailing miserably
Re:Mmmmm the other white meat! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been hiring nearly constantly for about 10 years. 6 years hiring Solaris guys, and the last 4 hiring Linux guys. I will be the first to say that around Philadelphia anyway, the market is full of dog shit I wouldn't pay $40k. So if you want a job, figure out a way to shine brighter than everyone else. Some ideas:
-Intelligence cannot be faked, but also cannot be earned, unfortunately.
-Use spell check on your resume, have someone else read it, ugh! If you've been around the block 20 times, limit resume to 2-3 pages or it gets trashed.
-Groom yourself, even for a startup interview. Nobody likes smelly, sweaty, people in grungy clothes.
-Do whatever you have to do to NOT be/appear nervous in the interview. Relax--we're trying to get to know you, the real you!
-Do NOT put stuff on your resume that you do not know!!!! Or at least qualify your knowledge (e.g. "I am vaguely familiar with VMware")
-Learn how to shake a hand and hold eye contact (yeah yeah, tricky for some IT folks)
-For a Linux admin, you'd better have the basics down pat (resolve.conf, named.conf, ntp.conf, httpd,conf, how to change a system IP/hostname, how to add a new filesystem, how to rescue a system that won't boot, or you forgot root pass, etc etc etc)
I will say, I have learned my lesson about hiring young people without a degree. A degree shows you can think 4+ years ahead to a goal, and work hard to get there. If you don't have a degree, have a good reason why, and let them know why you can follow through on things.
Re:Mmmmm the other white meat! (Score:5, Funny)
you'd better have the basics down pat (resolve.conf,
Heh.. you mean resolv.conf. Can I have a job now?
Re:Mmmmm the other white meat! (Score:5, Insightful)
I spent a few years running slackware servers and hosting my own services. Then I studied and got both my LPIC1 and LPIC2. Then I did a bunch of contracting.
That's when I discovered that companies won't hire Linux admins unless their business deals with Linux. Linux administration is more of a hit and run contract profession for 90% of the companies out there. I've contracted for very large companies, including fortune 500 all the way down to rinky dink fly by night operations that reincorporate when the investment capital runs out.
Linux servers have a tendency to just work when setup properly. I know this because I made a small unsuccessful business of migrating small business customers away from Microsoft servers towards Linux servers to handle most of their services. Once everything was setup, the service calls stopped coming so often. In IT, you'll never convince a customer to switch to Linux for the desktop. The best you could hope for is a Linux home media server or similar.
If you're serious, work towards your LPIC2 to start and learn bash scripting and perl. I currently don't know perl because I've never needed it, but 90% of the permanent jobs are looking for admin scripting skills.
Practice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Practice, practice, practice... learn by failure, otherwise you are just a common user
Re:Practice... (Score:4, Informative)
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They knew I knew enough to NOT do something stupid and something I didn't understand.
I've gained experience that way. On some gigs, I just fell into admin...when other admins quit their job, and I was one of the few that was left that knew anything about Linux administration.
Mod parent up. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Practice... (Score:4, Funny)
I also did it, and literally drowned in job offers afterwards. Turned them all down though, an Xorg update came in at the same time
I studied instead of playing video games (Score:3, Interesting)
I spent much of my childhood reading instead of playing video games. I received my first programming contract when I was 16, did some telco programming after that, lazed around for a year then went to work as a system administrator. I'm still a sysadmin, in a devop role, where I earn 45USD an hour. I'm probably going to grow further than this, as I've been doing it for 7 years. I believe my next goal will be to reach 55USD an hour.
Far as education is concerned, I've no college degree, no certs, the fact is I dropped out of high school since it was keeping me back.
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I'm in one of those "too easy" jobs, and too scared to quit in case I end up in a similar situation to yourself. A large portion of my programming work basically disappeared when we sold off one of our divisions. I've been trying various things to motivate myself, but right now I feel like I'm just staying for the money. I'm going to at least keep saving until the end of the year, then I'll have some money behind me to possibly take a risk.
Knife professional (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a "Linux Professional" in most fields of IT is like being a "Knife Professional" working in a kitchen.
It's a useful set of skills, and it gives you the ability to use a suite of tools that are very useful - and essential for some career paths - in that field.
But it's not how you should define your career, or even your desired job. (That you're thinking of it that way might be why you keep seeing sysadmin in a Linux environment as the only obvious role.)
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Being a "Linux Professional" in most fields of IT is like being a "Knife Professional" working in a kitchen.
hmm ok
But it's not how you should define your career, or even your desired job. (That you're thinking of it that way might be why you keep seeing sysadmin in a Linux environment as the only obvious role.)
Disagree. If you really love knives and making exotic knife cuts and carvings in food, don't define your dream job as being a pastry chef where you don't get to chop stuff up very much.
Maybe I can give the standard /. car analogy that even if you really like using a screwdriver, it would pay to try and learn a bit about a wrench or maybe even a hammer.
Re:Knife professional (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a "Linux Professional" in most fields of IT is like being a "Knife Professional" working in a kitchen.
hmm ok
But it's not how you should define your career, or even your desired job. (That you're thinking of it that way might be why you keep seeing sysadmin in a Linux environment as the only obvious role.)
Disagree. If you really love knives and making exotic knife cuts and carvings in food, don't define your dream job as being a pastry chef where you don't get to chop stuff up very much.
Maybe I can give the standard /. car analogy that even if you really like using a screwdriver, it would pay to try and learn a bit about a wrench or maybe even a hammer.
Why do you disagree, his point was there is no "Knife Professional" in a kitchen where you play with knives all day. If there were, it would be because there are too many knives for cooks to maintain, and your day would be mostly spent cleaning and sharpening them, it wouldn't be a job for people who actually like doing things with knives. If you like doing something for fun, don't do it for work.
There ARE Linux administration positions, but your time will be divided amongst application support and a whole host of other activities. If a company has straight up pure Linux admins, it would be because they have LOTS of "knives" and you'd spend most of your time using tools to manage them, like Chef, Puppet, etc.
To anyone dreaming of becoming a "Linux professional", please get it into your head right now, it is a TOOL. You might choose to become a carpenter because you love working with hammers, but your work doesn't revolve around your tools, your tools revolve around your work, so if you have a problem using screw drivers and nail guns, stay out of the profession.
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"Why do you disagree, his point was there is no "Knife Professional" in a kitchen where you play with knives all day. "
You have never been to a http://www.benihana.com/ [benihana.com] restaurant and watched the Knife Professionals work. They are incredible and can cook as well.
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GNU/Linux is the collection of kitchen utilities. The kernel would be like the oven, and all the utensils (knives included) the gnu utilities.
The application developers are the cooks, and the Linux Administrator is the dishwasher. He gets to work with all the utensils, but never touches the food.
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Linux is just one of many brand of knives that follow the same basic design. Fixating on Linux in particular seems strange when if anything you are really a UNIX professional rather than just a Linux professional.
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I've heard this advice before, but I have to say that I think it's ill-conceived. I believe that it's based on the supposition that if you have to do something every day, then it will simply suck all of the enjoyment out of it.
This is simply not true... happiness is not subject to laws of thermodynamics. If you really enjoy, or especially have a passion for something, then doing it for a living is not going to diminish that. It fulfills it.
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You're right it's not black and white: but the problem is, even if you enjoy it, you probably don't enjoy doing it ALL THE TIME. At work, you have no choice; you've got to keep doing it, even if you don't currently feel like it or there's some aspect you don't enjoy.
Yes, there really can be too much of a good thing.
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This is true. I do what I love for a living, and I can't imagine doing anything else. Certainly there have been days where things get a bit stressful, and it's hardly the same thing as just goofing off and having fun.
Nonetheless, I wouldn't trade what I do for anything. Even if I won a lottery and didn't need to work, I know I'd still do what I do everyday.... if for no other reason than the fact that at lea
Re:Knife professional (Score:5, Funny)
That's a bad analogy.
Being a linux professional is more like being a French Chef vs say a Windows Professional which is like a Fryolator Chef at McDonalds.
Re:Knife professional (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to work with Linux professionally, then by all means, polish those skillsets. Maybe an RHCE or LPCE wouldn't hurt, although I don't hold either one. But the big key, IME, is not to snub other skills, either. Yes, I work in a shop that uses mostly Linux servers (even Linux-based routers, made by a company called ImageStream [imagestream.com], who I highly recommend), but we also use Cisco routers, Brocade switches and a few Windows servers -- and I work on them all. Let's face it, most places today, IT professionals wear many hats; being a one-trick pony doesn't cut it.
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That's a bad analogy.
Being a linux professional is more like being a French Chef vs say a Windows Professional which is like a Fryolator Chef at McDonalds.
No it's more like being a salesman. I became a Linux professional standing on nearest shady street corner in a trenchcoats with burnt CDs of different Linux distros in the pockets yelling "Linux Linux TWO Dollah" at passers by. The police were very confused when they arrested me and realised I wasn't selling sex and that the burnt CDs were legal.
Re:Knife professional (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. You know Linux, that is a plus to your resume. You want a job that is only in Linux, then that is a minus. When I was younger I only wanted to work in Linux/Unix environments over the years, I really stopped caring about what freaking OS I am using and more on what am I accomplishing with my work. In my professional life I go on and off Linux... Usually I have both some times I have one or the other. But I don't see the OS as what defines my skills, I see my skills as someone who creates/improves/optimizes. The company uses Linux, No problem I know how to work on that environment and Ill give you a solution you should love. If the company works on Windows, I can give them just as good of a solution. If they are are on some older mainframe system, I can probably give them something that they never though they could do before, with using Linux/Windows/Unix in conjunction with the system. I personally don't care on the OS to define myself.
Now if a company asks me what OS should they use my answer is based on the following.
Linux: If they have a strong IT culture, and there are at least a few employees who know it beside myself, or some people who are exited to learn the system.
Windows: If they have a weak IT culture, or the employees are not that interested in learning a new OS, or they already have a windows network.
It is about finding the right solution for the organization. Being a Linux professional isn't that much more helpful. You need to be a good system administration/software developer/technical writer.... Reguardless of the make of your system. Yes each one works differently and there is a learning curve. But it isn't the 1980's anymore, we got Google, that make it rather easy to get the right information.
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I'm actually planning on taking a class in kitchen knife skills.
Yeah, Linux is just a tool, but hiring managers and HR bureaucracies are big on buzzword compliance. I've lost work because I didn't have experience with specific tools, even though I had tons of experience with similar tools that do the the exact same job. It's a stupid way of doing things, but that's the way it is.
Re:Knife professional (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I started out working as a VLSI engineer and built some semi-technical web-based tools as a hobby (DNS, whois proxy, that sort of thing). That hobby work - which involved building a product, deploying and running that product, and interacting (usenet, mailing lists, IRC) with other people working in the same space - led to professional work. That was what would probably be described as dev/ops these days - designing a network, developing glue perl scripts to hold a system together, doing basic DBA work, web scripting, monitoring scripts, working out why database replication had shat itself again, that sort of thing.
All of that work was on unix-ish boxes, but none of it was *about* linux or unix. These days I run my own company, and get to do pretty much what I want to do, as long as customers are happy. That mostly involves developing product design, implementing, QA-ing and deploying it. Then maintaining it and doing customer support for it. (Yay, small company!). I couldn't do that if I weren't reasonably fluent in RHEL, Debian, Solaris, OS X and Windows, but there's probably not more than 2 or 3% of what I do that's OS specific.
Unless you want to be a junior sysadmin or a low level programmer, you're never going to have a job where the operating system is central to what you do. It's always about business goals, politics, network architecture, balancing how much you spend on different parts of your network, and different parts of your company (skimp on dev, get burned on ops... skimp on marketing/sales and the rest of it doesn't matter...). The fastest way to learn that by working with good people, in a flexible environment, one where you can find stuff that needs doing - and that you think you can learn to do - and adopt it as your own.
The best way to get that sort of position is a mixture of demonstrating that you can do "stuff" (write scripts and share them with the world, work on an open source project - write documentation, at least, deploy an interesting website) and that you can work with people (interact - usefully - online in IRC or technical mailing lists, work on an open source project, write docs, improve tutorials, help others).
And give up on the focus with Linux, unless you're planning to be a software developer in a niche industry (embedded design or driver development) or you want to be a junior sysadmin forever. Focus on what you want to accomplish, not the OS.
If you want something concrete - if you're planning on starting out via the sysadmin route, learn perl. And maybe virtualization (ESXi, most usefully). If you're thinking software development might be interesting, learn python and SQL. Whatever you're planning, design and publish a website, with something of interest to you on it, running on a cheap VPS somewhere - register your own domain, run your own DNS, run your own email. Certification - in anything - isn't a magic key. Generally it's something you'd pick up as "career development" when an employer is paying for it, and it's a very rare certification that teaches you something you can't learn other ways, and a fairly rare one that's taken seriously by hiring decision makers.
Do something. Network. Be prepared to work for cheap, if it's on interesting projects where you'll learn. Do *something*. A decent resume, a web presence and a github repo with something in it won't hurt at all. Socialize with people who are doing things you might want to do. Go to your local Linux users group. And your local Windows users group. And your local perl / python / vmware / sql server / postgresql users group. Play nice with others. Show up for things you're interested in - and stay to help out with the cleanup.
Eror 404: Slashdot User Not Found (Score:2)
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Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
How Did You Become a Linux Professional?
By installing the first one in a non-linux shop when I was asked to install some service, once it was in used I mentioned it in some meeting with some big dog. No one had the balls to acknowledge they didn't know.
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It's schizzle to the Mizzle!
His Kernel is super fly, Just dont back your bumper up to him, cuz' he will smack that monkey!
Long story... (Score:5, Interesting)
It starts with my first account at the university for a computer lab running AIX V3.2 and HP UX 7.1.
It continues with me taking a C programming course, then diving deeply into MUD programming.
It goes along with Linux 0.99.4, which a collegue of mine showed to me running an MWM like window manager.
It sees me helping acquaintances compiling kernels for Slackware based distributions on their respective boxes.
It has to do with my second position as a firewall administrator of firewalls running on Solaris and later FreeBSD based machines.
It gets me to owning my own Solaris box along with a Linux box running several Linux distributions installed on top of each other.
It accompagnies me to a short stint as a system administrator at a research institute for distributed computing.
And now it sees me administer phone switches based on Linux and applications plugging into the phone switches and running on Linux too.
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Yes. And its predecessor LPC.
One data point (Score:2)
For me, a background C++ development on Windows along with doing sysadmin-type work outside the main project, was sufficient to get C++ on Linux development work at IBM.
If you can get yourself consulting work or work with a smaller company where you are their main "technical guy", you can often just specify what you're going to do--as my first "resume-able" work with Linux was. Getting approval for doing a client's entire internet presence (mail server, web server, firewall, NAT router) for "free" (outsid
Bioinformatics (Score:5, Informative)
Bioinformatics has been very happily open source and Linux friendly for my entire career to date (14 years). Only the last two and a half of those 14 years have been whithin acedamia, but open source is an especially easy sell here.
I broke into it somewhat oddly (Score:2)
I've been programming since I was 8. I started with BASIC on Apple IIs, then BASIC on Atari systems, then BASIC on a Timex Sinclair 1000, then assembly on a variety of platforms, then Pascal on Atari ST and then C...
So, I'd been programming a long time before I could even really think about the job market.
My first real job was something my HS career counselor pointed me at. It was a small business who'd had an HS kid handling all of their on-site computer needs. I ended up being hired by them at just barely
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I would like to add that I started working with Unix on University computers. And by the time I'd stopped hanging around there U of MN I had my own x86 system with a Unix on it. First it was SCO, then it was UnixWare, then Linux. Since about 1993, it's been the main platform I've used for just about anything on any of my own systems.
Certification (Score:2)
I got the LPI Linux certification, but only after I got a Linux job. I wouldn't recommend it, it was little more than a stupid cram of shell commands.
One certification which has a better reputation, though, is RHCE/RHCT.
The easiest way to get a Linux job is just to use it, develop in it, and then apply for a position in a company known to use it (which is almost everyone these days).
Just another tool in the box... (Score:2)
I've spent 1/2 my 25+ year career as a "Unix" (you know what I mean) system administrator and the other 1/2 as a Unix system programmer, sometimes application programmer, all with a little (sigh) DOS/Windows thrown in. I've worked on just about every flavor of Unix running on PC class to Cray-2 hardware, usually several at any one time. For most of that time, there were no books on the topics, just man pages and the compiler. Linux is just another tool in my toolbox.
It seems almost universal that ever
Accidentally (Score:2)
I'm not a Linux professional, per se. I fell into the role of Virtual Machine server guy. Some of the VMs are Linux. For many things, Linux is a better tool than windows to deal with VMWare problems, system monitoring and so on. So I use Linux as part of my paid work, and I notice that part is increasing. I guess I have to say that I'm slowly sinking into it, sort of like quicksand, but not as messy, at least not until you get into the configuration files.
it's a bag of tricks (Score:2)
"By 'Linux professional,' I mean anyone in a paid IT position who uses or administers Linux systems on a daily basis.
Being a "Linux Professional" (or as people tend to more often call me, "Linux Guru", damn them) is more about a broad and deep level of experience than it is about 'knowing linux'. For instance, you're going to know the inner workings of how many protocols work; you're going to know how to build your own Linux distro (more or less), and you're going to know how hardware behaves properly. There are many 'professionals' who don't know this, but if you're specializing you've got to know pretty much everything.
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Yep, MTAs, SELinux, bind, and pretty much anything that people do not willingly touch at the lower levels due to its complexity is generally considered a specialty. When you're knowledgeable enough to set up Postfix in a fashion comparable to Postini, bind with multiple views, or a custom network boot/deployment system, you're a professional specialist - simply because finding someone who can do that, and has done that, is pretty damn uncommon. It's a small community, relatively speaking, who have BTDT; mos
do a project where you use linux.. (Score:2)
like some clustering combo with virtual servers that you could scale to work with n+34523 users. maybe open source it. it helps if you can find real users for the service, like if it's a game or does something useful digging up some info from some source.
and suddenly you would have experience you could use to score a gig, then another...
With patience and practice (Score:5, Interesting)
I started with Linux use early 2000s, went through a couple years of labor and frustration installing, re-installing troubleshooting, etc. until it became my primary OS. One of the best things UI did was grab one of those fat Linux Bibles and read it cover to cover (the one I read was the Red Hat Linux 8 bible) - not all of it will stick, some will be not useful now, and largely it makes a great sleep aid, but it will give you a general picture of how things work in Linux.
From there start setting up a test system where you can try out the more serious stuff like setting up a web server, FTP, shell, ssh, etc. Maybe try out LTSP, etc. Once you get to the point where you can confidently do something useful (business wise) then see about migrating it to work. Show your boss you could do x with Linux, faster cheaper and without licenses, and that you can write out what to do if it crashes and your not there. Once you get the chance, make it work and also show it to your peers. Once things are rolling on Linux, you've become the Linux professional. Now you're there, you have to keep up on all that stuff - and there's always more to learn.
Started as a hobby when I was a teenager (Score:2)
The first computer our family had was a 286 12MHz running DOS 3.3 and Windows 2.11. Then came some 486SX, which I upgraded to have a double speed CD-ROM. Here in Germany dial up and downloads were very expensive, so the CD-ROM became my means to get my first Linux distribution. It was a magazine cover CD-ROM containing a DOS-bootable archive with Linux (something around Linux 1.0ish, I forgot), running the UMSDOS file system, ca. 20 MBytes. That was 1994. I played around with it for some time, until I bough
Interesting reading other peoples responses.. mine (Score:2)
About 15 years ago i just started installing it and using it for various tasks. In a smaller company this is a very easy thing to get away with, and I've spent most of my career in Small/Medium businesses. Many of which were in startup mode and saving money was an easy sale. What makes you a professional is when you've started to break things, or see things fall apart and you can fix it.
The hardest part about Linux (or at least was) is that you'd have to cash the checks you were writing, no blaming micro
Take the sysadmin job (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, don't stop with just installing systems on new hardware, thats easy - try to get your hands on the 'old' stuff that barely works, and I'm talking Pentiums - nothing in the last decade. back when I was a teenager, my mom was given around a dozen plus systems for a project she was working on, she tasked me with seeing what worked and what could be done with them. I was able to get around 7 systems fully working, only some had no drives. Between them all, I got into networking (obviously), diskless nodes, DNS, various services, the kernel/modules/configurations, etc.., etc.. Because the amount of resources I had to work with was very limited, I had to really do my homework to get everything going AND usable. A few years later, my first 'good' job I scored because I knew what some strange boot codes from LILO were when simply no one else did, and I could get the critical systems going again (I was contract initially) - I only knew that info from the countless issues I ran into on that old hardware, and getting it all working.
When it comes to your employer verifying that you can walk the walk, and not just talk the talk - it's done one of two ways, and sometimes both - they will either verify from word of mouth (previous employer/references) or during your 30 day/3month 'probation' period.
How I started (Score:2)
You want to know how people started so I'll tell you. In the early 1980s I got a 300 baud modem. I began calling Bulletin Boards Systems. One of them was a board with a private section which I gained access to after chatting with the sysop. It had "codez" that I could make free phone calls with.
I got busy in the mid-1980s, but in 1989 I began calling BBS's again. I started calling boards with h/p sections, or totally h/p boards. One one of them I mentioned the dialup to a local university, and what I
Also... (Score:2)
"I'm interested in what practical steps I can take to build meaningful skills that an employer can verify, and will find valuable."
I have been on many interviews for Unix sysadmin jobs, and have conducted many, many interviews for Unix sysadmin positions over the years.
People fall under a Gaussian distribution on an interview. A few people know almost nothing (we try to screen them out with phone interviews), a few people knock every question out of the park, and most people are in that big chunk in the mi
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You seem to be missing the point. I did not say this is a good list of questions, or the main things you need to know on an interview. Booting is just an example, I could ask for detail on other things. I said if I tell someone "Tell me how a Linux system boots in as much detail as you possibly can" and they give an answer like this, they're very likely to get hired. If they say "BIOS runs POST, the bootloader starts, and eventually init runs", then great, you've given me the same answer as the past do
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Nowhere in your original post do you make the point you just made, so that is probably why I missed it ;-)
We certainly see things differently. The best answer, as far as I am concerned, is that I haven't had a need to look at the inticate details of the boot code since I spend my time solving problems that haven't already been solved.
I was the only one who had any exposure to Linux! (Score:5, Interesting)
So after the plastic mannequins posing as managers discovered that "Lye-nux" was in use by some enterprise that they read about in some shiny trade publication and was therefor "sexy", I was anointed "project leader" to build and configure a mail server and a separate file server.
I used retired machines (lots to choose from), (if I remember correctly) a Slackware 6 CD, and did what they wanted, when I was called into a meeting and asked how much I would need to buy the equipment and software I told them that it was done and ready to begin testing whenever they wanted.
This really pissed them off, (not to have to spend huge sums of money) they felt cheated somehow and after I had successfully demonstrated that the setups I created worked reliably management decided to scrap "Lye-nux" and spend $500,000 on high end Sun equipment instead!
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Curiosity and Diversity, and Google. (Score:2)
Your most important asset is curiosity. Without that, you won't get very far. You also need a very diverse set of skills. That's pretty much how I got to where I am now, and I've been a Linux IT professional since 1998. Knowing your hardware, ability to build and deploy stable server systems with the right Linux distribution, and finally learning how Linux works and why. Just installing Ubuntu is not enough, you need to objectively pick the right tool for the right job. Some days its CentOS, other day
By force, like most sys admins I'd imagine (Score:2)
I started my career as a Windows NT and AIX admin, but my customers and clients decided to switch to x86 servers running Red Hat Linux to cut their software license costs.
My boss at the time asked me if I heard of Linux. I said that I did, so he declared me an "expert" to our clients and had me building servers with it a few days later.
Fortunately, Linux and AIX are somewhat similar so the learning curve wasn't all that steep.
There's no standard way (Score:2)
As an ex hardware guy I don't have any software degree or certifications. I used to buy Redhat releases on floppy back when I had dial-up and install them on my second PC. Learned all about networking, DNS, DHCP, etc. from howtos - which were always out-of-date even then. Anyway, last two jobs have been increasingly Linux and now I'm a full-time kernel hacker. The best source of information for what I work on now is the mailing lists and LWN. Buy a subscription.
Computer magazine with RH6.2 (Score:2)
Explore Linux in every aspect (Score:2)
I installed Linux first back in 1993; the Uni I was attending had some Unix boxes and I liked it so much I tried out Linux myself (slackware, on floppies no less).
Anyway, there are a couple of things that I think make you a professional:
How'd I do it? (Score:3)
Learn the Unix philosophy (Score:2)
(I'm coming at this from a developer's perspective, so a sysadmin perspective may be different.)
To be sure, Linux isn't the only Unix, and you can do this to an extent on Windows. (Much more if you install Python or Ruby on Windows.)
But Linux tends to have the state of the art in Unix tools, from the various scripting languages to the various development tools and languages. And because they're so good, it does encourage this idea that things should fit into a larger system, that you're not making "apps" or
Get a job (Score:3)
OS/2 Warp, Actually... (Score:2)
Back when I was in high school and using Win 3.1.1 on top of DOS 5, I came across a new copy of OS/2 Warp at a local computer shop, heavily discounted. I used it through my first year of college, where I got more and more into using Unix-related software under OS/2, thanks to the great porting work done by the community. I was regularly using vi, Apache, Perl, etc all directly under OS/2.
In school I used everything from DEC Unix (DEC OSF/1 on Alphas) to HP-UX on HPPA RISC boxes to, eventually, Linux, most
We have a saying in the NOC (Score:2)
Job required it (Score:2)
Started a job where I would eventually need to do Linux sysadmin, I'd only started fooling around with Linux at home shortly before. I took an introductory course but am self-taught otherwise. Now all my computers except my gaming PC run GNU/Linux - including my phone.
Started at the beginning (Score:2)
I didn't... (BSD "professional", old UNIX geezer) (Score:3)
Back when I was deciding between the free Unixes, not only was it more natural to choose FreeBSD, but at least back then, Linux was a mess in terms of documentation and consistency of the distribution(s). I chose FreeBSD and never looked back.
My story about failing Red Hat CNE (Score:2)
My advice to you is avoid Linux training courses that have a published failure rate and a high cost of retaking the exam.
Back in 2000, having had experience being a system manager for the now long gone Hewlett Packard MPE and MPEix systems and having installed and used several early Linux distributions, I decided to take the Red Hat CNE one week certification course.
I failed the final CNE exam and the result was a half assed resume entry and a blow to my career energy. Computers are fun and interesting, and
How did you become a "Hammer" professional? (Score:3)
Dear Slashdot,
I have become proficient in the use of a "Hammer" and I'd like to know how to become a Hammer professional. I use a hammer on a daily basis. I can't believe that making furniture is the only job available, although I would be open to that. What areas of Hammer usage have other people experienced, and what has been your experience as a hammer professional?
Show them! (Score:2)
I grabbed a PC that wasn't doing anything, loaded my favourite distro (Slackware) on it, plugged it in to the network, and showed that it could do useful things at an interesting price compared to the Sun hardware we mainly used at the time.
Now we use Linux for all new development. The suits insist on RedHat for product stuff. So be it. We use CentOS for development. My personal box remains Slackware.
...laura
Linux security - easy, just do it. (Score:2)
I started using Linux at 17 or so (asj introduced me to it), connected to the Internet via dialup and realized that if I could connect to systems on the Internet they could connect to me (using SLIP/etc I had an actual IP). So I started learning about security, but basically no documentation/etc. existed back then (this would be 18 years ago). So I started keeping notes, back then stuff like disabling stuff in /etc/inetd.conf (remember that file?) was serious high end security, and using tcp_wrappers was Ma
I didn't. (Score:2)
I became a computer system engineer. I work with whatever is needed for the job. Solaris, HP-UX, Windows, Linux whatever the job requires.
Zero Budget Solutions (Score:2)
Personally, I got my start as an "IT Manager" for a small company and often needed to solve problems where I had hardware, but no software with zero budget. This was web servers (Apache) and a file server (Samba). From there, I used it for personal projects by renting an unmanaged server and doing everything on the CLI.
I got a bit lucky in that a short term contract at a major company involving both Windows and Linux servers got my foot in the door there and now I'm on the project team for rolling out new L
I just did it (Score:2)
This was back in the days of Kernel Version 0.99. Believe it or not at THAT time (1993) you had basically very few choices in OS on servers. You could use some proprietary Unix (like Hitachi) but only on that OEM's hardware. You could use Netware of course, and you could use one of a very short list of other *nixes (Xenix being one of the major ones IIRC. Linuxware was also just then appearing). I recall my first commercial use was setting up machines for a guy to run a course on TCP/IP since there really w
Started in the 90's (Score:2)
I started using Linux in 1994 on my computer as a teenager. I got my first job doing tech support for a now-defunct dot-com commercial Linux distribution. As I was totally incompetent at talking to clients and stuff, they moved me to R&D. The bar was really low back then - my interview consisted pretty much of "Can you install Linux? Cool, can you start tomorrow?". The salary was low but who cares. I had what I would later find out to be the experience of a lifetime as I went to work with some amazing,
First Unix, then Linux... (Score:2)
`Catch-22'? What catch-22? (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, you're talking about needing to get the job before you can get Linux experience? The first thing you need to understand is how silly that statement is; we talked about this in my local LUG, a few months back, and one of the other guys summarised pretty aptly:
So, when we hire, that's what we look for: experience that actually you can get in your spare time.
My own response to the question [gmane.org] was longer and provides more specific suggestions.
Not a Linux professional but might be useful.... (Score:2)
Way back when, I worked as a CAD operator on an Intergraph graphics workstation. UNIX based. The other guys I worked with had no interest in taking on the System Admin responsibilities so I said I would do it. Having never used UNIX before I had a lot to learn. So I broke open the books, on my own time, and had the good fortune of having a friend that taught me a lot. I started off writing simple shell scripts then moved on to other things. I won't bore you with all the details but basically, the key to get
How Did I Become a Linux Professional? (Score:2)
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+1
Networking amongst like-minded people is great way to show the people who know about local Linux-related job openings that you're competent (or at least a good guy and teachable).
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The world of *nix neither begins nor ends with Linux. Stop being such an illiterate lamer. Maybe your question should be, "How did you become a *NIX professional?".
Precisely, and that's also how I got started. I worked with Unix systems, then, somewhere along the line, Linux evolved from a hobby OS into something that could be used in the enterprise. I never got any certificates, just started out with shit jobs and worked my way up. I suppose certs might help, other than that a good way to proceed is to contribute to FOSS projects.
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Pfft. Real professionals consider all POSIX compliant OSs.
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> Pfft. Real professionals consider all POSIX compliant OSs.
Real professionals think that POSIX compliance is a joke that really doesn't say much of anything and certainly is not enough to know whether or not your expecations from one OS can transfer to the next one.
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its true though - you want to be known for being able to do something, the only way to prove that is... to do it.
I got into Linux sysadmins when I was made redundant, a friend (who was similarly afflicted) opened a shop and he asked me if I would make him an ecommerce site to go with it (ok, he had a friend who had a shop too, and he had spent £10k on ecommerce software). So I said - "why not", got he software off him (turned out that was £10k spent of a slightly modified copy of osC
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Want a job at Google? Work on Chrome. Are you god-awfull talented too? You might.
At Google it's not a failure to get rejected; it's a massive honor if you are hired.
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Yes, i see the word "professional" being misused a lot... As you pointed out, it's purely to do with using it for paid work vs using it for personal reasons.
There are plenty of amateurs in all manner of fields who are considerably more skilled than professionals (and often a lot less likely to cut corners because theyre doing something they enjoy rather than a boring 9-5).
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Good gawd there are some bad admins out there. I have had a contract with a fortune 500 company to do their backup work and in house dev builds on a satalite branch with ~30 servers for about 5 years now. Well, they found a "cheaper" admin contract so declined to renew my contract about 3 years ago. Fast forward 1.5 months, I get a call asking - and I quote - "How much are we going to have to pay you to contract with us NOW". Turns out that the "administrator" managed to screw up all the automation and re
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Actually no I want him to stick with Windows we don't want any competition over in this side of the house.
Yes windows administration is hard, very hard mainly due to the fact that you cannot automate shit with it.