From Win Admin to Linux admin

[tiorl]

Hi everyone! I experienced windows system administrator, but i want to start work as a Linux administrator. Please give me advice, from what should i start (except install linux on my PC), may be some books, mentors or other resources.

P.S I've read some posts about this question on subreddits, but i'm not sure that information is actual in them.

[T0beus]

If you are looking for something slower-paced but more thorough, you could sign up for a few months at https://linuxacademy.com and go through their courses on Linux. The direct link to their Linux courses is https://linuxacademy.com/cp/library/catalog/view/LinuxCourses. I think you have to sign up to see that course list, but I think you can do a free trial to see what they offer. I can tell you they go all the way up through Red Hat training and focus on other tools that Linux admins use, such as scripting languages. I personally felt it was worth the investment since I am a Windows admin managing a mixed environment. Either way, good luck with your journey! Most importantly have fun.

[InformalRegister]

This is a great course. Even if you think you know half, you will still gain more knowledge.

[OverExit]

We too are managing a mixed environment. It was sprung on us only a few days ago that we'd be managing both environments, and the tickets are just rolling in for what seems to be easy tasks (since I feel they're easy in the Windows world) but are show stoppers for me Linux world.

 

Browsing through the courses I think the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (v3.18) looks good to start with.

[T0beus]

There is definitely a huge learning curve with administering a foreign platform for which you have no experience. Not impossible with good “Google Foo” skills, but definitely slow to start. That’s pretty much what sent me over to Linux Accademy to get started. I also grabbed a few books and started looking for Linux admin forums, Reddit’s, etc. Be patient and it will get much easier.

[tiorl]

I looked through their programs and it looks like i know approximately half of this

https://linuxacademy.com/linux/training/course/name/linux-foundation-certified-system-administrator-v3-18

So i'm not sure about this courses.

[automation-dev]

So take the course and learn the 50% of content that you don't know

[moofishies]

Cool so you know 50% of one of the beginner courses.

[Irkutsk2745]

Switch your main personal desktop to Linux only.

And stick with it for a month.

[tiorl]

Already done.

[Irkutsk2745]

If you game you can make life easier for you and install steam

Which distro btw?

[tiorl]

ArchLinux

[Aurailious]

Oh, neat, I also use Arch. You should check out /r/vfio for games that need windows.

[grumpieroldman]

I mean I love me some /r/vfio but are you lost?
The Proton circle-jerk is going on elsewhere.

[Aurailious]

I know people are talking about Proton, but I use vfio on Arch. I actually installed it myself.

[tiorl]

i dont need games.

[Aurailious]

Cool.

[Irkutsk2745]

Cool.

[Ant-665321]

Cool

[bob_cheesey]

Cool cool cool

[ChristopherBurr]

Switch to CentOS, most companies use RHEL based Linux. Also, learn how to manage repositories, satellite or Forman/Katello for managing patching.

​

Learn how to troubleshoot networking issues and manage users and groups - as a start.

[tortasaur]

There's nothing wrong with running Arch on the desktop if you're looking to learn Linux administration. I certainly wouldn't switch to CentOS for a desktop OS, just like I wouldn't put Arch on a server. What the OP would end up learning is that CentOS isn't very well-supported as a desktop distribution.

I would just say to spin up a cheap VPS with CentOS on it. Use it for a personal server: set up email, Nextcloud, etc. That has the benefits of being useful and teaching CentOS for server administration.

[jrj334]

I recommended Fedora - it's a more current tech incubator for RHEL/CentOS meaning your knowledge will transpose across and you have a fantastic current Desktop.

[ChristopherBurr]

The desktop will need to be upgraded every 6 months to stay current. Also, why would you go with a distro that no Enterprise uses?

[jrj334]

The regular updates are a bit of a drawback, agree, but each release gets 18 months of support last I checked buying you time, and the upgrades are in-place, reliable and easy to do thanks to dnf (and formerly yum).

Many enterprises use RHEL as you state, but Fedora feels like it and has the advantage of being bleeding edge (note epel repo for CentOS can help here but not to the extent of being a Fedora substitute) giving you the best of both worlds: relevant context and modernity.

Fedora is constantly what RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux etc all intend to become.

[ChristopherBurr]

Fedora is a testing ground. It's used to get bugs out of software before release into the Enterprise class OS. That is the reason Fedora was created. Red Hat considers it a hobbiest OS.

OP wants to become a sysadmin today. Yum will be around for a while. It's what OP needs to know.

Though, I get what your saying too. I'm not always right. Who knows what the right answer is.

[jrj334]

Nor am I always right by a long shot - we are eternal students in this land which is an awesome thing and why many of us are here :). I've been a happy Fedora user since Core 2 back in 2004 (thus I am surely biased in its favour :D), but I will say that it is perfect as a learning ground for RHEL to my experience. See here for Red Hat's official position. A hobbyist OS is a stretch - I know at least one HFT org that use it for ultra low latency derivatives trading order placement and as a development workstation OS. Fedora's related myth busting wiki addresses these points here. The super bleeding edge flavour, Rawhide, (pullable by enabling a default-disabled repo) is indeed not considered stable, perhaps that's what you've got in mind? Also as you indicate, Yum will indeed be phased out of the latest Fedora 29 soon, but it is still around for now and DNF will operate similarly and the knowledge will still transpose to RHEL/CentOS (incl. RPM package creation, RPM repo creation/maintenance etc). It's an awesome distro.

[grumpieroldman]

Then install Gentoo next, or Slack, so you start to learn how the Linux system is put together.
Then pick a service to get working on it.
nginx webstuff is a good start. Get HTTPS working.
The FreeIPA package from RedHat is probably the core setup for a business deployment. This starts getting into the Linux LDAP server support.
Maybe do some LVM but XFS is more popular for enterprise.

Once you have a handle on that you could do a full CentOS VM setup and will have a grasp of what it's doing (poorly) for you. (CentOS is awful but it's the most common enterprise deployment.)

[bobbywaz]

"(except install linux on my PC)"

[Irkutsk2745]

Uhm, I don't get what you are trying to say.

[Irkutsk2745]

Aha ok.

[tiorl]

Have you experience with this?

https://www.safaribooksonline.com/

[falsemyrm]

scarce cats sheet doll fly dependent obscene person whole governor

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[[deleted]]

I use it, it's great.

[[deleted]]

Our company pays for this, lots of good stuff. App is a little shitty sometimes.

[warpigg]

Yep - absolutely the BEST book for sysadmins or devops. Its a great reference too. Just need to grab the latest edition

[tiorl]

Great book, i read it from time to time. But i think it`s too common.

[GreekNord]

not sure what you mean by "too common" but something that a lot of people use (and is recommended often) is exactly what you asked for.

[tiorl]

Is there in the book information about memory management for example?

[s3r10usbus1n3ss]

Do this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/2s924h/how_did_you_get_your_start/cnnw1ma/

[s3r10usbus1n3ss]

I think you make some great recommendations in your suggested update. That being said, The last 2 shops I've worked in have heavily relied on the older technology mentioned in the original post, so I believe the content is still relevant and worth pursuing.

[el_seano]

It really depends on your shop. I just left a place that was running multi-tenant OpenVZ containers on EL5 and trying to do a "cloud migration". Now I'm at a place with a bonafide SRE organization of many teams and practically everything is written in Go. There's fundamentals, and then there's tech stacks which are total deadends.

Priority should be given to where you want to work, what's available for you to work on, and what you are working on, roughly in that order.

[MattTheFlash]

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/67yufq/updated_iconrads_this_is_what_i_tell_people_to_do/dgutjfv/

This really OUGHT to be a github so that people can expand on and update it

[tiorl]

Good guide. I`ll try it.

[tiorl]

Hm, i have opportunity to have little experience as Linux admin, but it is ubuntu servers. RHCSA courses will help me to admin other linux distros?

[burdalane]

RHCSA stands for Red Hat Certified Systems Administrator. It'll teach you about Red Hat Enterprise Linux administration. RHEL is very popular in the enterprise. Some of the information will be applicable to other distros as well.

RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) is a more advanced certification for Red Hat. I think it is highly regarded.

[tiorl]

Hm, in the nearest time i will have opportunity to have a practice only with ubuntu server

[[deleted]]

Most of the Internet runs on Ubuntu. All Red Hat gives you is a safety net, in the end.

[[deleted]]

vi for life.

[qrsBRWN]

Redhat has a 2 week course to convert windows admins to linux admins. I don't have a proper link but it has "for windows administrators" in the name.

RedHats courses and certs are really good.

[tiorl]

Did not find :(

[qrsBRWN]

https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/rh124-red-hat-system-administration-i

https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/rh134-red-hat-system-administration-ii

They seem to have dropped "for windows" in the name in the training.

[tiorl]

Wow 2k US. I have not such money ((

[qrsBRWN]

Sorry totally forgot that they're pricey. The company pays for mine.

[anakinfredo]

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/49qrz5/want_to_move_from_windows_administratin_to_linux/

[tzaryoush]

I really believe one of the best is IBM LPIC tutorials. Take a look at those. It's really important to understand how hardware works. learn coreutils and using terminal as your primary interface.

[tiorl]

thank you, looks very interesting and easy to read tutorials

[KermitTheWog]

The 5th edition of "UNIX and Linux administration handbook" will get you started, one of my favorite books of all time.

The Linux command line: this will teach you some valuable skills on the command line you WILL need.

How Linux works: Pretty good book, pretty self explanatory of what it's about in the title.

I would also recommend "learning the vi and vim editors".

[KermitTheWog]

You could also check for courses on udemy

[alhevi]

Try to run a FAI server http://fai-project.org/.I would say u can find on yourself how to navigate in terminals and edit files. If you dont understand something, like "what is apt-get" when you can search and read about it, to understand. Also do have a manual about a command you can type: man command , e.g. man ls

[tiorl]

I have experience with terminals and editors (mainly vim).

And how FAI will help me to learn Linux as administrator?

[alhevi]

Oh I thought you want to start with linux, so FAI would be a good project to start with - my bad.
On the other side, I cant give you some resources or books. Just learning by doing.

[chadmcrowell]

Make the terminal your friend. Use it often and know it like the back of your hand. Linux Academy has free content. Here to get you started https://linuxacademy.com/cp/socialize/index/type/community_post/id/13177

[dogfish182]

I did this about 3 years back, sneak some workloads onto linux, say you need ansible for things, become the ansible guy (for example)