Re: Careers in Linux
"Jonathan D. Proulx" <jon@ai.mit.edu> writes:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2001 at 01:52:02AM +0100, mark wrote:
> :Hi,
>
> : Iam finding it very hard to even get looked at by
> : empolyeers.Basically i have made a career change 1 1/2 years ago
> : from being a factory worker to supporting pc's (sadly win9x/win2k
> : for a uk comapany,name withheld to protect my job :-), at least it
> : got my foot in the door).
>
> Luck did have a big part in getting my current position! I was "the
> guy who knows computers" in my last job (Public Works department of a
> local Municipality), but hat little official responsibility for them.
Similar here. At the university i studied social sciences the
department of mechanical engeneering was looking for a student with
,,programming knowledge´´. OK, I thought, after 7 jears of linux
experience, GEM - Programming on Atari ST, I have ,,programming
knowledge´´. I got the job, it was very bad payed, and I ended up with
13000 lines of C++ - Code (in the biggest program), a very good
attestation, much more knowledge than before and a lifelong job
guarantee.
>
> Try to leverage that foot in the door, can you work in a cheap linux
> box to do firewalling, mail, fileserving, intranet webserver, VPN ?
>
> Be creative and see if there's anything you can do with old machines
> going out of service or a really low end PC, so it won't cost your
> employer much if anything, and then you'll have "official" linux admin
> on your CV
>
Also try to learn at home as much as possible. Networking, mailing,
firewalling, etc. I would especially take care of things like volume
management, high availability, shared filesystems (Coda, GFS) and
other enterprise features. If you have knowledge in this fields, no
matter on which flavor of unix, you can pick out your
employer. Scripting is a must, I would recommend python. Try to
automate with failure checking and everything needed in a production
environment.
>
> : Also I would be inclined as Iam to start playing with something like
> : Solaris as its more Unix based than say debian/rh/mandrake (if you
> : know what I mean)
>
> All my "important" servers are Sun machines running Solaris, so yes
> it's important to know. But I wouldn't call it "more Unix based"
> exept that Unix is a trademark Linux doesn't wear. From an admin
> perspective some of the commands behave a little differently (though I
> use the GNU tools mostly so they are the same), and there's a few
> minor differences that can be trouble till you get used to them. From
> a user view there's even less difference. I'd go so far as to say the
> difference between RH and Debian is greater than the difference
> between Debian and Solaris.
Except that debian is much better. It´s cleaner, it has a clear
policy, an absolute superior package management and more I can count
here. I work in a major data processing center as a solaris sysadmin,
and I hate solaris.
>
> That said, they're running Solaris because of the Sun hardware, and
> Sparc Linux isn't quite where we'd need it to be.
Here the same. No one decides to use solaris, but to use SUN hardware.
Greetings, Christoph
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