Hi all,

Have we got any Unix experts on here?

Well I'm only 19 and still deciding where to go in terms of career path.. and I've heard Unix is a very sought after thing?

If you could tell me how you got to where you are, how you learnt it and how you gained the experience, I'd be most grateful :)

Thanks in advance,

GazB

I work with UNIX, I wouldn't call myself an expert but I'm quite good with it.

I downloaded RedHat Linux and borrowed a book which I wish I could remember the name of. It was written by a Lecturer at Warwick University and was the best UNIX book I've ever read.

Taetech Training do Linux Courses which I've heard are pretty good.

I learnt mostly from messing things up and having to fix them again.

I now run Solaris 9 on my spare comp which I've grown to love.

RedHat, Mandrake and SuSe are all good Linux distro's.

Where/what is Taetech training?

Thanks for the response, most appreciated :thumbsup:

If you don't mind me asking, how old are?

All of our web servers run it as it is very stable so do a lot of other web servers and just servers generally. I feel I know enough to keep them all running but well worth learning about just to get out of the world of MICRO$OFT.

Originally posted by Glasstop
All of our web servers run it as it is very stable so do a lot of other web servers and just servers generally.

Also, Unix, Xenix, Linux, BSD et-al are a lot more secure!

Unix used to be big when I was learning about computers (mind you, so was COBOL) but lost favour when M$ lifted most of the CPM operating system, threw a few more commands in, re-structured the command syntax and sold the liscence to IBM for inclusion with their single user desktop PCs!

Originally posted by sccsux
Also, Unix, Xenix, Linux, BSD et-al are a lot more secure!

Unix used to be big when I was learning about computers (mind you, so was COBOL) but lost favour when M$ lifted most of the CPM operating system, threw a few more commands in, re-structured the command syntax and sold the liscence to IBM for inclusion with their single user desktop PCs!

I have word from a man high high up in a massive computer company, that Linux is the way forward..

Looks like I'll be reading a few "for dummies" books then! Linux, Unix, SQL, data warehousing... Anything else? Bugger it, throw in Oracle 9i for good measure!

well yeah, Linux is slowly taking the markey from Microsoft, more and more people are shifting to it... I've used linux on and off for years... but I'm a very impatient man and I'd be using it now if I could get it to work correctly with my wireless network... but I've spent stupid amounts of hours fiddling about to do it but no luck :(

Maybe I'll try another distro again soon... I had the option of doing a Unix/Linux/X option on my degree course, but I chose "Games Programming" instead as I thought it'd be more interesting and of more use to me...

at the end of the day, Unix/Linux is easy to learn by yourself, it starts getting most interested when your start writing your own shell scripts and piping commands to others, it can get very powerful in it's own right that way :)

Where did you learn Unix/Linux?

For someone who's never seen it in the field before, where's best to begin?

I learnt a lot of my stuff from trial and error, just installed umm... red hat 6.2 on a system, messed about with it and stuff... at the time i was like 14 or 15? I've always been good with computers so it was just like playing with DOS to me but with new commands to learn...

later I got a book on Linux that came with Red Hat 7.0 or 7.1... I've still got the book in my wardrobe along with tons of other really fat books on various other computer stuff :)

I would suggest just partitioning your HD off and installing something like Mandrake or SuSE and just having a little play with it... you can find allsorts out from the tinternet about linux and its commands... or buy yourself one of the numerous amounts of books... but almost every command has its own manual... just type something like

$> man ls

and it'll bring up the manual information for the command "ls" which is roughly equivilent to the command "dir" in DOS, then again, the command "dir" does actually work in linux too (well most distro's) but has different command parameters to "ls"

I would in no way consider myself a linux guru or anything, or even that I'm competent in it, but I know my way round it roughly and at the end of the day, got a book to fall back on if I need to :)

Speaking from my own experience as someone who dabbles in *nix coding and work, the best setup for this sort of thing is a KVM* switch and 2 machines.. one an old (or new if you've the cash) system with your *nix flavour of choice installed and the other for your main windows system. Dual boot is an option but in the process of learning you'll undoubtedly need to reinstall you nix box a number of times, and undoubtedly need access to the net and your normal day to day tasks so having a wholly seperate machine that won't get fubar'd is a good option.



*KVM - Keyboard Video Monitor : allows you to use one set of desktop pariphenalia with 2 or more machines

Yeah, thats a good idea... i thought of that at one time but I dont have the dosh to shell out for a new system... I have like about £50 to spare... dont think it'd even get me a P1... lol

Originally posted by xafier
Yeah, thats a good idea... i thought of that at one time but I dont have the dosh to shell out for a new system... I have like about £50 to spare... dont think it'd even get me a P1... lol
Oh, I'm pretty sure you could ask around friends, companies... a lot of P2's and the like are being tossed out the door in the usual 3 year renewal cycle..

You'd be surprised what box you can get for £50. Put an appeal out on this forum, someone might have something.

hmm maybe... its not like I'm wanting it for gaming, I've got a beast of a system here for that... Linux doesn't need that much power to run earlier distro's... the current versions of X and KDE etc take up a fair bit of RAM and graphics though...

good idea :) just need a P2 and 32 - 64mb of ram and a few gigs of HD space really

Originally posted by xafier
hmm maybe... its not like I'm wanting it for gaming, I've got a beast of a system here for that... Linux doesn't need that much power to run earlier distro's... the current versions of X and KDE etc take up a fair bit of RAM and graphics though...

good idea :) just need a P2 and 32 - 64mb of ram and a few gigs of HD space really
If you're seriously wanting to learn unix skills then you want to be looking at the shell script side of things.. not X-Windows.. so a machine that's slow in the pretty interface will still be more than happy in the good old shell screen...

I have an old P120 with 64Mb or RAM and than handles mandrake fine... It's like treacle in x-win but for web coding and testing it's just fine.

Originally posted by GazB
I have word from a man high high up in a massive computer company, that Linux is the way forward..


I take it was'nt Bill Gates then :D


Originally posted by xafier
but I'm a very impatient man and I'd be using it now if I could get it to work correctly with my wireless network... but I've spent stupid amounts of hours fiddling about to do it but no luck :(


I would like to use Linux, but couldnt think how I'd get my wireless network to work with it, what do you do about drivers etc ? are many ready available on the net ?

I was a unix (solaris and HPUX) sys admin for nearly 5 years and have worked proffesionaly with Linux for about 7. Also worked with FreeBSD and BSDI.

Linux isn't more secure than windows for a start. The kernel sure is (usually but has had its moments), but unlike windows Linux is usualy distributed with a lot of apps (most you don't need but takes a while to learn what they are) which regularly feature on security bulletins (my last job was as a senior security ananlyst for a bank). The number of Linux related secuirty postings easily outnumbers MS due to the proliferation of applications.

Having said that..once you get to learn Linux properly you can "sure things up" and make it much better. Removing services that are not needed, removing apps you dont use, it has a more flexible firewall, kernel patches can provide protection against buffer overflow attacks etc....
But as a learner - keep it off the internet.

Best way in is uing VMWARE. Run Linux as a virtual machine in a window with only a proxied access to the outside world - if you don't and you haven't set it up properley it will get hacked.

Once you are confident its good to go on the net - give me the IP address and I can do a quick pen-test for you to assure it.