Linux Guys... - Sportbike Addicts

Ant · 12-06-2006, 12:44 PM

My roommate just went on an interview for an IT support job where he will have to support Linux. However, he has no experience with it. I just wanted to ask a couple questions:

1) Will he be able to get himself up to speed quickly by downloading it and playing with it? Or is it kind of hard?

2) If you know Linux can you post some Easy, Intermediate, and Advanced Problems or issues he may come across just to test his knowlede?

Thanks guys.

jcblitz · 12-06-2006, 01:05 PM

Short answer, no. But I don't know your friend, he might pick up boring, annoying things quickly. I've been using linux on and off (mostly off) for 10 years and after a week or so of screwing with the latest distros at the time, I always come back to "fuck linux".

Ant · 12-06-2006, 01:29 PM

Thanks Jared. I think he's under the impression that he's a quick learner but I would have to think that a whole new OS or whatever it is is going to be tough.

jcblitz · 12-06-2006, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ant

Thanks Jared. I think he's under the impression that he's a quick learner but I would have to think that a whole new OS or whatever it is is going to be tough.

It took me 2 days to learn how to use OS X sufficiently. But with linux, I would hit weird dependency issues and things were just plain not working, regardless of the distro. I had a friend that tried to run just Unbuntu at work for his development machine and he gave up after a week. He couldn't get certain things installed and was hitting the same problems I always get, some dependencies just couldn't be resolved correctly and things would just randomly stop working without verbose errors. This isn't a "i hate linux" post, but linux was (and is) a huge pain in the ass and I'm a pretty competent computer user. But hey, some people like reading HOWTO's and manually compiling kernels and building source files to do simple things. But not me, and certainly not for a living.

soda7o · 12-06-2006, 01:46 PM

talk to cucclin he is the lynix gury or atleats a windows hater..

jcblitz · 12-06-2006, 01:47 PM

See, heres an example. I haven't touched my ubuntu install in a month so I decided to fire it up after posting this...and this is what I get. It's just stuck here.

soda7o · 12-06-2006, 01:49 PM

Jared, the penguin hates you

***Cakes206*** · 12-06-2006, 01:50 PM

PM Hassmachine.

ffejtable · 12-06-2006, 02:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcblitz

Short answer, no. But I don't know your friend, he might pick up boring, annoying things quickly. I've been using linux on and off (mostly off) for 10 years and after a week or so of screwing with the latest distros at the time, I always come back to "fuck linux".

Hahaha... thats pretty much the same exact boat I am in... Got my first Slackware in Oct 94 (kernel 1.0.9)...

I'ev turned quite a few friends onto it, but can't seem to put myself through the torture of mastering it.

As for your friend Ant, that really depends on a lot of things... Like what kinds of problems he is expected to solve, and how well he picks up new things. Linux is not an easy learn for most people. Unfortunately a lot of my experience in the IT field involves people incapable of working themselves out of a cardboard box without being spoonfed step by step directions, let alone troubleshooting computer problems. if your friend can (and wants to) figure things out on his own he should be ok.

SilverDragon · 12-06-2006, 02:42 PM

The easiest way to install and play with with it IMHO is to download the ISOs from redhat dot com. There are different flavors out there suse, etc. It depends on whatever the company he's going into is planning to use.

Linux/UNIX isn't to be just picked up in a couple of days unless you're command prompt savy!

One of your best friends should be the command "man" for manual.

sonny · 12-06-2006, 08:13 PM

<--- Linux PRO.

**FigNewTon** · 12-07-2006, 12:36 PM

Ant, as most people have already stated your friend is not going to learn the linux OS overnight. Nor is he going to feel very comfortable performing basic operations for some time. Have him start by learning the file structure. Linux is a flat file OS and although most things are now able to be done through the GUI, depending on the severity of the problem you may only be able to boot with a run level of 3 which is command line only. Also being familiar with the command line will allow for easier remote access to linux machines through ssh. He will also he will want to become familiar with the VI editor.

As for distros....Personal I am a Fedora Core fan but there are easier distros out there.

I have a pretty decent Linux tutorial that is designed to prep for the Linux+ certification. PM me and I will send you a copy of it.

CuCullin · 12-07-2006, 02:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcblitz

See, heres an example. I haven't touched my ubuntu install in a month so I decided to fire it up after posting this...and this is what I get. It's just stuck here.

Well first, its because you're using Ubuntu - atleast get a real desktop, ie: KDE

Ant, theres ALOT to deal with in Linux. I have not used windows at home in *years*, and I'm quite happily getting all my stuff done in KDE. However, I began with linux around 1994.

Can he learn enough to get a good intro to it in a few days? Yes.

Will he be able to do more than the basics? Doubtful.

If he is going to be supporting Linux from an admin standpoint, he should be familiar with the various scripting languages out there (perl, python, some bash scripting), some programming (primarily C++ with KDE, C for kernel modules, C with an ugly gui would be gtk/GNOME), etc.

It also heavily depends on what kind of Linux box he'd be supporting - if its servers, it may be anything from Slackware (complicated, but simple once you get it) to Debian (stable as balls, but always behind) to Red Hat (Easily managed using Red Hat's administrative tools, but RPM is a shitty pain in the ass package format, and GNOME is ugly

). Also, I've met some management types that refer to Solaris, the BSD's, and even AIX as "Linux" because they don't know the difference. In serverland, the BSD's are very nice to administer, I'm personally not a Solaris fan, but they are all quite popular.

If they are using it on the desktop (as a number of companies are doing this now), there are an assload of tools that come into play. Often times a server will be set up in house to handle package management, where the desktops check this in-house package repository for security and application updates so that they can be tested locally. The nice thing is, if the machines use PXE, it is EXTREMELY easy to install Linux on a shitload of desktops. Create once, install everywhere - a work of beauty.

The problems depend on how they are using Linux. It could be as a webserver, in which case problems can arise from php scripts not working properly (such as an older version of php is being used, or perhaps apache needs to be upgraded to a more recent release to make use of it); it could be a CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) server handling all the print jobs in the building over ipp, where the CUPS server going down halts printing; it could be alot of things.

There are tons of questions I could ask - just find out what they are using Linux for, and I could create a friggin test

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EDIT
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Jared, are you using Ubuntu on a mac?

Thats the only time I've ever seen it fail like that. PS: Macs also suck.

Ant · 12-07-2006, 03:18 PM

Gentlemen, thank you for your help. I am going to forward this to him. I really do appreciate this.

SilverDragon · 12-07-2006, 05:33 PM

This was the interview... I know it!