Computer Tech - Linux & Certification

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

12/15/2009 02:17:45 PM · #1

Seems a little strange making this post on a photography forum, but I know the community fairly well here by now and know there's a handful of you out there that can give some sound advice on this. :-)

I've found out that the company I work for is looking to transition from deploying Toughbooks with Solaris to using Linux next year. In advance of that I'm looking at the LPIC program to get up to speed.

I've ordered this book (LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell) as a study guide (in addition to that laid out on the LPI website).

The question I have is what flavor of Linux is best suited for study? The company I work for has not decided yet what variant of Linux they'll be implementing.

I'm leaning toward Ubuntu for both desktop and server installs. I'll use a laptop for the desktop software, and convert an extra desktop at home to use as a server for training/study.

Any thoughts or feedback on this? Advice from anyone with experience regarding this topic?

Thanks.
Barry

Citadel

Nikon D7500

12/15/2009 02:22:22 PM · #2

CentOS is a RHEL distro that I've seen used in a couple of instances. I would use Virtual Box ( //www.virtualbox.org/ )to set up VMs so you can setup different OS's easily. (i.e. you can try different distros).

Louis

Nikon D800

Nikon AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.8D

12/15/2009 02:23:52 PM · #3

I'm a BSD guy, so I may not have the most informed opinion, but I've heard good things about Mandriva.

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

12/15/2009 02:25:36 PM · #4

Originally posted by Citadel:

Very useful link Craig. I'm checking it out now. Thanks!

Citadel

Nikon D7500

12/15/2009 02:28:42 PM · #5

Originally posted by glad2badad:

Originally posted by Citadel:
CentOS is a RHEL distro that I've seen used in a couple of instances. I would use Virtual Box ( //www.virtualbox.org/ )to set up VMs so you can setup different OS's easily. (i.e. you can try different distros).

Very useful link Craig. I'm checking it out now. Thanks!

I actually use that at work btw. I threw about 20 GB (which is overkill) and 1 GB of RAM at my VM and it runs like a charm. Most of our environments are some flavor of Linux so its handy to upload files. (Uploading files using WinSCP is sooooo slow compared to using scp on Linux)

Kamlan 28mm F1.4 MF for APS-C

12/15/2009 02:32:04 PM · #6

Originally posted by Louis:

I'm a BSD guy, so I may not have the most informed opinion, but I've heard good things about Mandriva.

Thanks Louis. I'm learning in a hurry there's a ton of Linux flavors out there. Hadn't heard of Mandriva before.

I am seeing one common thread when looking at these...they all make strong arguments for their variant. :-)

I really need to settle in on one that will meet my study/training needs for the immediate future.

Manic

DJI Mini 3 Pro

12/15/2009 02:38:07 PM · #7

The big three in the Linux world are:

RedHat - RHEL for enterprises, Fedora for users, CentOS being a free clone of RHEL
SuSE - SuSE for enterprises, OpenSuSE for users
Debian/Ubuntu - Ubuntu is a variant of Debian, mostly commonly used for desktops, with Debian itself most popular on servers

If you're going to study Linux, one of these three main distros would be a good starting place, especially if you're going to look towards getting commercial support for your installed systems. Personally, I'd go with Ubuntu for desktops and RHEL/CentOS for servers, but that's just me :)

Oh, and I definitely agree with the use of VMs to test out the various options - VMWare Server is another good free option alongside VirtualBox.

Message edited by author 2009-12-15 14:38:48.

Citadel

Nikon D7500

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

12/15/2009 02:43:52 PM · #8

Just as an aside, I found that to really learn Linux I gave myself a project. The one that really taught me the most was setting up Cricket graphs for my home network. You have to setup a database, a webserver, configure SNMP, setup the RRDtool software , resolve a bunch of dependencies etc. Tough? Yes. But once I had it all running it was all very satisfying and I learned soooo much. Afterall, installing the OS is pretty simple in most cases. Getting it do something useful is another case entirely.

12/15/2009 02:45:16 PM · #9

Thanks Manic. :-)