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Best linux to learn for engineer career

konakona

konakona

Diamond Member
Recently, I attended an information session on campus hosted by Micron. They had a few product engineers talk about their job, and the DRAM guy said unix experience is quite helpful.

I have always wanted to get into linux and even got a secondary box ready for abuse, but never gotten around to do anything.

1)Is taking up a linux variant for learning purposes be worth my time for the sake of getting myself familiarized with UNIX?

2)If I dont mind rigorous installation process, which distro do you recommend?

TIA
 
Most companies that use Linux and want a good supported Workstation and Server distro go with Red Hat Linux, IBM HP and many more do that, basing my point on that, I suggest starting out with Fedora Core which is the free version of RedHat, now if you want to learn more about how the Red Hat OS is run as a server , I would recommend the free Red Hat clone Centos.
And Fedora Core has to be on of the best Linux distros out there for a person to start using, the installer is easy and graphical (same as Red Hat) and the applications and support are widely available.
Fedora Core
You see when a company says that UNIX experience is a big plus, you need to focus more on what they mean, it's not specifically a certain distro that you know from top to bottom, but it's the base systm Linux and the utilities that come with all Linux systems.

A good example of what the company you are talking about would like when it comes to Linux experience could be learning how to write BASH scripts.
BASH can make your qualifications go up a lot if you know it real good, a lot of jobs out there are just about a certain things that has to be accomplished and you have to write the BASH scripts for it to happen.
 
Originally posted by: The Linuxator
Most companies that use Linux and want a good supported Workstation and Server distro go with Red Hat Linux, IBM HP and many more do that, basing my point on that, I suggest starting out with Fedora Core which is the free version of RedHat, now if you want to learn more about how the Red Hat OS is run as a server , I would recommend the free Red Hat clone Centos.
And Fedora Core has to be on of the best Linux distros out there for a person to start using, the installer is easy and graphical (same as Red Hat) and the applications and support are widely available.
Fedora Core
You see when a company says that UNIX experience is a big plus, you need to focus more on what they mean, it's not specifically a certain distro that you know from top to bottom, but it's the base systm Linux and the utilities that come with all Linux systems.

A good example of what the company you are talking about would like when it comes to Linux experience could be learning how to write BASH scripts.
BASH can make your qualifications go up a lot if you know it real good, a lot of jobs out there are just about a certain things that has to be accomplished and you have to write the BASH scripts for it to happen.
Click to expand...
wow, what a helpful reply 🙂
that just about answers all my questions for now, time to download fedora and get it up and running on my secondary rig. Having both rigs on one desk makes it a whole lot easier 🙂
I will report back if I get stuck with installation, thanks again.
 
If you're looking to gain 'unix experience' I think the most important thing is to get familiar with as many different distros as possible (or don't even limit yourself to linux). If you were to stick with a single distro, you wouldn't be able to distringuish between what is specific to that distro (say, yum in fedora) and what is common to all of linux (kernel modules for instance) and what is common to all unix (like a / based filesystem). Knowing what comes from where will greatly increase your ability to move to another platform should it be necessary for technical reasons. Switching from say fedora to debian, all you'd really have to do to get started was read the apt man pages, which isn't very hard. Knowing that that's what you have to do is the important part.

Given that, I'd say you should try out whatever you fancy and keep trying stuff until you find something that you're personally comfortable with (if you're looking to actually use *nix for something other than learning). Even then, of course, it never hurts to keep looking at new and interesting stuff as it comes along.
 
I don't think it really matters - in a company, you won't be messing around with your system, you'll be using it to do work. As long as you are familiar with any one *nix, from the user side you should be ok on any of the rest. Switching between a Solaris machine and a linux machine and a BSD machine can be annoying (for example, the "find" command takes different arguments) but you'll be able to pick up any *nix quicly once you know how to read man pages and use another *nix.

edit: I don't actually remember what distro I used at work on Linux boxes... the Sun machines ran Solaris.
 
I was following the on-site instruction, and I am having trouble locating the dvd version of the fedora core iso. Quick googling revealed that someone made a script to accomplish this with cd images, but that doesnt pertain me as I dont have any working linux environment yet.

EDIT : I would rather not use bittorrent; dont have a client and dont plan on installing one to hog all the upload bandwidth. It was painful enough to live with a roomate who was using it heavily 🙁

The hdd is 7.687gb, and I am about to partition it. The windows portion is taking up 3.86gb, leaving 4.006gb free to use. Any suggestions? 🙂
 
What do you want to do?

If you are a software engineer of comp sci, then learn it in depth.

Most engineers only need to know how to use programs in linux, not administer it.
 
Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004
What do you want to do?

If you are a software engineer of comp sci, then learn it in depth.

Most engineers only need to know how to use programs in linux, not administer it.
Click to expand...

well I am a CMPE major with more of HDL/PSPICE/Assembly background, and hopefully my career would be filled with thats kinda work 🙂 I guess I could learn on the side as a hobby, but that will take less of a priority then. Just felt that I would need to introduce myself to the UNIX environment.

http://www.utorrent.com/

No need to install. It's a great, small client that runs directly from a downloadable exe. Just a suggestion if you can't find the iso anywhere else.
Click to expand...
thanks, but I am not very fond of any torrent client and we disallow its usage at our place. I might as well just settle for the CD versions then.
 
For someone starting out, I would suggest Mandriva.

I'll use redhat or fedora core if I need to, but I really don't like the user interface they have.

They screwed up KDE 🙁

 
Originally posted by: VanillaH
Originally posted by: IHateMyJob2004
What do you want to do?

If you are a software engineer of comp sci, then learn it in depth.

Most engineers only need to know how to use programs in linux, not administer it.
Click to expand...

well I am a CMPE major with more of HDL/PSPICE/Assembly background, and hopefully my career would be filled with thats kinda work 🙂 I guess I could learn on the side as a hobby, but that will take less of a priority then. Just felt that I would need to introduce myself to the UNIX environment.

http://www.utorrent.com/

No need to install. It's a great, small client that runs directly from a downloadable exe. Just a suggestion if you can't find the iso anywhere else.
Click to expand...
thanks, but I am not very fond of any torrent client and we disallow its usage at our place. I might as well just settle for the CD versions then.
Click to expand...

You don't need to go too far to realise that the mirrors link in there contains many university links that have the DVD iso's in there, here is a mirror link form Fedora 's site :

Mirror

Here is the page containing all the avilable mirrors, IIRC most of them have the DVD ISO.

Good Luck and shoot me a PM if anyhting else comes up.

EDIT : And just to make sure, I know you most probably know this, but just to check when you download the ISO make sure that when you burn it to burn it as an image through Nero / Cd-Creator or whatever else you are using, don't just copy that huge ISO into the CD as it will stay an ISO that way and not be bootable OK.
 
You don't need to go too far to realise that the mirrors link in there contains many university links that have the DVD iso's in there, here is a mirror link form Fedora 's site :

Mirror

Here is the page containing all the avilable mirrors, IIRC most of them have the DVD ISO.
Click to expand...
Ahh my bad. I just took a look at few random ones and they all looked the same with only CD ISOs so I stopped looking. Better look harder next time!

EDIT : And just to make sure, I know you most probably know this, but just to check when you download the ISO make sure that when you burn it to burn it as an image through Nero / Cd-Creator or whatever else you are using, don't just copy that huge ISO into the CD as it will stay an ISO that way and not be bootable OK.
Click to expand...
yeah, I knew that but thanks for reminding me 😉
 
Originally posted by: VanillaH
I might as well just settle for the CD versions then.
Click to expand...
I've taken to using net installers myself recently. It's not quite as efficient as bit torrent in that the downloads are slower and you've got less chance of resuming after a failure, but it sure beats burning 4+ discs per distro. Don't have a dvd burner though, so maybe that works better for you.
 
Originally posted by: The Linuxator
Originally posted by: Robor
The developers/engineers where I work all use Fedora Core 3 or Fedora Core 4.
Click to expand...


So where do you work ? And what's your position there Robor ?
Click to expand...

Sorry, can't say more than that. NDA. Even if I could it wouldn't be anything exciting. Only mentioning it because the engineers are Fedore Core 3/4 fans.
 
In my company we also use redhat on the development machines, and it's set up with all the standard dev tools. But my home machine which has Ubuntu is infinetly better because it is so easy to install and configure stuff. Even for software development my home machine is better because I can easily add any software packages. The redhat machines at work are OK for working using the standard tools but it's a huge pain if I ever need to install a different tool or package. Also it has very lacking administration tools, but that's because the admins don't want users to do any of that stuff (they do all the administration remotely). Simple example, I can easily compile the linux kernel on my home machine and getting all the required packages to do that took less than 10 minutes. I think that trying to do that on the work machine will prove way more difficult. Companies get redhat and other commercial distribution because of the support and set them up to be simple to administer a large number of them automatically. But some of the non-commercial distros are better for someone who wants to learn about administering a real linux system.
 
Erk.. so I am getting a mixed bag of advices here. It sounds like I could just get ubuntu and get the hang of it, and just learn the key differences in the interfaces and whatnot to migrate to redhat if I needed to. Well, Fedora core dvd iso finished downloaing a few hours ago; I was going to leave it overnight and get back to it in the morning, but ended up pulling an all niter doing stuff (well, coffee killed my sleepiness anyway). Now, my secondary rig only has 8gigs of space to spare in total. All my music/video stuff are distributed among 3 hdds on my main rig totalling 560gigs, and I have no intention of relocating any of it. Basically, if I can acess them over net lan, I should be fine.

So the question is, how should I partition this tiny HDD? I just deleted all the games and stuff to shrink the space taken up by windows and apps to 3.86 gigs, leaving behind 3.97 gigs available for use. It probably needs some headroom for swap file resizing and temp files and such, I suppose.
 
i am 17 years old. i learend linux in my summer vacation and now it has replaced windows completely. i hjave not booted into windows for 5 months. clearly if i can do it you can too.

linux learning is nothing special. linux is far far easier to install than windows and the support (community) available is so so much better than windows. just install i distro and start using it. read a few doc and you'll be set. hope you enjoy your linux experisnace.

distro to try.
ubuntu for ease of use and fast install
debian for statbiity and large larger repository of softwarer
gentoo is tweker (stay wqasy noobs)
slackware is even worse than gentoo (but with you learn a lot even during install)
 
Originally posted by: tanishalfelven
oh yeah and i forgot to mention if you wajt to get familiar with linux than look up linux from scratch
Click to expand...

what do you mean by lookning up linux from scratch?
Also, I have googled for information on how I should partition my hdd and the results looked rather complicated. For one thing, I dont have that much space to spare anyway and probably wont need it since most of "user data" is going to reside on the main rig.
 
Don't bother with Linux From Scratch unless you're very interested in how to create a distribution of your own. Don't bother with partitioning, either.
 
Originally posted by: tanishalfelven
i am 17 years old. i learend linux in my summer vacation and now it has replaced windows completely. i hjave not booted into windows for 5 months. clearly if i can do it you can too.

linux learning is nothing special. linux is far far easier to install than windows and the support (community) available is so so much better than windows. just install i distro and start using it. read a few doc and you'll be set. hope you enjoy your linux experisnace.

distro to try.
ubuntu for ease of use and fast install
debian for statbiity and large larger repository of softwarer
gentoo is tweker (stay wqasy noobs)
slackware is even worse than gentoo (but with you learn a lot even during install)
Click to expand...

I happen to disagree with you on something here. While I love using Linux, and Unix, you can't automatically assume that if you were able to quit using windows cold turkey, everyone else can too.

 
Originally posted by: VanillaH
Originally posted by: tanishalfelven
oh yeah and i forgot to mention if you wajt to get familiar with linux than look up linux from scratch
Click to expand...

what do you mean by lookning up linux from scratch?
Also, I have googled for information on how I should partition my hdd and the results looked rather complicated. For one thing, I dont have that much space to spare anyway and probably wont need it since most of "user data" is going to reside on the main rig.
Click to expand...

actually, I would suggest, if you really want to know the inner workings of linux, try gentoo.

Best linux distro ever in my opinion.

 
I was hoping to keep windows on that 8gb hdd so I could multiboot into windows. There is a game I play occasionally on that computer, and stanaphone which I intend to keep on for most part. Neither is guranteed to work in linux, nor is the TV card. But would sub 4gb partition be too tiny? maybe I should start keep an eye out for a hdd giveaway 😀

Hyperblaze, you sure I could cope with gentoo without being overwhelmed? Last time I thought about getting into linux and almost made my move, I was trying to download gentoo distro. Keep in mind I have literally zero experience with linux 🙂

Since Fedora core finished downloading, maybe just go with that instead? dunno, beats me 😛
 
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