Originally posted by: LeonarD26
I really want to learn both, but I'm not sure the 'best' way to progress. I'm trying to get a solid understanding of other people's experiences and what they found most useful. At work we have Oracle 10g running on RHEL and I get by OK, but I want more!
Thanks for the responses.
To me the 2 best learnin' OSes are Slackware and Redhat.
Redhat because it's the most commonly used distro, most of it's conventions form the basis for other large commercial distros' such as Suse and Mandrake. The only real differences are the gui configuration tools and the initial setups. Fedora I have had good results with, and is now the Redhat free version. It is also a testing OS, and any new features or open source software is going to show up first in Fedora before it gets migrated into the commercial Redhat variants. This will give you a good idea of what setup and decisions will be used in the future by redhat.
Slackware is also a good, but for entirely different reasons. With the exeptions of the init scripts (BSD-style vs System-V style start up scripts used by almost every other distro) it is the same as anything else you would see in any other Linux os.
The main thing that makes it good is that it's kept simple. The gigantic complications created when people try to make OSes "easy" is almost completely absent from Slackware. Bash shells rule and you can modify pretty much any part of the OS in ham fisted ways and not have to worry about breaking Gui configuration tools and complicated package managers.
Nice to learn the "ropes" and basics of a *nix OS.
The install is easy, in DOS sort of way. You select language and keyboard layout. Select networking options, format the disks and select "install everything" and most of the time it "just works" the first time out. Very quick compared to something like Gentoo. If (when) you mess it up, format and reinstall "everything".
Also if you keep a /home partition seperate you can format and reinstall around it and not worry about loosing your user settings and home files.
For a initial project I suggest setting up a simple File server. A ftp (carefull with that on the internet, doesn't use any encryption for passwords) server, and a SAMBA server for your home LAN, for backing up important windows files. Using Webmin, VNC, and SSH for remote administration you can do most everything from your Windows computer (putty.exe is a very good ssh client), so you don't need to waste a keyboard/mouse/monitor or get a switch for your extra Linux box if you don't want it. (although local administration is a nice convenience to have).
Another fun setup is to create a network music jutebox. Using something like Icecast you can setup a streaming music server for your other computer(s) and even make a little internet radio station for yourself. There are variaty of ripping and music mastering programs for linux. Try several different ones to find what suites you. I like ripperX for nice front as a automated tool to Rip/Repair CDROMS and Zinf is a nice music player and makes it easy to build playlists.
If you don't have a router and have a almost always on style internet connection you definately NEED one. By building a linux router/firewall you move a lot of the security burden off of your desktop computers. By not having to run software firewalls you increase the speed and stability of Windows computers by quite a bit, also makes connection sharing easier and infinately better then even the best windows-based internet connection sharing software. Stuff like smoothwall, LEAF internet appliance, and ClarkConnect make setting this stuff up pretty easy. But you don't want to run any network services on a firewall/router machine.
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