*nix to learn for employment?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

lowtech1

Diamond Member
Mar 9, 2000
4,644
1
0
Originally posted by: Buddha Bart
Food for thought:
IBM will only officialy support rpm-based distros. Of which only Redhat and Suse are currently supported. So if you're looking for jobs in the US, if its an IBM shop, its a redhat shop. (the germans still love their suse).

bart

[edit] sorry forgot turbolinux... hahhahaha[/edit]

Most if not all popular distro supports RPM or have a converter to do it such as Debian alien to convert deb to RPM.

 

Soybomb

Diamond Member
Jun 30, 2000
9,506
2
81
Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
kinda funny to see the poll results so far. almost 10% say gentoo is good to learn for employment?
rolleye.gif
fanboys!
Heh thats what I was thinking, honestly how many business run Gentoo on any serious server? Sure maybe a couple guys have it for their irc or game server but Yahoo isn't running gentoo ;)

I'd say RedHat just because of how many redhat boxen there are although I can't imagine any halfway competent employer turning a FreeBSD admin away from a Redhat job, or a debian guy from a solaris, job, etc. If you're good at one *nix you can do fine with the other after a brief time or orientation. At least thats my view but I don't get to hire people so hey....

I'm also surprised at the number of people that continue to talk so highly about slackware. Once you go package management you never go back. ;)

 

Bremen

Senior member
Mar 22, 2001
658
0
0
I'm also surprised at the number of people that continue to talk so highly about slackware. Once you go package management you never go back.
To be truthful I'm a bit surprised too, and I run Slackware. Well, once you get rid of the crutches you don't want them back, do you?

Also as a bit of explanation for my earlier comment that so shocked n0c: Theo is in much greater danger of getting knocked off by an offended [l]user than Pat ;0)
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
Originally posted by: Bremen
I'm also surprised at the number of people that continue to talk so highly about slackware. Once you go package management you never go back.
To be truthful I'm a bit surprised too, and I run Slackware. Well, once you get rid of the crutches you don't want them back, do you?

Also as a bit of explanation for my earlier comment that so shocked n0c: Theo is in much greater danger of getting knocked off by an offended [l]user than Pat ;0)

A prissy Linux user no doubt. There are a half dozen guys that come to mind that can pick up where Theo left off if need be (god forbid). I would list them, but I fear their wrath if I misspell their names...

I am told the other full time slackware developers are no longer there, so if that fabled bus did come... Where is Slackware? ;)
 

MGMorden

Diamond Member
Jul 4, 2000
3,348
0
76
Originally posted by: Soybomb

I'm also surprised at the number of people that continue to talk so highly about slackware. Once you go package management you never go back. ;)

As my grandfather would say, "That's a lie from the devil." :). I simply don't find precompiled binaries all that appealing. For getting things up and running quick it's ok. My laptop is an "on the go" machine that runs Knoppix, a flavor of Debian. Apt-get is cool for that because I get get a program going quicly when I need it. However, Slackware is sitting on my desktop Linux box. On a machine that I have a bit more time to fine tune, Slackware is simply better. I don't mind compiling my own stuff and checking for dependencies. At least I know it's being done right. And though I am perfectly capable of configuring either, I much prefer Slackware's style of init scripts to the SysV type scripts of the other distros.

It all boils down to preferences so I'm not gonna say Slackware is definately better, but do know that a lot of people simply like the way Slack does things. If different, but then there are different types of people too.

 

Soybomb

Diamond Member
Jun 30, 2000
9,506
2
81
Originally posted by: MGMorden I simply don't find precompiled binaries all that appealing.
Neither do I, thats why I use Freebsd's ports system ;) Seriously I was a big slack user and a package management tool just makes it soooooo much easier to not only install software, but to remove and update it. If you have one machine and a few services or apps you can make do, but with the number of boxes and things I'm watching now I'd go nuts :D I agree 100% on the BSD style init btw ;)

I'm just curious if the poster has now picked one!
 

ahabeger

Member
Feb 15, 2000
29
0
0
So at my old job (Scalable Computing Lab with DOE) we made fun of people that ran RedHat, to me linux is supposed to be command line and minimalistic, wich doesn't sound all that much like RedHat (but that's my opinion)

I'll play around with the new RPM a bit on a current install, move my experimentation machine to RedHat, but my servers are staying gentoo (dear god i don't want to install that again)
 

Sunner

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
11,641
0
76
Originally posted by: Soybomb
Originally posted by: MGMorden I simply don't find precompiled binaries all that appealing.
Neither do I, thats why I use Freebsd's ports system ;) Seriously I was a big slack user and a package management tool just makes it soooooo much easier to not only install software, but to remove and update it. If you have one machine and a few services or apps you can make do, but with the number of boxes and things I'm watching now I'd go nuts :D I agree 100% on the BSD style init btw ;)

I'm just curious if the poster has now picked one!

I have to agree, I use Gentoo, though BSD ports is nice as well.
Not for precompiling stuff or anything, but simply cause a good package management system makes life so much simpler when upgrading/removing stuff.

Oh and SysV init owns BSD init ;)
 

N11

Senior member
Mar 5, 2002
309
0
0
Originally posted by: ahabeger
So at my old job (Scalable Computing Lab with DOE) we made fun of people that ran RedHat, to me linux is supposed to be command line and minimalistic, wich doesn't sound all that much like RedHat (but that's my opinion)

I'll play around with the new RPM a bit on a current install, move my experimentation machine to RedHat, but my servers are staying gentoo (dear god i don't want to install that again)

Have you ever used Red Hat? In a serious situation?

Linux is the operating system, Red Hat is the distribution, and like all other distributions you can do whatever you want and use whatever parts you want of it. Somehow a concept of a fully featured distribution has translated to 'bloated unecessaries you have to use' in the minds of some people -- this I don't get and never will.


As far as which *nix to learn, I would hands down recommend Red Hat. Linux labs on my campus all run Debian, however, enterprise level situations require certified reliability. IBM and Dell are only certifying Red Hat for their builds, which means that rebelling and installing Gentoo or something else that is not supported is something that everyone in the industry will advise against, including myself.

Please do not believe that downloading and installing red hat is going to negatively impact your learning experience. This is not the case and similar comments should be disregarded. Red Hat is the overwhelming choice by the linux community (for reasons a single post cannot adequately describe), and is becoming the preference for the increasingly skepticle corporate arena bathing in these newfound waters of uncertainty as they take the plunge.
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
0
0
So at my old job (Scalable Computing Lab with DOE) we made fun of people that ran RedHat, to me linux is supposed to be command line and minimalistic,

Sounds to me like you never took the time to understand how Linux works, you can have as many or as few packages installed as you want and you can even mix GUI and CLI tools!

but my servers are staying gentoo (dear god i don't want to install that again)

I hope you don't have a lot of them, I know I sure as hell wouldn't want to waste time updating more than 1 or 2 boxes running something like Gentoo.
 

ahabeger

Member
Feb 15, 2000
29
0
0
Originally posted by: N11
Have you ever used Red Hat? In a serious situation?
As a desktop OS and to test some speciaty network cards, I had many headaches with both, probably just my linux teething & the network cards have a reputation of being very picky, I'll give RH a second chance
Originally posted by: N11
Please do not believe that downloading and installing red hat is going to negatively impact your learning experience.
Ahh, words i needed to hear. Most of the *nix gurus i've been around play around with development and probably jaded me against RH.

Thanks for your advice everyone!