Is there enough crossover between the two that it wouldn't matter? Should I just learn which ever one I think is better? or is one much more marketable than the other?
What's a more Marketable Skill: Linux or BSD?
- Thread starter halfpower
- Start date
if by marketable you mean in terms of a career path, just do a few job searches on monster.com for job openings in your area. if there seem to be more employers looking for linux, then i guess know linux would make you more "marketable".
Linux would be more marketable skill, but going from one Unix-like to another is usually rather easy.
Learn how the stuff works. Learn how to make it work for you.
Scripting, a bit of programming, system administration. Linux vs Unix it's all pretty much the same. Going from one environment to another requires only a small amount of adjustment and 99% of skills transfer one to the other as long as you avoid being dependant on GUI tools paticular to one distribution or another.
Scripting, a bit of programming, system administration. Linux vs Unix it's all pretty much the same. Going from one environment to another requires only a small amount of adjustment and 99% of skills transfer one to the other as long as you avoid being dependant on GUI tools paticular to one distribution or another.
Linux is more marketable, but you should try to build familiarity with more than just one distribution. That will give you a leg up over anybody focused on just one.
My advice? Pick a mainstream UNIX along with whatever Linux distros that vendor supports. Like AIX+SUSE=IBM or Solaris+Redhat(well, maybe Ubuntu makes more sense now)=Sun. You'll make more money and have more opportunities come your way. I run into lots of companies that have an established mainstream UNIX environment who're just starting to dip their toe into Linux. They don't want to pay for just a Linux admin/dev, but if you can do both you're golden. Another good aspect of this approach is that you're far more likely to be asked to work with/troubleshoot larger Solaris/AIX systems than you are Linux, consequently requiring a greater depth of knowlege. Being a great Linux guy isn't going to help you when you've got to diagnose a hardware issue on a 64-processor Sun or IBM box. Experience with the hardware diagnostic utilities unique to their operating systems will, though. It also pays a hell of a lot more, in my experience. ;-)
Low level administration tasks aren't that different from one system to the other. Once you've got one system down pat, picking up another isn't that hard. On the other hand, don't bill yourself as a guru of one just because you've got a few years under your belt with the other. A good part of being an admin is the experience to recognize and fix issues quickly, not just spend an hour with google and manpages to figure out what an issue is and how to fix it. After working with Sun hardware/software for close to 15 years I've seen just about everything and can usually recognize it when I see it again. I wouldn't feel comfortable claiming the same level of expertise on similar UNICES, even though I've worked off and on with them during those 15 years as well.
My advice? Pick a mainstream UNIX along with whatever Linux distros that vendor supports. Like AIX+SUSE=IBM or Solaris+Redhat(well, maybe Ubuntu makes more sense now)=Sun. You'll make more money and have more opportunities come your way. I run into lots of companies that have an established mainstream UNIX environment who're just starting to dip their toe into Linux. They don't want to pay for just a Linux admin/dev, but if you can do both you're golden. Another good aspect of this approach is that you're far more likely to be asked to work with/troubleshoot larger Solaris/AIX systems than you are Linux, consequently requiring a greater depth of knowlege. Being a great Linux guy isn't going to help you when you've got to diagnose a hardware issue on a 64-processor Sun or IBM box. Experience with the hardware diagnostic utilities unique to their operating systems will, though. It also pays a hell of a lot more, in my experience. ;-)
Low level administration tasks aren't that different from one system to the other. Once you've got one system down pat, picking up another isn't that hard. On the other hand, don't bill yourself as a guru of one just because you've got a few years under your belt with the other. A good part of being an admin is the experience to recognize and fix issues quickly, not just spend an hour with google and manpages to figure out what an issue is and how to fix it. After working with Sun hardware/software for close to 15 years I've seen just about everything and can usually recognize it when I see it again. I wouldn't feel comfortable claiming the same level of expertise on similar UNICES, even though I've worked off and on with them during those 15 years as well.
kamper
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- Mar 18, 2003
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Wow, interesting contraction. I don't believe I've ever seen that one before
As far as learning a bix unix, isn't that a bit difficult on one's own? I've never looked, but are there boxes with aix that the average joe can just pick up? Obviously solaris is an exception there but that doesn't include the older versions that I imagine you'd be more likely to find in production use.
As far as linux/bsd, I've always found it easier to learn stuff on *bsd but obviously plenty of people find linux very tinker friendly and learn well that way.
Originally posted by: kamper
Wow, interesting contraction. I don't believe I've ever seen that one before
As far as learning a bix unix, isn't that a bit difficult on one's own? I've never looked, but are there boxes with aix that the average joe can just pick up? Obviously solaris is an exception there but that doesn't include the older versions that I imagine you'd be more likely to find in production use.
As far as linux/bsd, I've always found it easier to learn stuff on *bsd but obviously plenty of people find linux very tinker friendly and learn well that way.
There's AIX hardware available on ebay. There's also some PA-RISC hardware you can learn HP-UX on, or when you find out it's ass install OpenBSD on it. :evil:
Agree with everything you said.
Even at software side things can be very different when you go deeper.
[Into bragging mode]
AIX uses ODM, I don't see Solaris/Linux uses anything similar.
AIX has smit(ty), Solaris doesn't have anything similar.
AIX uses LVM, Solaris uses SVM, Veritas, and now ZFS.
Disks have distinguishly different names in AIX/Solaris/Linux.
AIX's kernel debugger KDB/kdb is vastly different from Solaris' mdb syntax wise.
Each CPU architecture has slightly different address space, Power/AIX is segmented, AMD64/Solaris is not. AIX has svmon, Solaris has pmap.
The virtual memory manager implementations are vastly different.
AIX has kernel trace, which is like the 'fbt' subset of Solaris' DTrace.
Flags are different for AIX's XLC compiler, Solaris' Studio C, or gcc.
The loader and runtime-linker behaviour can also be slightly different.
There're also more difference than similarity in system performance tunables.
[ End bragging ]
That's why it's more important to understand the concepts/theories than command specifics.
Expose yourself to more than one Unix will certainly help.
Of course, remembering all the commands for a particular distribution is also something to be proud of
At home, you can have Solaris, Linux, BSD etc.
Unless you're a serious Power developer, I don't think you want a $1000+ Power-based system just to run AIX.
Although you can get cheaper AIX box on ebay, they're older arch therefore only support version 5.1 and lower.
Our company looks for people who can use their brain's to apply themselves to all. Thus you may be employed for your Solaris skills, but you are expected to be able to fundementally educated in all platforms and major applications as often you will combine them all in a project using their strengths and weaknesses to decide the most suitable for the task in hand.
On the open source side, pretty much all the basics are easily transferable, and anything inbetween can be picked up quickly if you fundamentally sound in one.
Suppose what I am trying to say is don't limit yourself. There is no 'best' platform for all situations. Sure concentrate on one (I would start with Solaris if I could do it all again seeing as how every bluechip seems to thing its the only flavour of *nix for servers) but keep yourself as strong as possible in the major corporate-orientated Linux Distros (RedHat/FC mostly!) and all flavours of Windows from 2000 up.
On the open source side, pretty much all the basics are easily transferable, and anything inbetween can be picked up quickly if you fundamentally sound in one.
Suppose what I am trying to say is don't limit yourself. There is no 'best' platform for all situations. Sure concentrate on one (I would start with Solaris if I could do it all again seeing as how every bluechip seems to thing its the only flavour of *nix for servers) but keep yourself as strong as possible in the major corporate-orientated Linux Distros (RedHat/FC mostly!) and all flavours of Windows from 2000 up.
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