hello everyone...ok so I was job browsing to see what's out there...and lately i have noticed that people are not only running an MS shop but also requiring unix/linux experience. honestly, i've never ever ever ever used any of the two and would know where to start. with so many flavors and options out there I dont know where to start if i wanted to start learning the OS.

what would you recommend I download or read up on? what version would more likely be used by a company?

thanks for the help!

UNIX or Linux used on servers 99% of the time won't use a GUI or the used GUI is so straight forward, so that you'll understand it in five minutes, so don't waste any time on figuring out what GUI you prefer. Dive into the commands you can run from the shell. Google on these and you'll find enough information without a doubt. Install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, which is free, and install any distro on it which you like. My advise would be something like Fedora or Slackware for instance. Like I wrote before, don't waste time on GUI's. Configure your virtual machine as a file server, firewall, mail server, web server, et cetera. Make backups, add users, et cetera. Play around with it. Telnet into your virtual Linux environment for example. Something else which can be nice to have a look at are socalled live CD-ROM's. Knoppix is one of the nicest out there if you ask me. Download it, burn it onto CDR and you can then simply boot from this CD-ROM and play around with Linux, without having to install it and without damaging any files on your hard disk. Focus on the shell in Knoppix, is it'll load a GUI by default.

What Arie said. Best way to learn it is by using the command line. As for your other question, most companies I've seen using Linux, use Red Hat or SuSE. For commericial Unixes this greatly varies, but the major ones are Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, HP-UX and SCO.

Oh, and a very good starting point is http://www.linux.org/.

This post has been edited by beats: Dec 21 2007, 08:21 AM

hey guys thanks alot for the information. I'll look at those versions you mentioned and test those out. i guess i'll find a list of commands from google. I also like that bootable cd idea.

time to start learning something new...

For me, the best way of learning a new OS is not by using a bootable CD, but rather setting up a virtual machine in VirtualBox and install linux in there. That way, you get a chance to learn the "how-to" of installing device drivers, installing software (which can be a major PITA), and in general, using the real system.

My recommendation for Linux systems would be FedoraCore (it's closely related to RedHat), while a good Unix-based OS is FreeBSD. FreeBSD is a great, lightweight server OS that gives you just what you need and not much more. The documentation is also top notch.

THANKS A LOT