Hi all, I am a Microsoft Windows Server Admin (multiple certifications in buncha things, Exchange, Active Directory, etc)... I wanted to make a foray into the world of Linux, but not only for personal (home) usage, but also to broaden my career opportunities. Few questions though...

What distro of Linux would be used in a corporate environment? I mean, there are so many distros, and I'm not sure if I learn one, that I would not know another completely? I am assuming it would be like, Red Hat Enterprise, but SUSE is also very popular so I'm very confused in this regard.

Next, are there any beginners books or links or whatever you can recommend to explain to a TOTALLY Windows user, the beginning workings of Linux, how to get around, how stuff works, and how to do the generic tasks, like installing apps etc. I installed Red Hat Enterprise on a test machine at work to play with, but I couldn't even get as far as installing Firefox. I used Linx (I think that's it) to download Firefox, got the tarball and extracted all that, and double clicked the installer, and nothing happened. I wasn't sure what to do, but I was getting errors and stuff, so I figure I am just an idiot

Next question is, if I used a free distro (for my home or something) like Fedora Core, would that prepare me to work in an enterprise environment? My goal is to be able to switch jobs to work for a more 'young' company -- these would include a Google or AskJeeves (both of which I have an 'in' with, because of people I know who work there). I could possibly get a job but I am not going to try to fake my way to learn the systems -- I want to go in knowing something and provide value to the company so I look as good as I do in my current position

I know it's not a short term thing (correct me if I'm wrong though!), to learn Linux adeptly enough to be in a position that I can use it for a job, but I want to make the right steps and moves to get closer to that goal. If you can lend me any of your knowledge with regard to this, I'd really appreciate it

RE using a community version to prepare you, Red Hat use Fedora as their test base before inputting stuff into their enterprise versions. Therefore, if you want to prepare on a budget, you could go with Fedora.

Of course, if you are working with the commandline, then practise on any distro would make you well prepared.

Hamish

Redhat, Suse and Debian are the distros used in most enterprise environments with Redhat probably grabbing a large chunk of the market share. If you want to understand the inner working of RHEL then you can use Fedora as suggested above or use CentOS which is a free rebuild of RHEL. As for understanding the inner workings of Linux, get yourself a book e.g. the Sybex Linux+ book, Jang's RHCE book etc. There are a lot of free articles on the web and also ask questions on forums like this one. The Wiki on this site is also a very good learning resource.

RHEL and SUSE are two of the top players in the corporate distro market... they are both redhat-based distros so by learning to work with one you learn a lot about working with the other... both companies will offer different advantages to their corporate customers but you as as the technician should be able to work with either system regardless...

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Next, are there any beginners books or links or whatever you can recommend to explain to a TOTALLY Windows user, the beginning workings of Linux, how to get around, how stuff works, and how to do the generic tasks, like installing apps etc.

the newbie forum here at LQ is a great place to ask questions:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...p?s=&forumid=8


here's a linux intro i googled for you, it seems nice:

http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/


also take a look at the linux documentation project for all kinda docs:

http://www.tldp.org/


google's linux search could be your best friend:

http://www.google.com/linux

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I installed Red Hat Enterprise on a test machine at work to play with, but I couldn't even get as far as installing Firefox. I used Linx (I think that's it) to download Firefox, got the tarball and extracted all that, and double clicked the installer, and nothing happened. I wasn't sure what to do, but I was getting errors and stuff, so I figure I am just an idiot

you are not an idiot... you just need to get familiar with the basics first... as for this specific issue, you'd probably want to use an RPM package instead of the firefox built-in installer, but it's up to you really... wheather or not a double-click will execute a file would depend on the window manager you are using AFAIK... the "conventional" linux way to execute a file is to open a terminal and then execute the file from there... you can execute a file by using a "./" like for example to execute a file called "installer.sh" in my current directory i could do a:you should do some reading about RPM, as it's the package system for RedHat-based distros:

http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/

also get to know APT, the automated package system for Debian-based distros:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch1.en.html

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Next question is, if I used a free distro (for my home or something) like Fedora Core, would that prepare me to work in an enterprise environment?

using something like fedora core at home to learn and practice for working in an redhat-based linux environment makes perfect sense...

you could also use a distro built from the RHEL source packages to maybe get a more similar (to RHEL) practice environment...

http://www.centos.org/


just my ...


BTW, Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org!!!

Suse is not based on Redhat although it uses RPM (rpm package manager formerly redhat package manager).

So what I'm getting from this is, if I install Fedora, it would prep me well to use virtually any version of Linux? Granted I understand there will be *some* differences, but the jist of the operations and use will be much the same. I want to administer the server aspect, so I'm not sure if Fedora is just a desktop only OS, or if it will support all the same server functions as the other enterprise distros do.

Thanks a bunch folks, I really appreciate it!

well, to a certain degree... if you learn to do everything from the CLI on fedora then you'd be prepped for pretty much any red hat based distro, but you'd still need to get to know non-red hat based distros beforehand if you want to work with them... debian, for example is a distro you DEFINITELY should get to know if you decide to try something non-red hat... there's also slackware, but it's not very popular in the corporate environment so it could be pointless for you... the irony is that learning to do things on slackware actually helps one on non-slackware distros a great deal, so it's actually a great distro to learn the ropes on...

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I want to administer the server aspect, so I'm not sure if Fedora is just a desktop only OS, or if it will support all the same server functions as the other enterprise distros do.

it will support all the usual stuff, don't worry... the main differences between RHEL and Fedora are that fedora gets no corporate support and it's not meant to be a stable distro like RHEL... as for the desktop thing, AFAIK you can choose to NOT install a GUI or anything else you don't want on your server... in other words, fedora is meant to be a general-purpose bleeding-edge distro so you should be fine on your non-corporate server and/or the desktop...

well, RPM-based then... is suse still considered to be based on Jurix or something??

Yeah, the original Suse is based on Jurix, which in turn is based on Slackware. Take a look at this article.