Eve Atley wrote: > I'd like to get opinions on possibly taking a linux/unix course. We run a > Red Hat 9 linux server in a small business, and I come from a primarily > windows environment (though I do use a little Unix on Mac OS X). I was > debating taking a unix/linux course at a local community college. We also > own "Red Hat Linux Networking and System Administration", but obviously I > need the time to read this book. I don't have the luxury of playing with our > server to learn and get hands-on feel. > > So based on this course description...is it worth it? How in-depth do > community college courses of this nature go? Is there another, perhaps > better way to go about learning what I need to know? I don't believe that you can become even remotely competent in any aspect of computing (whether programming, administration, or even just usage) based solely or primarily upon academic tuition; there is just too much to learn. If you don't know where to start, a course may help to provide useful orientation. But the bulk of the knowledge inevitably has to be acquired by other means; primarily through a mixture of reading and practice. If the only Linux box available is the server, and you can't practice on that, other alternatives include: 1. Using a bootable Linux distribution (e.g. Knoppix) to practice on what is normally a Windows box, without needing to interfere with the Windows setup. 2. Getting another box; apart from some of the desktop components, most current Linux distributions will work fine on the computers which are normally considered obselete (e.g. P90s, maybe even 486s; the kind of systems which tend to be thrown away because their second-hand value is so close to zero). 3. Using other Unix-like systems, e.g. MacOSX, or a Windows box with Cygwin installed. Cygwin has a few "quirks", due to having to run on top of a decidedly non-Unix OS, but most of the utilities are exactly the same programs which form the core of any Linux distribution. -- Glynn Clements <glynn.clements@xxxxxxxxxx> - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
