System administration/development, newb question 1

[Xaqte]

Ok, I've recently made a transition to a heavy Linux environment. I have had basic Linux experience, but not enough to brag about. This environment has many flavors of Linux which utilize Samba, Apache web server, and CVS.
Now, on to my question:
If you guys had it your way in the work environment, how would you plan out the process of learning Linux and all the features it provides, and what tools would you suggest to accomplish this?

Also, any thoughts of certain projects that would benefit my education... as well as my employer would be a plus!

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/suggestions!

X

 

[thedaver]

Read "Securing and Optimizing Linux" from openna.com

Read "Hacking Linux" by somebody, see Amazon

Spend hours reading from

http://www.ldp.org

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[Xaqte]

thedaver, thanks for a quick response!
That is one great site! BTW, to correct the link:

http://www.tldp.org

(for anyone else)

I open to more suggestions/ideas from you or anyone else!

Thanks,
X

 

[Trevoke]

1) Install Gentoo from Stage 1.
2) Download lxnay's LiveCD and install Gentoo from Stage1 again; this time, make some reiser4 partitions and instead of emerging gentoo-sources as your kernel, go on the forums and download nitro-sources and figure out how to install that.

Use Gentoo for a month or two -- extensively.

Then install LFS (

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org).

Good luck; come back when you're old and bitter, or when you've learned

-Haben sie fosforos?
-No tiengo caballero, but I have un briquet.

 

[Xaqte]

Trevoke,
This might sound like a dumb question, but what could I hope to accomplish from your first two steps?

In regards to installing LFS... I had looked at this earlier.
Have you installed LFS? If so what did you gain by doing this, and what experience have you had with LFS?

Thanks again for any & all responses! I look forward to hearing more from you guys with this!

X

 

[ericbrunson]

I've been administrating Unix for almost 20 years and I've been running Linux as my primary desktop since 1994. I recently had a need for a very small, highly customized linux running on a Via Epia board, so I wanted the bare basics to start with and I wanted all my binaries compiled on the hardware rather than running pre-compiled i386 packages, so I decided to go with Gentoo.

It was fun, to say the least, but it was also edifying to get my hands dirty with the nuts and bolts of boot loading and building things from the ground up. I consider myself to be a Linux expert, but the exercise definitely solidified some concepts in my head.

If you really want to improve your understanding of some of the fundamentals of the system and how linux is put together under the hood, Trevoke's suggestion is a good one.