From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Yes. Yes it does.
Look for job listings that require command line Linux skill.
The candidate pool who can get around on a Linux command prompt is growing, but it's still pretty small. It gives you some advantage toward networking, Cybersecurity, systems administration, and cloud deployment.
I've hired for junior positions on a sysadmin team and Linux as a hobby is the number 1 thing I look for. It moves your resume to the top of the stack.
What education do you have in the area?
The IT/Sysadmin sector does have a risk with knowing enough to be dangerous.
Daily driving Linux is great to get used to the command line, but is different from running servers.
If you have no experience with running Linux servers, I would be focusing on that part, rather than daily driving at this point.
Running a server requires a bit of a different mindset to that of just using a desktop.
You need to be far more restrictive about installing software on the server, be more cautios of reboots, and in general focus on stabillity.
You also need to familiarize yourself with Debian/Ubuntu and Red Hat/Fedora based distributions, their package managers, apt and dnf, the general layout of the system, they are mostly similar, but they have their own flavours, especially when it commes to the config files.
Learn the basics of vim, it will allways be installed on a server, I prefer nano but can use vim if needed.
A big part of my job when I was a Helpdesk technician combined with a Linux sysadmin was storage, I had to set up VMs in vSphere and Nutanix and give them the correct ammount of storage, sometimes also expand the storage on a server, and work with mountpoints.
Play around with LVMs, learn the concepts of PVs, VGs and LVs, learn how to expand them, how to move an LV from one PV to another inside a VG, learn how to mount them.
Learn how to set a manual IP, this can change from version to version of a distribution.
Learn to get annoyed at YAML files.
Understand how to secure a system, I'll admit that I never really had to do this as all servers I worked on was behind strong firewalls and not accessable from the internet, but I did my best with what I had.
Prefers Nano over Vim? Why'd you have to go and commit a felony. Now I can't take anything you say seriously. Damnit.
This is a great response, would heed its points especially the yaml files.
I interview developers and information security people all the time. I always ask lots of questions about Linux. As far as I'm concerned:
So yeah: Get good with Linux. Especially permissions! Holy shit the amount of people I interview that don't know basic Linux permissions (or even about file permissions in general) is unreal.
Like, dude: Have you just been chmod 777 everything all this time? WTF! Immediate red flag this guy cannot be trusted with anything.
Have you just been
chmod 777everything all this time?
Oh man, I ran into a dev at a meetup who proposed this solution.
And I had to do a polite, "Oh wow maybe that works but I don't think that's a solution in my company" because YIKES.
chmod 777 do?Quick and dirty: the basic permissions are read, write, and execute, and are applied to the owner, the group, and everyone else. They're applied to all files and directories individually.
It's represented by a 3 digit number (in octal, which is base 8, so 0 to 7). The first number is the permission given to the file's owner, the second to the file's group owner, and the third to everyone else. So, the owner of the file is the one user account that owns it, the group applies to all members of that group. User and group ownership are also applied to each file and directory individually.
Read, write, and execute are represented by the numbers 4, 2, and 1, respectively, and you add them together to get the permission, so 0 would be nothing, 1 would be execute but not read or write, 2 would be write but not read or execute (and yes there are uses for that), 3 would be write and execute but not read, 4 is read only, etc through to 7 which is basically full control.
This will take a little bit to make sense for most people.
chmod (change modifier, I think) is the program you use to set permissions, which you can do explicitly by the number (there are other modes but learn the numbers first), so chmod 777 basically means everyone has full control of the file or directory. Which is bad to do with everything for what I hope are obvious reasons.
chown (change owner) is the program you use to set the owner (and optionally the group) of a file or directory, and chgrp (change group) changes the group only.
It gets deeper with things like setuid bits and sticky bits, and when you get to SELinux it really gets granular and complex, but if you understand the octal 3 digit permissions, you'll have the basics that will be enough for quite a lot of use cases.
(Additionally to the 3 digit number, permissions can be represented a bit friendlier where it just lists letters and dashes, so 750 (full control user, read and execute group) could be shown as rwxr-x---, where r=read, w=write, and x=execute, and what they're applied to can be represented by the letters u for user (aka owner), g for group, and o for other)
This goes into more detail of those basics: https://opensource.com/article/19/6/understanding-linux-permissions
Read, write, and execute are represented by the numbers 4, 2, and 1, respectively, and you add them together to get the permission
Maybe I'm the weird one here but this seems like a counter intuitive way to remeber/explain it. Each octal digit in the three digit number is actually just 3 binary digits ( 3 bit flags) in order of rwx. For example read and execute would be 101 -> 5.
If you're a developer and you don't know how to deploy to Linux servers you're useless.
Welp, found your red flag
Can I ask if the reverse applies, eg is having no idea how to use non Unix like OSes (like Windows) any kind of red flag? Kinda been considering trying to go into a tech career so that I can have a 9-5 office job (I've until recently worked in what would be considered "blue collar" jobs, recently switched to an education job, would be nice to just sit down in an office and use computers for a living). I've used (GNU/)Linux from a very young age (parents had an Ubuntu laptop), as my primary OS/daily driver since I was 13, and exclusively (i.e. got rid of my Windows partition due to Windows enshittification) since I was idk maybe 16 ish? So I'm pretty comfortable doing things in Linux. But I have a reputation for being a tech person among my friends and they ask me to fix their stuff sometimes and whenever it's a Windows problem I literally have no idea how to use the OS lol. So are Windows skills and knowledge also expected for tech jobs or just Linux/Unix-like?
Depends on the tech job. A lot of corporate IT support jobs care a lot more about troubleshooting windows because that's what the employees use
Depends. It/tech is a massive space so not certain if you're applying to tech support or like server architecture. So some specifics would be nice.
One thing to point out:
I thought I was a freaking wiz kid at Windows because I knew about the registry and how to modify settings. But then I learned a lot of the "hacks" on the internet are bad for the enterprise.
On Linux, it's even worse, with so many blog posts recommending sudo this, and install this app that. And if you don't have a background of WHY, you can do a lot of damage. And with AI, it's even worse. So many bash script kiddies asking AI to write the ugliest code I ever seen.
Now that Im a senior engineer, I realize I know nothing and leave much of the IT space to trained professionals.
This is very good insight and something that no one else touched on. OP if you see this, while being a power user on your personal linux machine does help with skills and getting you jobs, it’s still very different from administering an enterprise linux machine in a corporate environment. One thing you can do is set your own homelab and mini environment at home. This will get you more experience with actual administration and will be a great asset to disclose in interviews.
God help me if I ever end up with someone who just copies and pastes commands from chatgpt into a server
To give yourself a better chance, learn things like:
Also learn how to deploy database and web servers manually.
It sounds like a lot but they're things you'll be expected to use.
It will. Keep in mind that, depending on the type of job, you'll have to keep learning new tech just to keep up: virtualization, containers, orchestrators, automation, backups, logging, auditing, scripting and God knows what else. It's a good starting point to get you the jobs that the Windows crowd won't touch because of the command line.
Learning Linux was probably the very best thing for my career.
The fact that I use Linux as my primary OS has been a positive in almost every interview I've been in as the interviewee. Linux has been used everywhere I've been, and that represents a huge amount of upskilling they can skip.
As an interviewer, I'd say that developers who use Linux generally understand their development stack better.
If you're applying to work with my team. A big Yes.
Seeing a developer use Windows is a big turn off, I can clearly see all the future dev environment problems I'd need to assist them with.
And if you understand linux permissions, the architecture, bash, common tools, etc. I can envision how you will make the dev experience better for everyone and contribute to fix any deployment issues. Unlike windows, you won't be introducing ovearching solutions to problems which can be solved with a simple bash script.
Exact experience I've had, in every workplace I've been Windows users have been a non-stop liability and required support for workarounds and hacks. Seeing their workflow through screenshare was kind of a culture shock.
This has been my experience as well.
It doesn't help that, prior to 2023 (I believe), Microsoft's OpenSSH fork simply did not recognize ProxyJump. I administered a server behind a bastion, which meant every Mac and Linux user could ssh in. Windows users had to use some strange program like PuTTy.
Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but PuTTY has been the defacto terminal emulator on windows for the past two decades.
When I got into IT, I had years of experience with Mac OS, UNIX, a bit of IRIX and VMS, BSD and even a bit of Linux.
And then I spent 10 years mostly managing a Windows shop. I still ran OpenBSD on the internal support servers, but had to support a full Microsoft stack for anything customer-facing.
What will increase your hiring chances is being adaptable and having a portfolio of success stories to reference during interviews.
Even a simple "I know how to setup a network-wide ad blocker on docker by using my own image" can get you far, so yep.
Depends on the job, a lot of places don’t use Linux
However Linux jobs tend to pay more than the non-Linux equivalent if you can find one
Most places deploy to Linux, and for those knowing Linux helps a lot. Also a lot of places will give MacBook pro, expect you to know the CLI so a lot of Linux knowledge will be useful there.
No, it won't. Corporations in today's time have this entitlement that you should know everything beforehand. You need a lot more than that. Oh, you don't know Ansible? Don't understand Terraform? Can't fix a Docker config? Haven't used AWS? Rejected, next?
Lots of good advice here. I'll add that you could develop an understanding of IP networking and how it works on Linux, network interfaces, with containers, with iptables as well as stateful and stateless firewalls, CIDRs and basic routing, IP protocols and some common protocols like DNS and HTTP. This used to be pretty common knowledge in applicants 15 years ago, but very few have it today I find. DHCP and PXE boot is fun to learn too, and is still common in datacenters.
Depends on the job!
Linux opens up a lot of possible job openings
get a cheap mini-pc and set it up as a linux router/server/lab
does wonders to teach you the tech used in the industry, and you can even setup your own netflix, google drive, spotify and more.
It depends on the role. My first job was doing manual QE on Windows, and knowing Linux wasn't much help at the time, but it did help me transition to a coding role in the same company a year later. I'm now doing platform engineering at a major tech company, but that has a high barrier to entry, which I suspect is the case for most roles that are Linux-focused. If you're trying to get your foot in the door, I think you should look at job profiles for low barrier to entry roles (e.g. tech support) and try to work your way up.
It highly depends on the job. Some companies run fully on Windows, no exceptions. There it obviously would not help. But many still either host various services on Linux, or buy hosting/cloud commuting that is Linux based. There it might even be necessary.
It also depends on what you mean by "power user". I would generally advise you to look into the server side of things. In my work, there are zero Linux machines that have a GUI of any kind installed. t The 50 or so Linux machines are all administered through SSH and Shell.
You didn't tell us what you think the usual 9 to 5 pays. Are you asking whether a tech job pays more than minimum wage? Many of them do. Also, when you're interviewing, and even when you're writing a cover letter, try to avoid the term power user, and instead provide details of things that you've actually done. Anyone can call themselves a power user, but what does that even mean? If you say you're a power user, if you're lucky the interviewer will ask you for details, and if you're unlucky they won't, because they'll assume you're just grandstanding. So you're better off providing a little extra information up front, and not gambling on them asking for it.
As many people here have pointed out already, it's highly dependent on what type of Job you're looking for and in what industry.
When I was applying for my entry level Job (actually an apprenticeship to become a sysadmin), the fact that I was a linux user (especially daily driving Arch) and that I had set up my own self hosted projects was a factor in me being set up in the department that was actually interesting to me (the Linux/Server department) instead of the Windows/Client department but I probably would have gotten the job either way. My work there set me up deeping my path into Linux sysadminship where I still am today.
It might just be me but it gives off "I can set up a printer, yay!" vibes.
Yes, because you're already familiar with the command line. But for a job in the professional Linux world, also try out RHEL (not Fedora), and familiarize yourself with best practices in patch management. There's a lot more to it than just dnf upgrade if you have applications depending on specific versions of packages, CVEs need to be mitigated ASAP, downtime needs to be minimized and reverting a borked upgrade (including the installed database) needs to work 100%.
Also, get familiar with containerization, SELinux, VMWare hypervisors, a version control system, the LAMP stack and Samba.
Depends what you mean with a job in tech. If you want to work as technical problem solver or programmer, then it's very useful, almost required.
absolutely... you know servers are mostly linux right?
If your goal is to make yourself more valuable to employers/clients the best path is to specialize in some critical and niche enterprise tech. People that are good at stuff businesses were lured into using get paid very well. In my case it was SharePoint, but that's just an example.
Knowing your way around the OS is taken for granted in these positions, so you have one piece of the puzzle, which is great, but you need the other pieces.
But be careful, if I have to choose between two experts, one with basic win+linux and the other only linux, I'm choosing the former.
In my area being a linux admin actually pays less than I expected. I kinda always hoped to get into a linux admin role. Now I have a sort of cloud ops role and it makes more than a typical linux admin would. It would just be silly for me to pursue this any further. That doesn't mean I don't touch Linux on a daily basis at work. But it's more alround.
In my personal experience, yes. There are so many jobs that exist around the Linux ecosystem, being comfortable with concepts like piping, file permissions, scripting, git, etc, will invariably give you a leg up.
Specifically for a job of Linix sysadmin, probably yes. If you can afford it do a certification, it will help you stand among other candidates with no work experience.
For other IT jobs it's not so relevant. Linux is technically on the servers but the infrastructure is hidden from you by multiple levels of abstraction.