[CentOS] Slightly OT: How to learn UNIX

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 5:02 AM, Ugo Bellavance <ugob at lubik.ca> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>         I was wondering what would be the best way to learn AIX, Solaris, or
>  HP-UX, for someone who knows Linux very well?  Books?  Courses?
>  Self-teaching in a home lab?
>

I found that the best way for me was to stick to one OS, go through
Evi Nemeth's Unix and Linux Administration Handbooks and learn what
each chapter goes over. Break that one OS multiple times. Then pick up
another one. These days for someone at home you can go with Linux,
xBSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD,etc ), and Solaris on x86 hardware.

However, for other people this does not work well and it is better to
dive into all 3 'flavours' at once.. otherwise they find that they are
always saying "well OS#1 is better than OS#2 because its commands are
like this or that."

HP-UX and AIX can only be really learned on specific hardware.. I
found this limits the amount of self-teaching one can do on these OS's
as you end up only with production boxes at some site :). If you have
a 'beefy' system at home.. I would suggest installing some sort of
virtualization software and then installing a BSD derivative (for
learning MacOS etc), a Solaris virtual system and various Linux
distributions.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"