I’m trying to get a job in IT that will (hopefully) pay more than a usual 9 to 5. I’m been daily driving Linux exclusively for about 2 1/2 years now and I’m trying to improve my skills to the point that I could be considered a so-called “power user.” My question is this: will this increase my hiring chances significantly or marginally?
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.
Oh nice!
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.
This is a great response, would heed its points especially the yaml files.
Just make a template, once done you can easily do it while blasting Scooter, get pissed when it breaks due to a change of interface names, switch to Sabaton while you battle it out. After that you go to the local zoo and watch some Lynx just relaxing all day and ask yourself where it all webt wrong.
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
Hopefully God AND some with a lot of subject matter knowledge. It’ll only get worse.
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.
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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
sshin. 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.
After you’ve used a normal Linux shell for SSH, using putty feels like trying to paint the Mona Lisa with an EtchaSketch.
To give yourself a better chance, learn things like:
- Bash scripting
- Docker
- Docker Compose
- Kubernetes
- Oauth2 and and an authorization server like Keycloak
- Build and deployment tools like Jenkins
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.
Deploy database? You mean something like SQL?
Yeah, or a nosql database. The point is to know how to deploy and manage servers manually as well as using the tools to do it.
Yep. You should absolutely know how all the pieces connect.
One IT responsibility is setting up servers. You should at least know how to get a website running off of a Linux machine at a basic level. But what we judge you on is your ability to manage and secure it.
No, dont learn docker, learn containerization and what tools can be used for it. No to Kubernetes that comes much later and/is VERY specific. No clue what keycloak is, but it sounds useful. Never hear about Jenkins. Id rather say get a grasp on python and skim what tools are used to administer servers -> ansible and puppet maybe.
Well you just got dismissed early in the interview
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.
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.
Thats oddly specific. I think “I have experience with Linux” would be better
This is a IT-related question – of course being “oddly specific” is a great idea. Even if the job in question does not use anything docker related.
The word “Linux” doesn’t even appear in that though
On a resume you might format this like “Skilled in setting up networked Docker images”. Absolutely a valued skill and worth mentioning.
You didn’t even mention the word linux
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.
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.
yes
Exactly this. Having an interest and a hobby to an open source system will make you better in your job and a much more interesting candidate to hire.
Source: started with linux in 1995 as a kid. Never having issues finding great jobs.
Edit: I did not mean being a devops here, but finding an interest in open source software and learning a highly lucrative programming language while going. You can get pretty far with Rust or Go in the modern startups, C or Java in enterprises. Being very good with Linux drives this interest.
Depends on the job!
Linux opens up a lot of possible job openings
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.
What is the alternative to DHCP? Besides static IPS of course.
Not much, although it’s not strictly necessary for IPv6. But not much is pure IPv6 yet. Perhaps 2025 is the year of IPv6!
Oh damn you’re right ipv6 has something included. Ipv6 is so cool, sad that hardly anyone supports it. Not even I myself on my home server because I couldn’t get routing from ipv6 to my internal ipv4 hosts working.
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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.
