On Sep 4, 2005, at 11:20 PM, Bob Sanders wrote:
On Mon, 5 Sep 2005 00:56:56 +0100
Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Fair comment. If you're talking about individual user/admins then the
learning curve of installing and administering a different OS (not
necessarily more difficult, just different) is a serious obstacle.
Based on my experiences, I'll disagree with you Neil. I had a
couple of
interns working for me last year. One was about to graduate from
college and the
other was in the middle of getting a Master's degree. Both were
comp-sci majors.
The Master's degree intern had been running Red Hat or something,
but really didn't
know Linux. The other intern used WinXX - college was teaching her
Java,
nothing much more than that.
First thing I did was get them set up with systems and hand them a
Gentoo minimal
CD and url for the installation manual. Told them to ask anything
they wanted at any
time. Explained to them that they needed to learn Linux, but that
RPM based distros
wouldn't give them any type of broad knowledge, and wouldn't be any
better than learning
to install WinXX. They took about a week, with a couple of
restarts, had them run fluxbox
and Enlightenment before allowing them to run their choice of WM.
Eventually, they moved
to KDE, which is fine, but they had an X environment and additional
knowledge, they could
work while KDE was compiling. *Btw - they were also learning how
to install and use Irix
at the same time.)
While they were there, they had no real problems with Gentoo. As
part of their task at the
time was porting/fixing former Irix tests to run on Linux, it was
a lot easier to deal with the
issues on Gentoo, then move the the tests to RH and SuSE, where all
kinds of things
broke. But they were more able to fix the tests because they had a
better peek under
the hood.
While they've left to go to other companies, one of the interns
told me that she misses her
Gentoo system - she's back in the Java/WinXX world of Corporate
computing.
For training new technical individuals on Linux, source based
distributions with package
management systems that stay out of the way, are great tools.
Even if the end of the road
for many of them is some - keep your distance, GUI installer based,
RPM Linux system.
For a long time I used to think that starting a new user with a
nice RPM based distribution
was the right answer. I was wrong. It's the wrong answer. It
teaches them nothing they
can use in the future. It's painful during upgrades. It binds
their hands in the shackles of -
you will do things the way we tell you to do them. And letting new
users utilize GUI based
installers, always ends in - where is the install everything check
box?
They may migrate to another distribution, and that's fine. But
they will be prepared and
have knowledge. To use Holly's car analogy - they learned to
drive a stick shift, but
now want an automatic. No problem. (It's a poor analogy on my
part - too simplistic
and not fair to Portage.)
Also, this isn't just the two interns. With only two exceptions -
a Slackware user, and a
remote Engineer who prefers to have Corp IS administrate the box,
I've moved a lot of
technical people to Gentoo. A few have gone to other dists, and a
few have returned
back to Gentoo - the others are just too painful to administer.
But, in all cases, they
are more knowledgeable because of having to "do things the hard
way." And being
more knowledgeable make them much more valuable as skilled
employees. More so than
any certification will.
Bob
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Hi Bob,
I found your email really informative and I have a question regarding
one of your final comments. To paraphrase, you state that doing
things the hard way will make employees more knowledgeable, "more so
than any certification will." So, my question is this: is it
worthwhile to obtain certification? And, if so, which would be a
better choice in your opinion: Red Hat certification or say, for
instance, certification from the Linux Professional Institute?
Btw, I'm not sure if I have hijacked the thread. If so, please feel
free to edit the subject line.
Paul
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