(Part 2) Best products from r/linux

While being a self taught sys admin is great, learning the internals of how things work can really extend your knowledge beyond what you may have considered possible. This starts to get more into the CS portion of things, but who cares. It's still great stuff to know, and if you know this you will really be set apart. Im not sure if it will help you directly as a sys admin, but may quench your thirst. Im both a programmer and unix admin, so I tend to like both. I own or have owned most of these and enjoy them greatly. You may also consider renting them or just downloading them. I can say that knowing how thing operate internally is great, it fills in a lot of holes.

OS Internals

While you obviously are successful at the running and maintaining of unix like systems. How much do you know about their internal functions? While reading source code is the best method, some great books will save you many hours of time and will be a bit more enjoyable. These books are Amazing
The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System

Linux Kernel Development
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

Networking

Learning the actual function of networking at the code level is really interesting. Theres a whole other world below implementation. You likely know a lot of this.
Computer Networks

TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols

Unix Network Programming, Volume 1: The Sockets Networking API

Compilers/Low Level computer Function

Knowing how a computer actually works, from electricity, to EE principles , through assembly to compilers may also interest you.
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

If you want to program in Java, I would also suggest IntelliJ Idea. Community edition^[1] is free. Oracle docs are fine^[2], javadocs^[3] are great and the source is free for OpenJDK and if you want to go pro I highly recommend Effective Java^[4] by Joshua Bloch. There is also Findbugs^[5] which is cool for static analysis and most of the popular IDEs have plugins for it. You should also check Concurrency In Practice^[6] for multithreaded programming. If you are into web programming, I highly suggest Head First Servlets and JSP^[7]. There are also very good libraries such as Google Guava, Apache Commons etc.

1. http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html
   
2. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/
   
3. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/
   
4. http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-Edition-Joshua-Bloch/dp/0321356683
   
5. http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/
   
6. http://www.amazon.com/Java-Concurrency-Practice-Brian-Goetz/dp/0321349601
   
7. http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Servlets-JSP-Certified/dp/0596516681
   
   

I disagree.. you should definitely learn red hat/fedora/centos in terms of network configuration files, other config files etc etc if you want to have a good knowledge of server level/enterprise level linux. Red-hat based distros are MUCH more widely used for server implementations than debian or slackware.. But that said definitely learn the debian way too. Linux in a Nutshell is a good back, or this book is also quite good: http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Commands-Editors-Programming/dp/0131478230/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250956616&sr=8-16 -- Another good one is the Linux Quick-Fix Notebook- excellent excellent book

Trying to address all your questions.

1. There are many different ways to learn, it kind of depends on how deep you wanna go. If you're just wanting to get your feet wet, put Ubuntu or CentOS on a VM (something like virtualbox) and fuck around with it. Try to follow guides on setting up a Wordpress or deploying some other software.
   
   For more in-depth, study like you're planning on taking the RHCSA/RHCE exam. The objectives (RHCSA/RHCE) do a good job of covering the fundamentals. The book by Michael Jang is an excellent resource for this.
   
   If you want a "fuck you, eat linux" type approach, I'd recommend doing a Gentoo or Arch install. This won't teach you everything, but you will learn about some of the lower level parts of the OS that make it tick. I'd still recommend this (especially the Gentoo install) after you get the fundamentals down.
   
   
2. Windows and Linux tend to have their roles, but I find Linux tends to be more flexible. Linux does have equivalents to some of the things you list off, for example I have a domain setup in my house using FreeIPA, but in the enterprise world the Microsoft equivalents are still king. Linux is just a tool, so it really depends on what you're trying to do.
   
   
3. Generally by the time you get to a senior level you'll have specialized into some niche or another, at least in my experience. The fleet that I help to manage at work has some Windows components, but I only work on the Linux parts. It really depends.
   
   There are definitely some distros that are more "enterprise" than others. Generally I see mostly these deployed for enterprise use:
   
   

• RHEL(Red Hat Enterprise Linux)/CentOS
  
• Ubuntu (LTS versions)
  
• Debian
  
• SUSE (much rarer than the previously mentioned)
  
  Other distros like Mint, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch, etc. are only really used for desktops unless you really hate yourself or your admins. I have seen some Gentoo or Arch servers out in the wild before that customers have deployed.. but it's rare. Generally the big three (RHEL/CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian) are what are in demand skill-wise. There are some specialized distros used in enterprise that aren't as common (Scientific Linux, CoreOS, etc).
  
  CentOS is essentially RHEL with all the proprietary bits ripped out (some other small differences). I was able to study for my RHCE with CentOS without issue, they're that similar. You will run into trouble if you start going for some of the more specialized RHEL certs using CentOS.
  
  

4. Networking is a good skill to know. When I was first starting off I got my RHCE and CCNA since I didn't know which direction I wanted to specialize in. I ended up focusing on Linux, but my slightly-more-than-basic knowledge of networking has been a huge help. Hardware (other than the basics of switch vs managed switch vs router) isn't as important as networking concepts (how subnetting works, DNS fundamentals, VLANs and what they're used for, etc).
   
   I hope this helps!

So Chromebox's come in at ~£99 in the USA, does that include sales tax (VAT)? The pound prices include 20% VAT added on, which makes the Chromebook pricing look less of a rip off if your $150 price doesn't.

I threw together an example AM1 system, a fairer comparison between the Chromebook and AM1 socket would be:

• AMD Semron 2650 £22
  
• Motherboard £22
  
• 4GB DDR3 £25
  
• 64GB SSD £31
  
• case £28
  
  This comes in at £128 but the performance of that system is going to be pretty close to your Chromebook. I've been looking into it because a friend runs a school business that needs to replace the internet terminals. I'd love to suggest the ODriod but it needs to run silverlight animations smoothly (used by children) and I'm not sure the ODriod C1 is capable of that.
  

>So Amazon shouldn't be able to store your IP along with the searches (unless this info is incorrect, and it could well be).

See the eff statement linked above. While Canonical does act as a middleman, its still possible for amazon to track users (at least the initial version that was analyzed, though I've seen no evidence to say that this has been fixed). You search locally, data is sent to Canonical. Canonical asks Amazon for a new search query each time, and Amazon replies to Canonical with say 20 relevant ads. Canonical sends back to you as URLs to amazon.com to include in unity, and these images can work identically to web bugs. The key point is the product images are fetched from amazon's servers from your IP address right after you searched for the term. Amazon could easily give a unique combination of ads or add a useless query parameter to the image fetches or just have 100 symlinks to each image and ensure every search term gets a unique fingerprint collection of image links. And before you think this is getting paranoid, amazon does this sort of tracking all the time.

If I copy a URL:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SZ0E1K/ref=s0_aaaaa_aa_a000_a0_a0?pf_rd_m=AAAAAAAAA0AAA&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0A00AAAA00AA00AAA00A&pf_rd_t=000&pf_rd_p=0000000000&pf_rd_i=000000

the only part that's relevant to get to the product is
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007SZ0E1K . The rest is to track how I got to that link (and I tried to anonymize the rest by changing everything to A and 0).

Its a trivial task for amazon to correlate your search query to your IP address and to advertise to you best (e.g., correlate with your amazon account) they will likely do that (and this assumes amazon never received the IP address in the first place which is not clear).

Furthermore, the legal notice allows third parties (amazon) to store your IP and search query.

I classify any adware that monitors you as a subset of spyware. Wouldn't call it malicious or illegal or malware, and agree its relatively easy to uninstall.

I much appreciate your answer. I will take into account ir. I started using Linux about a year and a half ago, coming from windows. I just thinked that I could find a good alternative for Windows, and I moved to Ubuntu MATE. I was fascinated by its velocity, security and how it's packages worked. At the first time, I was dual-booting, but then I removed windows and started to just use Linux. I've been using Linux casually for a lot of time, and now I'm going serious. I want to learn bash scripting and python. I have got a fantastic Spanish Python book, (I'm learning a lot because of it), and now I'm looking for some bash and Linux books by O'Reilly and I've found this book https://www.amazon.es/gp/aw/d/0596009658/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%C3%85Z%C3%95%C3%91&qid=1520884449&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=O%27Reilly+bash&dpPl=1&dpID=513EprgSOcL&ref=plSrch and this other one https://www.amazon.es/gp/aw/d/1491927577/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%C3%85Z%C3%95%C3%91&qid=1520884734&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=O%27Reilly+Linux&dpPl=1&dpID=51AbKrNDvaL&ref=plSrch
Would you recommend me this books to learn?
I'm Spanish, so the prizes should be different

I started with no linux knowledge on this book the unix bible. It's got enough information to help you understand how your linux system actually works. From there it's easy to find information on your own by knowing better what to look for and having a better understanding of the information you find. The Orelly bash book is the only other one I've picked up, and it helped me a lot with scripting and has come in handy several times for reference. After that, you'll pretty much know enough to google and find the information you need pretty quickly.

Glances is a very nice example of a good python code base and project structure. An excellent demonstration of the a "proper" way to package a standalone python application. https://github.com/nicolargo/glances

It does, as the name suggest, only provide a "glance" into how the system is doing. For a deeper dive in monitoring check out Brendan Gregg's posts and guides,
http://www.brendangregg.com/index.html .

He also has a book which I consider one of the most up to date and best on the topic of monitoring: https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Enterprise-Brendan-Gregg/dp/0133390098

Glad you asked!

I asked the same question on my blog a few months ago.

Then that blog entry hit slashdot. There was a big discussion.

I think it all boils down to the size of your network. Smallish, and cute names are fine. Biggish and you've got to use functional names.

Also, you should find The Practice of System and Network Administration somewhere and buy it (or check it out of a library until you convince yourself that you have to buy it).

Also, feel free to submit things like this to the sysadmin subreddit

<shamelessplug>

The best book for LX0-103/104 is: https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Linux-Guide-Certification/dp/1305107160

Trust me, it's worth the money ;-)

</shamelessplug>

Depending on your needs you can't go too far wrong just grabbing an Intel Nuc (amazon link). Memory and drive not included (+~$200).

If you don't mind paying the windows surcharge just rolling into costco and picking up a cheap box-o-desktop would work as well.

I loaded Mint Linux onto a ~$400 HP Pavilion from costco a few weekends ago for a friend and it works great.

Edit: Reviews of the NUC that have linux installs (and Mavericks MacOS ?!). The last is intriguing. I may have to take my own advice and grab one just to fiddle with that. Tri-booting Linux, OS X and Windows would be neat.

one month later... do you still love it?

I am considering the Acer C720 with i3, 4gb ram and 32gb ssd: http://www.amazon.com/Acer-C720-3404-11-6-Inch-Chromebook-Granite/dp/B00KOUIZBC

It's $90 more than the Acer C720 with a celeron and 2Gb ram. That is $90 well spent, right?

Hoping to pick this up today.. let me know :D

Read a lot. Man pages, guides, examples, source code. Experiment. True, with only one machine you probably won't get to get exposed to, say, networking stuff (you can emulate complex networks using VMs, but you still need to know a lot to set up such an environment). Still, there's a lot of things to learn about the system just by mucking with it. Having a machine you can reinstall whenever you want helps a lot, get an old PC or laptop and use it as a test bed if you don't have a spare server, making it a webserver today, a mailserver tomorrow, a firewall the next day and so on.

Take any problem as a challenge to dig deeper and understand why. Granted, in the Google age, the solution to most problems are just a search and a copy-paste away, but getting to understand what happens with the machine and what's the most elegant way to control it takes a lot of research and practice and failures. Learning "why" is way more important than learning "how", since tools evolve and change and the manuals are always close, but knowing what to look for is a skill that takes time to develop.

Speaking of failures, try to come up with as many ways as you can to make things fail and try to find solutions to most of them. Good sysadmins understand failure and actively explore ways to prevent or handle it.

If you don't mind reading thick books, I heartily recommend Evi Nemeth's Linux Administration Handbook (pretty hands-on) and Tom Limoncelli's Practice of System and Network Administration (about the mentality and processes and non-technical stuff). You might find the latter a bit boring, since it has zero scripts and commands in it, but sooner or later in your career you'll love it.

I'll stop because I ranted too much already, but as a final word, keep in mind that SA is primarily about maintaining infrastructure that helps people, so don't get too caught up by the tech to forget that service availability comes first, shiny toys second ;)

You're actually somewhat in luck. MSFT has been selling laptops at a loss to try and keep Chromebooks from taking hold.

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-13-3-Inch-Celeron-Personal/dp/B015CQ8PNA/ref=zg_bs_565108_4

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Stream-13-3-Inch-Celeron-Personal/dp/B015CQ8PNA/ref=zg_bs_565108_4

I know you said no Chromebooks, but this one is pretty neat from the POV of screen and keyboard.

• CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
  
  A ground up approach to understanding digital processing and transmission in a broad sense. I only recommend this book if you are looking for an intrinsic understanding of computing rather than merely a handle on using a particular programming language or operating system. By the end of the book you should have a handle on actually building your own computer, however it's actually an excellent "first book" for anyone interested in computing.

asus chromebox

http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M004U-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B00IT1WJZQ

It's pretty easy to get linux on it, but you could make a chrome app or something too...

As a bonus the wifi, ssd, and ram are all removable.

If you're looking for a good book to get you started, I can't recommend this one enough: A Practical Guide to Linux: Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming. Here's my description of it from another l4n post:

It's a great book for a beginner who doesn't want to get a Dummies book that is mostly concerned with the GUI and doing all the same things that you would on Windows or Mac OS, but instead wants to learn about what you can do without a GUI. It's a great reference book as well, containing the man pages for many commonly used and built-in commands, as well as teaching BASH shell scripting, how to completely use vim and emacs, and more about the inner workings of the OS.

Also, I (shamefully) have not done this completely, but if you want to learn about how the core of most any Linux system works, install Arch using their fabulously laid out Beginners Guide

GIven that the T440s came out before those specs were available on laptops, I think you're being a little harsh.

How about this one then? Acer Aspire: $489.40 w/

Iris Graphics 6100

8 GB RAM

1 TB HDD

i5 2.7 GHz processor

only 1080p resolution vs Mac's 1600

So this is everything you are wanting except resolution at 1/3 the price. You can buy a 3840x2160 resolution external monitor for your laptop and still be underneath a Macbook Pro Retina. There are no laptops out there (that I know of) which have 2560x1600p resolution at 13 inches, but there are a ton out there which (for $400) less will deliver everything else. And at $400 less you can make nice upgrades to your computer / buy extra batteries for battery life (if your laptop supports it, some ThinkPads do).

I'm using openelec on an Asus Chromebox. Aside from a couple of bugs in openelec (bluetooth related), it's fantastic. The script to install took about an hour total; just make sure you follow the instructions carefully.

The chromebook c720, and its newer i3 variant are super cheap and run linux very well. no issues. I got the 2GB model for $130, easily 8+ hours of battery. and way smaller than any of my school books. Uses Atheros wifi.

10/10 Would buy again.
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-C720-3404-11-6-Inch-Chromebook-Granite/dp/B00KOUIZBC/
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-C720-Chromebook-11-6-Inch-2GB/dp/B00FNPD1VW/

if you don't want a discussion but the real deal, you can have a look at this:

• https://www.amazon.com/Solaris-Internals-OpenSolaris-Architecture-paperback/dp/0134185978
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operating-System/dp/0321968972/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/HP-UX-11i-Internals-Chris-Cooper/dp/0130328618/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Aix-6000Internals-Architecture-Ranade-Workstation/dp/0070340617/
  
  
  Probably you know about this, might be exactly what you need regarding usage:
  
  http://bhami.com/rosetta.html
  
  
  edit: forgot the excellent https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Approach-paperback/dp/0134426541

You're looking for a clear dividing line, and there isn't one. The term "emulator" is more descriptive of the problem you're trying to solve (I have a program for X but I only have Y, how can I get it to run on Y?) than any particular implementation. It's all in the name, "emulate" means to copy or imitate. If that's the goal of the software, or even just how you're using software that was designed for another purpose, it could be considered an emulator.

> So, [...] it has to be called "emulating"?

No, but if it fits the definition you shouldn't complain if someone says it is.

> I really think that "computer system" refers to hardware, not software.

Maybe you'll trust the textbook I was taught from.

> A computer system consists of hardware and systems software that work together to run application programs.

Don't listen to the useless advice that says just keep installing and smashing your head against the keyboard until you learn something. Follow a course that gives you a study guide and an organized approach to the topic and you will faster, and better.

The topics are presented in a logical order that build upon each other.

Study for the RHCSA and go get it. The bonus is at the end of the day you can also get a job with it.

Resources (these two should be all you need):

https://www.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Study-Seventh/dp/0071841962/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468515373&sr=1-1&keywords=rhcsa+7

https://linuxacademy.com/

Well, it is copyrighted by Kirk McKusick, who was a core contribute in the early days of FreeBSD, and he has a restriction that it only be used tastefully (so there's some subjectivity to it). I don't know if he still works on it as a core contributor though, but he did recently release v2 of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, so he's involved in some capacity.

I'm not sure of the legal restrictions on the new FreeBSD logo, Beastie or Tux so you may very well be right they they don't need to be defended.

The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System is suppose to be a good one.

How does this compare to an Asus Chromebox? Can install Linux on these things without much trouble.

I recommend you get Michael Jang's study guide and then setup a lab and practice, practice, practice.

At the risk of a self-plug, I'll offer up ELLIS (Enterprise Linux Lab Installer Script) for setting up your lab. It will give you all the infrastructure needed to practice for the exam on a single lab machine.

The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System by Marshall Kirk McKusick

Though it uses FreeBSD-specific details, its breadth and level of detail is really high, with most of the concepts being applicable to nearly all Unix-likes, and much of it to operating systems in general.

The second edition came out just a few days ago, which I link to.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321968972/

Essential Reading:

1. • How Linux Works
     
2. • Slackware Linux Essentials, 2nd Edition
     
3. • Debian System, Concepts and Techniques
     
4. • The Linux Bible
     
5. • Ubuntu: Up and Running
     
6. • A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (7th Edition) 7th Edition
     
7. • RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide, Seventh Edition (Exams EX200 & EX300)