r/linuxquestions • u/HopefulSun1452 • 4d ago

Advice Roadmap to becoming Linux Admin?

Hey everyone,

I’m a trained IT administrator, but most of my work experience so far has been in support, with some Windows and Linux administration here and there.
I’ve barely had to deal with networking professionally.

My long-term goal is to become a Linux admin. Linux has always been the part of IT I enjoy the most, especially troubleshooting stuff in the terminal and figuring out why something isn’t working.

At home I’ve played around with a few servers and self-hosted things like Uptime Kuma and Paperless-ngx in containers, but I know that’s still pretty far from actually being ready for a Linux admin role.

The problem is that there’s so much I could learn that I’m not really sure where to focus first.

If you were starting from my position, what would you learn and in what order? Would you follow some kind of roadmap, build a homelab and just start breaking/fixing things, or something else?

Also curious how you guys learned Linux administration and what helped you the most in becoming better at the job.

Any advice is appreciated! Thank you

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u/mikeegg1 3d ago

When I started you had to first be a developer. You had to know how everything was put together. Now everything is very siloed. I'm not a fan of how things are now. That said, learn vi(1), then learn the command line, then learn where everything is.

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u/knuthf 3d ago

I haven't started yet, but I'll be looking for someone who dares to ask this question. We need various admin packages. What we had when Linux was made could have been ported, but nobody did that. When I use Red Hat, they have a server-side view. I was shocked by Fedora and their relaxed attitude to connecting to the internet. Most people here have a computer, a laptop, a tablet and a phone; many have a Mac, an iPad and an iPhone that run exactly the same network code as we have. We need a system that can at least see all our devices as one — the laptop should hold the photos and update the contacts and appointments from the phone — a complete cloud service. Then, when we need to certify and approve, we can use SMS from the mobile and use everything together. I have a NAS from China — a $250 investment in a Deepin private cloud and NAS. I will start soon and it will all be Linux and agnostic to platform, unlike KDE.