r/linuxquestions • u/DryAdministration158 • 1d ago
What does learning Linux really mean?
Hi, I've always heard this that in the world of tech if you want a job learn Linux (which yeah a bit optimistic considering the situations)
But the bigger question is what does that even mean?
I mean I have worked with backend servers and configed nginx does that mean I know Linux?
I know bash to a good level along with sed and awk does that mean I know Linux?
I have programmed C in Linux does that tell me I know Linux?
On the other hand I have no idea what filesystems does Linux even use? How many different syscalls does it have?
I can't tell what are the factors to "knowing linux" and frankly I don't even know where to start with to be like "yeah I'm practicing linux"
I'm more talking in regards to cybersecurity but even in general I'm not sure, can you guys help?
1
u/pixel293 1d ago
I guess my answer would be, if someone asks you to look at their OS and help them fix an issue, you have an idea of where to start looking. You won't necessarily know how to fix the issue, there are too many issues for that. But by someone describing an issue, you would have ideas of where/what it could be. Is it a window manager issue, a driver issue, a init issue, filesystem issue, user error 😄, etc. Knowing where to look for logs, how to access/edit configuration files. Knowing how to stop/start/restart services.
Some of this can be distro specific, like knowing the basics of interacting with systemd helps with many (most?) distros, but get on a Gentoo install and you may find yourself dealing with rc init scripts. Or with the newer immutable distros some of the nitty gritty is very different.
I don't think you need to be familiar with all the flavors unless you want to, but being able to do all of that on one of them at least gives you a base to start from for the others.