Advice Needed: new to linux/unix , windows admin want to learn

[jcck20009]

Hi All:
I am a windows admin for almost 13 years now, but its still laughable to an Unix administrator on some of the things we did despite the improvments windows made over the years

where do i start to learn unix/linux to blind into my skill set,
so my specific questions are:

1. what is the one or two distro i should learn and dive into and would cover at least 80-90% of the basic admin concept (ie. administration, networking, security, shell scripting etc)

2. is there a small distro that can run under 256MB of RAM or later that can include most of the package used by an Unix/Linux admin ?

3. what would you said the person like myself the 1st thing should be looking at


Thanks for your advise and have a great day

Warm regards
JCB

[jayd512]

Hello and Welcome!
To tell the truth, almost any distro out there can give you every opportunity to learn the basic fundamentals of Linux administration. Once you start delving into the CLI, you'll start to pick up on all of it. As far as distro's for 256 RAM, you might want something like DamnSmall or Puppy. Another option would be Xubuntu, which is Ubuntu with a lightweight Window Manager(Xfce.)
Once you have it installed, and as you have admin experience, you might want to look into things like security, permissions and such.

[jmadero]

I would suggest Xubuntu and then going off of this guide:

Debian Linux Tutorial - Beginners Guide To Linux Servers and Networking Installation and Set Up with Instructions On How To Configure A Home Server

This is for Debian but Ubuntu is based off of debian and Xubuntu is based off of Ubuntu so, you'll at least take something out of it.

Welcome to the forums and good luck with everything

[saivin]

1. Debian
2. Slackware
3. Arch

Since you are an administrator I hope you would not be much interested in pretty graphics (but can't say about windows users... ).

Debian was well behaved with my 256MB system. Plus it has excellent dependency resolution system with which installing softwares is child's play. This is most important issue with linux for newbies like us.

Once you feel comfortable you may delve deeper into Debian or try more challenging distros like Slackware and/or Arch.