Way Too Much Ubuntu
I would say go with Slackware. You get a high console resolution, and for small console programs the installer is amazingly easy.
SC - Spreadsheet
Emacs - Word Processor
w3m - Console browser with image support
naim - Instant Messager
the list continues.
Frothy Coffee!
90-95% of my administration at work is done without a GUI across several blends and breeds of UNIX and Linux. Solaris 8, 9, and 10, IRIX, RHEL3, RHEL4, HP/UX etc etc.. Heck, even some of my very best windows tools were commandline scripts I wrote to make registry changes to over 700 machines at the same time with a little for/do logic. (do not attempt this with a workstation version of a Microsoft OS!)
For UNIX/Linux, the biggest godsend to console administration is a command called screen. I have screen configured with a .screenrc settings file that lets me very easily open several terminals within a terminal, label them, detach them with whatever program I was running in it still running, and reattach to them whenever I want with simplified hotkeys, and a session reattach script that lets me list my named sessions and attach to them in whichever sequence I want. That enables multitasking without a GUI. Then between wget, scp, vim, pico, cpio, iostat, sar, some nice broad environment variables, and some quick aliases to keep the keystrokes down, a powerful shell like tcsh or zsh, and a little bit of scipting knowledge, the only time I ever need a GUI is to troubleshoot a GUI application a user is having a problem with.
If you've never heard of, or used screen before, read its man page in ubuntu or whatever flavor you're running. Once you start playing with it, you'll really dig it. You can even set it up so that other people can connect to your 'screen' session in view only mode or interactive mode (if you are trying to show someone how to do something, for example)
Last edited by toupeiro; August 1st, 2007 at 07:49 AM.
"Its easy to come up with new ideas, the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date." -Roger von Oech
Way Too Much Ubuntu
I must say that I am impressed with your wide range of system experience.
Frothy Coffee!
Re: Text-based system
hehe thanks man!Originally Posted by fistfullofroses
I appreciate the compliment. I am just a hobbiest who turned his hobby into his job about ten years ago. I had to support some pretty interesting environments in that time. I learned what I know by either not having an alternative but to figure it out, or by working with some pretty cool people throughout the time, so although I'm no expert, I do like sharing whenever I can.
"Its easy to come up with new ideas, the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date." -Roger von Oech
Way Too Much Ubuntu
I am hoping to attain a job similar when I am done with college. Main problem is a lack of knowledge on what step to take next.
Frothy Coffee!
not to get too far off topic, but it is a good time for you then. Something like close to 70% + of the IT workforce will be retiring within the next 5-7 years.
There are two approaches companies take when they hire techs. 1. Degree required. This will most likely guarantee you a higher salary but from what I've seen companies will often times fast-track those people into management because of lack of industry experience unless they've done some workforce internships during college, or some impressive project work. The vanilla computer science majors that I have met usually have a hard time adapting to a high demand technical job, because without interning, they usually aren't prepared for the diversity of technology most companies utilize, or the fact that some companies IT needs are for 24x7 operations, and you will have to respond at 3:30AM if required to. Prepare yourself now for things like that and you will do just fine.
Number 2 is experience required. In this career route, you usually start off getting paid crap and a lot of the grunt work will fall on you in the beginning, but it never lasts that way. Its much harder to find work if you find yourself in between jobs at a 4-5 year experience range without a degree.
When I started, I could have made as much money working at in-and-out burger, but when my company got short-staffed during a time they were wanting to upgrade Novell Groupwise to Microsoft Exchange 5.5, I was available, and that was the first step towards the kind of technical lead position I have now. It's harder to make the leap into management without the degree, but not impossible. For me, it gives me the best of both worlds right now. While I am not a manager, as a technical lead role I can make the IT decisions I want, and implement them, and not have to worry about the budgeting and staff problems as much. I have the trust of the managers, and they will back my play pretty strongly almost every time I've needed them to.
My advice is talk to your college counselor about interning at companies for experience and credits. If you apply yourself at these internships, those IT managers will remember you when its time to staff up.
If UNIX or linux support is where you would like to end up, then beefing up at your console knowledge, and script knowledge such as perl, will take you far. Administratively, most of what you will do will be text based.
Last edited by toupeiro; August 1st, 2007 at 04:34 PM. Reason: spelling
"Its easy to come up with new ideas, the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date." -Roger von Oech
Way Too Much Ubuntu
WOW. Thank you so much for this response. Mostly what I have heard from every place I have applied is that they want people who've got degrees. So I said "sh-- I need to go to college." Now, I am in college, and I am think that an internship would be a good next move (due to your advice). I have some experience with Unix/Linux support, but nothing on the scale that you are talking about. Most of my experience was helping people with their home businesses. Some of them got large enough that they clanceled the web hosting with whomever, and bought servers. Umm, good for them but they had no clue how to run a server. Enter young Linux kid... It was easy enough for someone who needed a really small database, web page, and whatnot. But that let me know where I wanted to go. I really enjoyed that type of work (even if it was only for my folks wealthy neighbors).
Any good how tos for scripting out there?
5 Cups of Ubuntu
http://bsflite.sourceforge.net/ BSFlite is another option for AIM cli.
Quad Shot of Ubuntu
Nano!
Dipped in Ubuntu
this is really interesting, i think i will try screen, and i just learned that you could view images and video in a terminal, i will definitely try this once i can get time, there's tons of apps that can be used
mc - GNU Midnight Commander is a text-mode full-screen file manager. It uses a two panel interface and a subshell for command execution. It includes an internal editor with syntax highlighting and an internal viewer with support for binary files.
mutt - e-mail
weechat – chat
irssi – chat
finch - pidgin in a terminal pretty much
rtorrent - the name should be enough
links2 - internet browser
abcde - a better cd encoder
moc - music player
scrot – command line – nice command line screen shot capturing program
these are just some programs i know of, does anyone know of a cli distro that has a livecd? or is that possible
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