Who has a job working with Linux?

[schwabdale]

Just curious, If you have a Job working with Linux.. Maybe a Linux Admin,
Please post some information. Challenges you face, salary, How hard is it to find a job, ect.

This may be something I am interested in. I am new to Linux, but I think its very cool and
would love to move from Microsoft to Linux administration.

Thanks in advance.

[StuartN]

Just curious, If you have a Job working with Linux.. Maybe a Linux Admin

Maybe not what you mean, but I am an information analyst. I used to do all my work with Gnu and other free software, but was stuck with being forced to deliver all results using MS Office (Word and Powerpoint).

Since about 2000 I have used Open Office and I do everything within Linux. Interestingly, along with the increasing acceptance of Open Office and open document standards, people have also increasingly rejected the packaging of results (like Powerpoint) and are much more receptive to even plain text reports of analyses.

I am still stuck with having to do the occasional firmware upgrade from Windows.

[muteXe]

I use this UK site quite a lot:
http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/linux.do

Kinda useless if you're not from the uk though.

[philinux]

Thread Moved to Community Cafe.

[Shining Arcanine]

Just curious, If you have a Job working with Linux.. Maybe a Linux Admin,
Please post some information. Challenges you face, salary, How hard is it to find a job, ect.

This may be something I am interested in. I am new to Linux, but I think its very cool and
would love to move from Microsoft to Linux administration.

Thanks in advance.

I have a summer fellowship at my university where some of the stuff I do is easier with Linux than Windows. I have a meeting today where we will be retrying something that failed yesterday with Windows on Linux, because I discovered that drivers for our hardware existed in the Linux kernel tree after our failed attempt yesterday.

[aeiah]

we have fedora kvm hypervisors that mostly run windows VMs, with the exception of one fedora LAMP VM and one ubuntu VM, the ubuntu one only being used as an rsync dump from the LAMP server.

my own workstation is ubuntu though, so i suppose i use it a fair bit. the powers that be want to move everything to windows hyper-v though, which is a little annoying because niether me nor those that want it changed have ever used hyper-v.

[Xianath]

I spent five years in tech support. There's no way I could have done what I did if it weren't for Linux. Not only did the knowledge directly help me solve cases (the majority of the software's supported platforms were some form of Unix, and even on Windows we used *ugh* Cygwin), but as a tool in its own right. For example, Linux is the only platform (I know of) that can sniff traffic on the loopback adapter or multiple adapters. The ability to quickly hack together a script or program to dig through huge amounts of data such as 30 gigabytes worth of log files was also paramount. Amarok used to let me set a playlist and never pay attention to it, and Kopete let me keep all my IMs in one place (different groups used different protocols, including Skype). Overall, for *work*, it was the logical choice. I started work in September of 2004 and had Debian for a while, then October came...

Unfortunately, my work life was as much hell because of Linux as it has been fun. Most shops are too Microsoft dependent for a Linux desktop to survive without significant tinkering, and then only just barely or not at all. I can't remember the number of times I was yelled at for missing a meeting because the calendar entry got updated but KOrganizer/Evolution/Thunderbird missed it. Not to mention Visio diagrams, Project plans, embedded OLE screenshots, DFS, ActiveX-based websites and countless pieces of software that just require Windows and don't like Wine. Even so, Windows cut it even less than Linux did, so I stuck with the latter until I moved on. Now the only thing that keeps me in Linux as a desktop is Kopete. I keep VMs on my Mac, on my home Windows box and my work desktop also runs Linux (too crappy for Win7 and no, thanks, no WinXP for me). When I get a decent laptop, I'll probably keep Win7 on it and run Ubuntu in a VM.

Poor hardware support (one doesn't get to choose their work desktop) was also an issue initially, especially before Intel fixed their video drivers. Some things are still quite annoying, such as jack sensing and external monitor support for docking stations, but at least it's almost completely usable now with on average desktop.

[Johnsie]

I'm a programmer at a medium sized company. Most of our workstations run Windows because that's what the users are familiar with and we use some specialised software/hardware that is not compatible with Linux. It would be almost impossible to get most users to switch to Linux and I don't think there would be much benefit if they did.


Our websites and internal portal run off Ubuntu Linux servers that I installed. The portal is used for processing orders, scheduling uploads and various other things. We also have a freebsd server that does some file processing.

I also have an experimental Ubuntu workstation that is manned by computing novices. They only use the computer for web browsing and emails which Ubuntu Desktop Edition is decent enough at. So far this has been a success because they haven't got any spyware.


The main challenges I face are usually when hardware fails, when someone finds a bug in my software or when one of our sales reps comes up with a 'bright idea'. These are not really Linux related though... The Linux part is easy, it's dealing with IT illiterate people who expect miracles that's the big problem.

I have found live usb sticks and live cd's invaluable for rescuing files from broken systems.

[beercz]

I do (http://lidd.net)! (at least most of the time) :-)

[wgarider]

I work for a media company in the southeast and run Ubuntu on my laptop. We are a very Windows centric shop but I administer most of our Windows servers, VMware environment and storage systems from within Ubuntu. I do have to run Win7 but I do so in a VM (on VirtualBox); mostly to run the VMware infrastructure client and Outlook....

We run Linux more and more as time goes on; some by our choice and some at the suggestion of our application vendors.