Do you make a living out of Linux - if so, in what way?

[Ted_Smith]

Hi

I'm still a relative newb to Linux, but I'm learning heaps daily, and am about to embark on a 'HOWTO Guide' for the problem I resolved here (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=186930). In other words, I think I've got the 'Linux Bug'.

This afternoon, I was browsing some of the IT related job adverts on the Internet, and there was one titled 'Linux Consultant' and the requirements was to install and deploy Red Hat on 24 Servers at £414 p\day (that's about $700 USD) over a period of 2 weeks.

Now obviously I'd never dream of applying for it but it did make me realise how much more valued Linux experts are over Windows experts. Subsequently I stumbled across this 'Linux Careers' FAQ : http://www.bellevuelinux.org/faq_career.html which is also very interesting.

My question to the community is, how many of you make a living using Linux, what is that you do, and of course, do you enjoy it? Would you recommend a full time career in Linux vs having fun with it at home? (I realise the Linux community is largely based on people's volunteering but I'm talking specifically in relation to the corporate\government field where people are hired as consultants\contractors).

Laslty, can anyone recommend some good courses\home study courses\college based courses to obtain Linux certification? What kind of Linux Ceritifcation is there (some kind of equiavlent to MCSE?)

Cheers

Ted

[IYY]

I do, more or less. My job mainly involves coding in C, but the platform is a special super-light distribution of Linux, so I was hired mainly because I was familiar with it. I love the work itself, but there is too much of it!

To learn the more advanced commands, I'd suggest sites like the Linux Documentation Project. For example, this book is good: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

[jon_benge]

I've set my target on becoming a Linux administrator, but i've got a long way to go yet. I'll have to stick with supporting Windows for the time being.

I am taking the CompTIA Linux+ examination first, then i'll probably work my way up to the Red Hat or SuSE qualifications.

But yeah, the salary is higher for Linux admins :smile:

[graabein]

I don't but I would really like to. I've worked as a software programmer since I graduated at the same place for about five-six years now. Mainly with VB 6.0 and C# .NET on NT/XP with some ASP and SQL Server work thrown in. If I were to switch work I could imagine doing cross platform development on GNU/Linux.

[Rhapsody]

No, but I do dream of it.

[nuvo]

No, but it is something I'd be interested in a few years down the line when I have more experience with programming under Linux and Linux use in general.
I've coded stuff under Windows, but always been frustrated with some of the things that made me move to Linux (I really didn't like the Windows desktop, I prefer GNOME or XFCE and using Delphi had it's own problems).
I'm somewhat hoping that now that I'm on a system I actually like, which lets me discover something new almost every day (before completely switching, I didn't even know how to work APT as I never did manage to get my old hardware running right under anything other than Knoppix, and LiveCD's aren't great for installing stuff on) and which doesn't limit me as much (more Open Source), that I'll get some of my drive back (this seems to be happening as I've rejoined old projects that I might have forgotten about if I had stayed with XP).
I'm thinking of learning a new programming language as well as Ruby on Rails, which I'm learning as an alternative to writing masses of PHP for personal projects as although there's Lazarus, it's not exactly great to set up (Alien doesn't do it and it gave me errors when following some tutorials).