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Does the distro matter when applying for a job as a Linux admin?

18 points by Sandman 17y ago

staunch 17y ago
From the submission title: "Does the distro matter when applying for a job as a Linux admin?" Yes. Almost certainly some clueless people will care whether you've specifically used their flavor of Linux. From the article title: "Does the distro matter?" No. The differences among Linux distros is so slight that any otherwise qualified/competent admin can be expected to easily learn everything important in days or weeks.
- riffic 17y ago
  not true, the differences between distros is the support the distro provides. Some organizations need more support than others, and may even need to pay that.
- jrockway 17y ago
  The differences among Linux distros is so slight that any otherwise qualified/competent admin can be expected to easily learn everything important in days or weeks. Not sure I agree. After years of using Debian, I had a hard time administering CentOS. yum is a cruel joke... and that's when the dependencies aren't messed up. The quality control and the intrinsic design is ... inconsistent. This makes it hard to administer, and I would certainly never take a job where I would be responsible for CentOS or Redhat.
  - jonny_noog 17y ago
    I feel similarly. To me, as a (primarily) Debian user, there's Debian and all the distros that descend from it, then there's all the others. This differentiation exists in my mind primarily because of the difference in package management. It's not that I couldn't use CentOS and stuff (I have and still do to some extent), but I certainly have a much harder time of it. I guess that would probably change pretty quickly if I really wanted it to. I don't want to though.
  - staunch 17y ago
    So, do you disagree that "any otherwise qualified/competent admin" could easily learn to use a different distro than the one(s) they know? (I've noticed an increase in the number of replies I get like this on HN now. Time was people made an effort to reply to what you actually said (and meant), not just state some tangentially related populist opinion. Maybe it's just me though...)
    - bugs 17y ago
      Someone competent with linux ( More than "Oh I run a vps all by myself") should easily be able to learn how to do the same administration tasks on another. It may end up taking longer to do certain tasks and they may have to refer to documentation more often than someone competent in that distro thinks they should but linux is relatively universal and once you get past initial setup maintenance becomes rather similar.
      - jrockway 17y ago
        maintenance becomes rather similar In that any task can be completed in an unbounded amount of time. If you want to do things quickly, though, all Linuxes are not the same.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      I've noticed an increase in the number of replies I get like this on HN now. I've noticed an increase in the number of replies I get like this on HN now...
- skorgu 17y ago
  As the article said, if the recruiter is at that level of box-ticking it would be a major disincentive for me as a hypothetical applicant. Generally, from the other side a candidate not having experience in RHEL (our bread and butter distro) isn't a deal breaker here. It's somewhat surprising if an applicant has really never used RHEL or CentOS but as you say there frankly aren't that many differences that someone intelligent can't pick up shortly. As long as there's a general knowledge of unix concepts the details of package management and where the config files happen to live isn't enough to get worked up over. What would be a red flag would be experience in only one distro, ever, even outside work.
Imprecate 17y ago
If they're specifically looking for someone who needs to hit the ground running almost immediately doing work tightly connected to package management, automated updates, or relations with the vendor, then yes. I could only see that being the case for short-term contract work.
- robryan 17y ago
  And from the article it doesn't sound to be the case. It's the same thing that happens with programming languages.
jsz0 17y ago
"Why, in the Linux world should it matter if I have experience with CentOS instead of Unbreakable?" I think it should matter to employers. No doubt you could learn OEL very quickly but I'm sure it has a bunch of little oddities and quirks that could make the day-to-day administration and troubleshooting more difficult for someone without practical OEL experience. From the employer's stand point if they can find someone who knows PAC & OEL inside-out why would they take any chances? It may reflect the job market more than your skill set or the company policies on recruitment. It's very likely they can find a candidate who meets their exact requirements. (Personally I would have just lied and spent the next couple of days learning OEL inside-out to back up my lies)
- nailer 17y ago
  I agree in general - if you were pure Debian/Ubuntu and didn't know how to create RPMs, use yum, know the Satellite API, kickstart, python, etc., then you wouldn't be great at something RHEL based. But OEL is just a RHEL clone - literally everything is the same except the logos, release file and installer artwork - so if you know RHEL or CentOS then the experience is valuable.
ax0n 17y ago
It really ought to matter. You take someone with quite a bit of experience in just RHEL or CentOS, and you hire them to work on Ubuntu Server LTS? They'd probably figure it out, but you'd probably have been better off finding someone with less overall Linux experience that is competent with Ubuntu Server or any other Debian-family distro. Fortunately, there's a relatively small core of distros used in the enterprise -- at least when compared to the vast array of all distros under development. I'd think a "Linux sysadmin" worth their salt would be a student of the main families of distros, but competency in the relevant distro should matter when it comes time to hire. Of course, a rockstar sysadmin would know most linux distros, plus some other not-Linux OSes (any or all of Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, *BSDs and the list keeps going)
- olefoo 17y ago
  'rockstar sysadmin' - Seems like a bit of a contradiction to me. A sysadmin is supposed to be the cool head in a crisis who set things up so that even in extreme circumstances the systems are still functional. And yet able to improvise effectively when the circumstances require it. If you're looking for cultural icons, sysadmins are more like Scotty or McGyver than they are like Mick jagger or Gwen Stefani.
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    Yeah. Nobody wants a Shane MacGowan sysadmin.
  - nailer 17y ago
    As well as 'the cool head', they're also the guy that automates the shit out of everything - OS installs, software deploys, reporting, monitoring, etc. Ideally, most sysadmin work should be automation rather than fixing shit, because you've automated some kind of pre-emptive check and redundancy. Anything that saves a bucketload of time for other people deserves rockstar-like adoration, in my humble opinion.
    - olefoo 17y ago
      That's exactly right. Automation raises the value of a system administrator, it's a multiplier whereby one man can do the work of dozens. Optimization and performance tuning is another multiplier, if you can tweak a set of application servers to serve twice as many sessions you've just doubled the number of visitors you can serve before you need to buy more machinery, or cut your hosting costs in half if you're running on third-party equipment.
olefoo 17y ago
Yes and No. In my opinion, it's more a reflection of the culture of the shop in which it is used than the specifics of a distribution. A good admin should be able to get up to speed on any distro within a few days and should be able to wrangle BSDs and other more exotic flavours of unix derived OS's easily. What really matters is the history of the shop and the systems and the culture which has grown up around them. Any distro can be badly managed. If you're logging in to the servers using a VNC session as root, you're doing it wrong, no matter what distro is supporting you. Being an admin at an established shop does entail a certain amount of putting up with decisions that were implemented before you showed up. What matters is if you are going to have the authority that goes with the responsibility that your are being asked to take on. If the expectation is that you will keep a patched together system on the air it matters a lot whether you are expected to replace it and manage the transition to a new infrastructure with grace and aplomb; or if you're being asked to be the janitor in a lunatic asylum where all the devs have root on the production machines and you'll only find out about changes when the system breaks... The first is a professional challenge, the latter is a path to madness.
silentbicycle 17y ago
You can learn a given Linux distro, or you can learn Unix. There is a difference. The fast (but painful) way to learn is to work on porting.
- nailer 17y ago
  Agreed, there certainly is a difference. But 'Unix' is often used as a shorthand for a bunch of committee-created standards that people don't use anymore. Eg, POSIX shell will break when handling file names and data with spaces in them. The defaults in the current Unix OSs - RHEL, SLES, Debian/Ubuntu, OS X, FreeBSD - don't match the 'standard' either - most of these, for example, are moving away from SysV init to something that handles dependencies (rather than starting an SMTP server when there's no network). None of these OSs use SysV packages either. It's certainly valuable to learn multiple Unixs, but make sure that's practical experience rather than an expired 'standard'.
justinhj 17y ago
I'd be looking for an admin that is aware of the major distros and knows the strengths and weaknesses of each. Learning the differences in a new one is straightforward, but being the kind of person to actively investigate the bigger picture is far more valuable.
c00p3r 17y ago
there are just two things remains: apt-cache search/apt-get install and yum search/install =) If you know rpmbuild --rebuld or dpkg-buildpackage you're enlightened guru. If you were realized that it is possible to rebuild Fedora's .src.rpm on CentOS you could be compared to Krishna himself. =) btw, Someone still hiring "Linux admins"? I can do it for free. =)

18 points by Sandman 17y ago

From the submission title: "Does the distro matter when applying for a job as a Linux admin?" Yes. Almost certainly some clueless people will care whether you've specifically used their flavor of Linux. From the article title: "Does the distro matter?" No. The differences among Linux distros is so slight that any otherwise qualified/competent admin can be expected to easily learn everything important in days or weeks.

riffic 17y ago
not true, the differences between distros is the support the distro provides. Some organizations need more support than others, and may even need to pay that.
jrockway 17y ago
The differences among Linux distros is so slight that any otherwise qualified/competent admin can be expected to easily learn everything important in days or weeks. Not sure I agree. After years of using Debian, I had a hard time administering CentOS. yum is a cruel joke... and that's when the dependencies aren't messed up. The quality control and the intrinsic design is ... inconsistent. This makes it hard to administer, and I would certainly never take a job where I would be responsible for CentOS or Redhat.
- jonny_noog 17y ago
  I feel similarly. To me, as a (primarily) Debian user, there's Debian and all the distros that descend from it, then there's all the others. This differentiation exists in my mind primarily because of the difference in package management. It's not that I couldn't use CentOS and stuff (I have and still do to some extent), but I certainly have a much harder time of it. I guess that would probably change pretty quickly if I really wanted it to. I don't want to though.
- staunch 17y ago
  So, do you disagree that "any otherwise qualified/competent admin" could easily learn to use a different distro than the one(s) they know? (I've noticed an increase in the number of replies I get like this on HN now. Time was people made an effort to reply to what you actually said (and meant), not just state some tangentially related populist opinion. Maybe it's just me though...)
  - bugs 17y ago
    Someone competent with linux ( More than "Oh I run a vps all by myself") should easily be able to learn how to do the same administration tasks on another. It may end up taking longer to do certain tasks and they may have to refer to documentation more often than someone competent in that distro thinks they should but linux is relatively universal and once you get past initial setup maintenance becomes rather similar.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      maintenance becomes rather similar In that any task can be completed in an unbounded amount of time. If you want to do things quickly, though, all Linuxes are not the same.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    I've noticed an increase in the number of replies I get like this on HN now. I've noticed an increase in the number of replies I get like this on HN now...
skorgu 17y ago
As the article said, if the recruiter is at that level of box-ticking it would be a major disincentive for me as a hypothetical applicant. Generally, from the other side a candidate not having experience in RHEL (our bread and butter distro) isn't a deal breaker here. It's somewhat surprising if an applicant has really never used RHEL or CentOS but as you say there frankly aren't that many differences that someone intelligent can't pick up shortly. As long as there's a general knowledge of unix concepts the details of package management and where the config files happen to live isn't enough to get worked up over. What would be a red flag would be experience in only one distro, ever, even outside work.

Imprecate 17y ago

If they're specifically looking for someone who needs to hit the ground running almost immediately doing work tightly connected to package management, automated updates, or relations with the vendor, then yes. I could only see that being the case for short-term contract work.

robryan 17y ago
And from the article it doesn't sound to be the case. It's the same thing that happens with programming languages.

jsz0 17y ago

"Why, in the Linux world should it matter if I have experience with CentOS instead of Unbreakable?" I think it should matter to employers. No doubt you could learn OEL very quickly but I'm sure it has a bunch of little oddities and quirks that could make the day-to-day administration and troubleshooting more difficult for someone without practical OEL experience. From the employer's stand point if they can find someone who knows PAC & OEL inside-out why would they take any chances? It may reflect the job market more than your skill set or the company policies on recruitment. It's very likely they can find a candidate who meets their exact requirements. (Personally I would have just lied and spent the next couple of days learning OEL inside-out to back up my lies)

nailer 17y ago
I agree in general - if you were pure Debian/Ubuntu and didn't know how to create RPMs, use yum, know the Satellite API, kickstart, python, etc., then you wouldn't be great at something RHEL based. But OEL is just a RHEL clone - literally everything is the same except the logos, release file and installer artwork - so if you know RHEL or CentOS then the experience is valuable.

ax0n 17y ago

It really ought to matter. You take someone with quite a bit of experience in just RHEL or CentOS, and you hire them to work on Ubuntu Server LTS? They'd probably figure it out, but you'd probably have been better off finding someone with less overall Linux experience that is competent with Ubuntu Server or any other Debian-family distro. Fortunately, there's a relatively small core of distros used in the enterprise -- at least when compared to the vast array of all distros under development. I'd think a "Linux sysadmin" worth their salt would be a student of the main families of distros, but competency in the relevant distro should matter when it comes time to hire. Of course, a rockstar sysadmin would know most linux distros, plus some other not-Linux OSes (any or all of Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, *BSDs and the list keeps going)

olefoo 17y ago
'rockstar sysadmin' - Seems like a bit of a contradiction to me. A sysadmin is supposed to be the cool head in a crisis who set things up so that even in extreme circumstances the systems are still functional. And yet able to improvise effectively when the circumstances require it. If you're looking for cultural icons, sysadmins are more like Scotty or McGyver than they are like Mick jagger or Gwen Stefani.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  Yeah. Nobody wants a Shane MacGowan sysadmin.
- nailer 17y ago
  As well as 'the cool head', they're also the guy that automates the shit out of everything - OS installs, software deploys, reporting, monitoring, etc. Ideally, most sysadmin work should be automation rather than fixing shit, because you've automated some kind of pre-emptive check and redundancy. Anything that saves a bucketload of time for other people deserves rockstar-like adoration, in my humble opinion.
  - olefoo 17y ago
    That's exactly right. Automation raises the value of a system administrator, it's a multiplier whereby one man can do the work of dozens. Optimization and performance tuning is another multiplier, if you can tweak a set of application servers to serve twice as many sessions you've just doubled the number of visitors you can serve before you need to buy more machinery, or cut your hosting costs in half if you're running on third-party equipment.

olefoo 17y ago

Yes and No. In my opinion, it's more a reflection of the culture of the shop in which it is used than the specifics of a distribution. A good admin should be able to get up to speed on any distro within a few days and should be able to wrangle BSDs and other more exotic flavours of unix derived OS's easily. What really matters is the history of the shop and the systems and the culture which has grown up around them. Any distro can be badly managed. If you're logging in to the servers using a VNC session as root, you're doing it wrong, no matter what distro is supporting you. Being an admin at an established shop does entail a certain amount of putting up with decisions that were implemented before you showed up. What matters is if you are going to have the authority that goes with the responsibility that your are being asked to take on. If the expectation is that you will keep a patched together system on the air it matters a lot whether you are expected to replace it and manage the transition to a new infrastructure with grace and aplomb; or if you're being asked to be the janitor in a lunatic asylum where all the devs have root on the production machines and you'll only find out about changes when the system breaks... The first is a professional challenge, the latter is a path to madness.

silentbicycle 17y ago

You can learn a given Linux distro, or you can learn Unix. There is a difference. The fast (but painful) way to learn is to work on porting.

nailer 17y ago
Agreed, there certainly is a difference. But 'Unix' is often used as a shorthand for a bunch of committee-created standards that people don't use anymore. Eg, POSIX shell will break when handling file names and data with spaces in them. The defaults in the current Unix OSs - RHEL, SLES, Debian/Ubuntu, OS X, FreeBSD - don't match the 'standard' either - most of these, for example, are moving away from SysV init to something that handles dependencies (rather than starting an SMTP server when there's no network). None of these OSs use SysV packages either. It's certainly valuable to learn multiple Unixs, but make sure that's practical experience rather than an expired 'standard'.

justinhj 17y ago

I'd be looking for an admin that is aware of the major distros and knows the strengths and weaknesses of each. Learning the differences in a new one is straightforward, but being the kind of person to actively investigate the bigger picture is far more valuable.

c00p3r 17y ago

there are just two things remains: apt-cache search/apt-get install and yum search/install =) If you know rpmbuild --rebuld or dpkg-buildpackage you're enlightened guru. If you were realized that it is possible to rebuild Fedora's .src.rpm on CentOS you could be compared to Krishna himself. =) btw, Someone still hiring "Linux admins"? I can do it for free. =)