Linux

If you're applying to work with my team. A big Yes.

Seeing a developer use Windows is a big turn off, I can clearly see all the future dev environment problems I'd need to assist them with.

And if you understand linux permissions, the architecture, bash, common tools, etc. I can envision how you will make the dev experience better for everyone and contribute to fix any deployment issues. Unlike windows, you won't be introducing ovearching solutions to problems which can be solved with a simple bash script.

Depends on the job!

Linux opens up a lot of possible job openings

When looking for Linux tech jobs to apply to, a lot of them actually have Vim experience as a preferred quality. Can any experts confirm this?

Even a simple "I know how to setup a network-wide ad blocker on docker by using my own image" can get you far, so yep.

I interview developers and information security people all the time. I always ask lots of questions about Linux. As far as I'm concerned:

• If you're claiming to be an infosec professional and don't know Linux you're a fraud.
• If you're a developer and you don't know how to deploy to Linux servers you're useless.

So yeah: Get good with Linux. Especially permissions! Holy shit the amount of people I interview that don't know basic Linux permissions (or even about file permissions in general) is unreal.

Like, dude: Have you just been chmod 777 everything all this time? WTF! Immediate red flag this guy cannot be trusted with anything.

Lots of good advice here. I'll add that you could develop an understanding of IP networking and how it works on Linux, network interfaces, with containers, with iptables as well as stateful and stateless firewalls, CIDRs and basic routing, IP protocols and some common protocols like DNS and HTTP. This used to be pretty common knowledge in applicants 15 years ago, but very few have it today I find. DHCP and PXE boot is fun to learn too, and is still common in datacenters.

I've hired for junior positions on a sysadmin team and Linux as a hobby is the number 1 thing I look for. It moves your resume to the top of the stack.

It will. Keep in mind that, depending on the type of job, you'll have to keep learning new tech just to keep up: virtualization, containers, orchestrators, automation, backups, logging, auditing, scripting and God knows what else. It's a good starting point to get you the jobs that the Windows crowd won't touch because of the command line.

Yes, because you're already familiar with the command line. But for a job in the professional Linux world, also try out RHEL (not Fedora), and familiarize yourself with best practices in patch management. There's a lot more to it than just dnf upgrade if you have applications depending on specific versions of packages, CVEs need to be mitigated ASAP, downtime needs to be minimized and reverting a borked upgrade (including the installed database) needs to work 100%.
Also, get familiar with containerization, SELinux, VMWare hypervisors, a version control system, the LAMP stack and Samba.

My personal experience: Absolutely!

I've always landed on jobs/projects that involve Linux server. Generally startups with not much expense to spare would go for this route. However, even bigger companies would opt for enterprise Linux.

I wouldn't say that will work on every IT jobs out there, but when it does, you know you're in for a fun ride!

To give yourself a better chance, learn things like:

• Bash scripting
• Docker
• Docker Compose
• Kubernetes
• Oauth2 and and an authorization server like Keycloak
• Build and deployment tools like Jenkins

Also learn how to deploy database and web servers manually.

It sounds like a lot but they're things you'll be expected to use.

It highly depends on the job. Some companies run fully on Windows, no exceptions. There it obviously would not help. But many still either host various services on Linux, or buy hosting/cloud commuting that is Linux based. There it might even be necessary.

It also depends on what you mean by "power user". I would generally advise you to look into the server side of things. In my work, there are zero Linux machines that have a GUI of any kind installed. t The 50 or so Linux machines are all administered through SSH and Shell.

yes

Honestly, it depends on the business.

If I were the hiring manager we are a 80/20 split on win vs Linux servers. You may be top tier on 20% of our systems but we have automated about 85% of the tasks on those boxes. The other 15% is being covered by the windows people.
How do I justify hiring you to do 15% of the work of the others?

In order to be paid above average, you need to be good at something others find hard. But don't pigeon hole yourself to one thing.

Being good at windows and Linux will make you a more attractive hire. As a Linux daily driver you should have no excuse to not know virtualisation or containers. Run up some qemu VMS or some LXC containers to expand your skillset.

Put it this way - it doesn't hurt.

Nothing fully replaces real world experience with the exact software and technologies your potential employer uses, but having demonstrable ability to use and understand linux is very transferrable. Ultimately it comes down to the interviewers and what they're looking for, and to the more technical of those, choosing linux as a daily driver shows you're more interested in understanding how computers work and that you have a degree of problem solving ability.

Read some adverts of the jobs you want to get, being realistic that you may need to start low to get that experience, and build ability in what's wanted, especially the bits that are marketable.

What education do you have in the area?

The IT/Sysadmin sector does have a risk with knowing enough to be dangerous.

Daily driving Linux is great to get used to the command line, but is different from running servers.

If you have no experience with running Linux servers, I would be focusing on that part, rather than daily driving at this point.

Running a server requires a bit of a different mindset to that of just using a desktop.

You need to be far more restrictive about installing software on the server, be more cautios of reboots, and in general focus on stabillity.

You also need to familiarize yourself with Debian/Ubuntu and Red Hat/Fedora based distributions, their package managers, apt and dnf, the general layout of the system, they are mostly similar, but they have their own flavours, especially when it commes to the config files.

Learn the basics of vim, it will allways be installed on a server, I prefer nano but can use vim if needed.

A big part of my job when I was a Helpdesk technician combined with a Linux sysadmin was storage, I had to set up VMs in vSphere and Nutanix and give them the correct ammount of storage, sometimes also expand the storage on a server, and work with mountpoints.

Play around with LVMs, learn the concepts of PVs, VGs and LVs, learn how to expand them, how to move an LV from one PV to another inside a VG, learn how to mount them.

Learn how to set a manual IP, this can change from version to version of a distribution.

Learn to get annoyed at YAML files.

Understand how to secure a system, I'll admit that I never really had to do this as all servers I worked on was behind strong firewalls and not accessable from the internet, but I did my best with what I had.

If your goal is to make yourself more valuable to employers/clients the best path is to specialize in some critical and niche enterprise tech. People that are good at stuff businesses were lured into using get paid very well. In my case it was SharePoint, but that's just an example.

Knowing your way around the OS is taken for granted in these positions, so you have one piece of the puzzle, which is great, but you need the other pieces.

But be careful, if I have to choose between two experts, one with basic win+linux and the other only linux, I'm choosing the former.

I had the same question. I have rather good understanding of Linux and command line however at my job where Ubuntu is used other people easily caught up with me. They still don't know much about what exactly a command does but they know when to run it so IMO it doesn't matter how much Linux you know the only knowledge matters which you could use to have your job done quickly and efficiently.

Specifically for a job of Linix sysadmin, probably yes. If you can afford it do a certification, it will help you stand among other candidates with no work experience.

For other IT jobs it's not so relevant. Linux is technically on the servers but the infrastructure is hidden from you by multiple levels of abstraction.