Good Instructor Led (Linux) Training for the Early Career SysAdmin?

May 10, 2023 2:30 PM

I'm mentoring a new systems administrator for our organization who has a background in mac repair. They have had no problem picking things up whenever I've taken them through how things work. They've got an opportunity to dip into our organization's training budget.

What with online search descending into uselessness and my own remove from being an inexperienced sysadmin, I've been trying to come up with some instructor led training that would be worth their time and affordable. I'm mostly coming up with varieties of online tutorials, free or not free, whether they're textual or with video or what have you. I want to find some options that actually involve live instruction. Primarily, they'd benefit from instruction in Linux administration.

Does anyone have any suggestions? If you're familiar with the Carpentries, I'd say that something that picks up from where they leave off would be ideal.

Something else I thought could be a useful approach is to find instruction on the OSI model, something that really helped me out in my early days in understanding how various parts of computing interact even when I wasn't working as a network admin. Again, I can find plenty of online tutorials/videos, but not anything that included real interaction with a human.

Thanks!

posted by ursus_comiter to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: I'd look at CompTIA. Net+, Security+, and Linux+. This person likely has a good handle on hardware and troubleshooting, but it sounds like they need some "fleshing out" of their skills. Don't sleep on the CompTIA certs - they are a great introduction to the basics of their subject areas and can give a newb a good foundation to build on.

Check https://www.comptia.org/training/classroom-training

Disclaimer - I don't have experience with their training offering but I've seen many people prepare and pass their certs and am impressed by the body of knowledge.
posted by jermz at 6:17 PM on May 10, 2023

Response by poster: I went down the CompTIA road for a bit, and it eventually let me to the Linux Foundation, which offers a solid foundational course to judge by the curriculum listed.
posted by ursus_comiter at 9:59 AM on May 11, 2023

A good decade or more ago, when interactive online training (instead of static slide shows) was new, O'Reilly offered courses in Linux and shell scripting and stuff. They were among the first to have disposable sandboxes that would disappear after you were done, things like that -- and the pacing and materials were good.

https://www.oreilly.com
posted by wenestvedt at 1:18 PM on May 11, 2023