Should I start considering RedHat?
Posted by travisscology@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 39 comments
Hi guys, young IT graduate and professional who aspires to be a sysadmin one day or something in IT architecture and design. I was enrolled in a 3 year technical program where we were introduced to many Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Alpine, CentOS...) but one that was heavily used was Debian.
I have more than a dozen big projects where the main servers ran on Debian as well as extensive documentation. They seem to be good as I was able to land many offers thanks to them. I hear that Debian is a good distribution overall (never used a GUI on it, always unticked the GNOME option during installation).
However as I'm browsing the IT market lately, I have yet to see any job postings that mention Debian even if it's a popular system. Most companies in my area seem to be using RedHat and/or ask for RedHat certifications.
Do you think I should start practicing on RedHat and implement my future projects on it or is Debian knowledge sufficient? Also, if you think there is another distribution I should look into, let me know.
PS: I cannot say I'm a Linux nerd despite my educational and professional background so excuse my ignorance on some topics. Matter of fact, some of my friends who are not in IT know Linux better than me. The only difference I was seeing between the distributions I was using was the already installed packages and a few utilities. This could be also due to the fact that I never use GUI so a CLI is a CLI, whatever the OS is. But hey, you want a DHCP, a Postfix or a PXE? I'll get the job done no matter what.
TheFluffiestRedditor@reddit
As a long term Debian and RHEL admin, there are some gotcha differences.
I recommend obtaining a Redhat developer account (free), and then play with it. You’ll find all the differences quickly enough.
The big differentiator is Satellite- the Management application, which is not available for free/developer use. Any site which has gone all out on RHEL will also be using Satellite, and that’s essential knowledge.
pdp10@reddit
Our main enterprise distros are Debian and Alpine. We did use RHEL and CentOS a long time ago, but switching away from them turned out to have immediate RoI and be one of the best things we ever did.
travisscology@reddit (OP)
What was costing you a lot with RHEL, was it the support license?
Also, do people pay for support/licenses on Debian and Alpine?
pdp10@reddit
RHEL and CentOS were less flexible in general, and RHEL less flexible due to the licensing terms. Even more importantly, they were far less productive due to having shallow repos of third-party software. Contrast with Debian-family, which has something like 72,000 packages.
i-heart-linux@reddit
I am at a red hat shop, yes licensing can get expensive in private sector hence we have some great deals for my org (non profit) so ive had exposure to openshift, rhel, and satellite in my years here. I should be seeing my salary jump from ~ 94k to well around 130-140k with my next move…and this is without a degree/certs due to my deep experience with these RH tools/linux and database administration…
JustTrollingFromNE@reddit
We have something like 800 Linux servers, almost all of which are RHEL. The only time we end up with other Linux distributions is when the application runs on an appliance, usually delivered to us as an OVF.
You mentioned GUI a few times and that you always use CLI. As a sysadmin you most likely will never be seeing a GUI anyway. Just stick with the CLI and practice on whatever distro you can get your hands on.
DejfCold@reddit
As many have said. All distros are basically the same. After all the difference is really only the set of preinstalled programs and their configuration.
However there's one thing that you won't really find in any other distro - selinux. Afaik Ubuntu has something similar, called AppArmor, but still, it's special enough to take a look at it at least. Though useful, it could keep you awake at night, because although you have everything setup correctly, the app just won't start. And that would be caused by selinux doing it's job.
And Oracle Linux, another RHEL based distro, has "Unbreakable kernel", whatever that is.
travisscology@reddit (OP)
I did a quick research on SELinux and I see why apps would break or not start if it's constantly checking and verifying permissions (especially with a remote security server).
Already experienced in the past instances where basic services would not start because of basic permission issues and it sometimes drove me nuts. Must be hell if there is a whole security architecture enforcing that, but should be the norm for most companies today.
DejfCold@reddit
It's not just "permissions". Though I guess you could call it that since it's so broad term. It's not just the usual RWX permissions you'd see with
ls -l. It checks many things - security contexts, security labels and policies, ports, security users and groups... It's like RWX on steroids.But it's not that bad actually. They do have helpful logs when something is blocked. But I guess that's not really something you can use during an interview. Or actually ... it depends.
27CF@reddit
It's not that bad. When you're setting the server up, you can put selinux in permissive mode. Run 'journalctl -t setroubleshoot' and follow the instructions until it stops logging violations. Put selinux back in enforcing. Things go smoother if you put files in standard locations.
malikto44@reddit
In general, Debian skills will transfer. However, Red Hat is a unique beast. RHEL 10 is immutable, and it diverges from the Debian variants enough to require some thinking.
If you are wanting a supported RHEL instance and need RAID, just do like Windows and get a hardware RAID card with a cache. ZFS will install and work, but working versus being supported are different things. Same with btrfs. RHEL doesn't really have any supported checksumming enterprise filesystems (no, XFS may check metadata, but not data), so you will need to work around that. I'm guessing because of Stratis, but who knows.
Overall, the main push I see in development are on Debian and Ubuntu. Red Hat and SuSE are used in production, and often time development environments, but it seems Ubuntu is gaining ground, especially with Ubuntu supporting FIPS standards, and even TPM based booting.
PippinStrano@reddit
No mention of openSUSE, sad panda.
I expect it though. All Linux at my US department is RedHat.
travisscology@reddit (OP)
Actually I used OpenSUSE once in college. Only purpose of the VM was hosting a docker container. It was like a fever dream and I don't remember anything apart from the fact that it may (or may not?) resemble Alpine.
Burgergold@reddit
Red hat enterprise linix itself isn't a lot different. You can get used with Fedora or Centos Stream
Most likely you will need to get used with other Red Hat product such as Satellite, Openshift, etc.
scottkensai@reddit
Or use Rocky
Splask@reddit
No need to use another distro when you can just get a dev license for RHEL and play with it all you want.
_SleezyPMartini_@reddit
be daring, use FreeBSD
frenchyp@reddit
FreeBSD is so stable, easy to use and documented, the daring move is to use anything else (for servers)
travisscology@reddit (OP)
I'll use TempleOS instead
GullibleDetective@reddit
Go crazy and use artistx!
But yes either redhat or centos/now rocky Linux or Ubuntu server would be the way to go
Unnamed-3891@reddit
I might be talking out of my ass, but from 5+ years at a major nordic MSP, my gut feeling is that out of all clients using Linux, 90% is Redhat and it's clones, 5% is Ubuntu and the final 5% is all the other Linux distros combined.
syncdog@reddit
A while back I heard about a market study that showed that ~90% of unpaid Linux deployments are Ubuntu, while ~90% of paid Linux deployments are RHEL. Those are definitely the big two distros to learn for career growth.
bumbo79@reddit
I've personally found about 80% are using Debian-based (like Debian, Ubuntu, etc) 15% are Redhat-based (RHEL, CentOS, Rocky Linux, etc) and the other 5% are usually Windows shops that have that 1 Linux server that just works that was installed X Years ago and no one really knows about
Ok-Car-2916@reddit
The difference I have found tends to be what kind of companies you are exposed to.
Startups and small to medium sized businesses I've noticed lean towards Debian and friends.
Fortune 20, Big Gov, and Big Defense is where I've been working the past 10 years and I have yet to come across a sizable deployment of Debian or Ubuntu for their critical infrastructure. And working on consulting, I've been on the inside of a lot more different big enterprises than most. 90% Red Hat / 10% Debian would be being quite nice and optimistic towards Debian I think.
I would throw Rocky/Alma/CentOS under the Red Hat bucket though. That 90%/10% anecdotal stat I'm giving is not 90% RHEL, although RHEL is a big chunk of it.
travisscology@reddit (OP)
This is very interesting. For you it's 80% Debian and for the previous comment 90% RHEL. That's why I marked down "jobs in my area" because things tend to get very different from a place to another!
KindlyGetMeGiftCards@reddit
All the distros are all mostly the same, so if you know one you can work out the other or know where to look for the info you need.
At the end of the day you are trying to fine tune your skills to a job you don't know about yet, so it's a crapshoot if you will line up with the unknown or not. So focus on your overall skills at this point in time, when you get a job focus on their stack at that time.
Ok-Car-2916@reddit
I tend to use Fedora on my personal machines and stick to the red hat ecosystem because I run across it more often in my work. That being said, if you are a Linux pro for another family of distros, it isn't going to take you long to figure out the differences well enough to do most anything you'd need to EXCEPT if you want to contribute and/or package in some way. Then you will have to learn their little nuances and packaging differences and whatnot.
If it helps convince you that learning Linux to an expert level is going to pay off then definitely stick to Fedora and derivatives. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter all that much. I do like it as a distro though and think it tends to be one of the highest quality in a variety of ways and has consistently not made the bad decisions another certain corporate sponsored distro has made recently.
BotBarrier@reddit
If the sysadmin jobs are for RHEL, best to be really strong on RHEL and it's tooling.
travisscology@reddit (OP)
I just found out that there are some tools native to RHEL like Satellite, OpenShift... and widely used. I am thinking about re-doing my Debian projects on RedHat and make use of them on a small level.
BotBarrier@reddit
Sounds like a good plan... good luck!
TaliesinWI@reddit
At least get your hands on it so you can claim the experience. If you already know Debian and how to deal with its package management, knowing the Red Hat rpm/yum scheme should be pretty easy to wrap your brain around.
Once you do, you're going to see that if you know one distro you pretty much know most of the major ones. Debian/Ubuntu and RHEL are the two big non-rolling release distros so for job searching and enterprise you should be all set.
travisscology@reddit (OP)
I hear a lot about package management. We did have some classes about Linux fundamentals where we looked into some of them like yum... but I feel like the only time I did "package management" is with the following commands:
apt add, update, upgrade, install, removeThese are the only commands I've ever used, but feels like there is something bigger I'm missing out on.
Tymanthius@reddit
That's most of it right there.
You can list out what is installed, what is ready for upgrades, and other things. But man & google is your friend if you need those commands.
uptimefordays@reddit
I mean there are two “real” routes for package management: setting unattended upgrades via provisioning and telling everyone “it’s what big tech does” or managing an internal package repo, setting unattended upgrades but pointing at your repo, and deciding on update cadence for your repository.
Th3Sh4d0wKn0ws@reddit
Yup, apt is the common package manager on Debian and things based on it (Ubuntu, Mint, Pop_OS). I have zero Redhat experience but they have a different package manager: dnf, formerly yum.
But if you're comfortable looking up man pages and documentation it shouldn't be that much different.
Tymanthius@reddit
if you know one linux, you know them 'all' pretty much.
There are differences, teh most obvious is the package manager.
But the reason you see RedHat so often is b/c RedHat offers paid for support. Companies like that.
So I'd say install and play w/ RH at home, maybe mimic some of your projects.
Then go take the RH certs and add that to your resume. But while you do that, apply to the RH jobs and let them know you are well versed in Linux, however your direct experience is Debian. It's not a rough transition.
uptimefordays@reddit
RedHat’s certification programs are pretty good they provide a solid foundational knowledge of Linux which is really what’s important.
TaiGlobal@reddit
Yes I highly recommend. Most companies want to pay for enterprise support and you as an admin/engineer should want to work with a company that’s willing to do that. That means they have a decent budget and also you have support you can rely on if needed.
travisscology@reddit (OP)
I just realized I can predict how a company treats its IT department by having a look at which technologies they use. Valid AF