<div dir="ltr">Guys, <div><br></div><div>I started out at a help desk, some 27 years ago. The one thing that helped me is hard work, never saying no, keeping an open mind, and pushing myself to keep learning. </div><div><br></div><div>The only regret I have I never learn a program language, so if you can't join on of the free online course. </div><div><br></div><div>I would as well recommend coming to the meetings, asking questions here on the mailing list. A lot of the greybeards know a thing or too. I don't mind helping, feel free to ask question. Don't get stuck with one distro, many people install Ubuntu, but the market is more geared more toward Red Hat so, install CentOS or Fedora. Even better, Arch Linux because they have a wiki that is the best to learn really thing. If you really want to learn, try Slackware. <br><br>Devops is the hot thing, so try to read up on Puppet, Chef, Salt Stack or Ansible. Free IT Athens rebuild old PC with Linux on, see if there is something in your community you can do some free IT work. Volunteer work counts as much a paid job. My first job was an Interm at TV station for two years, with no pay, but I learned so much. <br><br>You can set up a small home network on the cheap. For $100 bucks you can buy like 3 or 4 Pi and setup file server, media server, and workstations. You don't need expensive hardward to learn, and labs are so great, if you have a laptop install VirtualBox it's free an a great to run other os without having to buying equipment. <br><br>Amazon use to let you have a free account, it's a great way to learn AWS, which is another hot skill to have. </div><div><br></div><div>Keep notes, Google is great, but if you are working on a system with no internet access, notes are great to help, no one going to look down on you for having them, they are more like to look down on you for not having notes. </div><div><br></div><div>Remember this, there are no stupid questions, so don't be afraid to ask. </div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 10:22 PM, Antony Natale <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:antonynatale@gmail.com" target="_blank">antonynatale@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">As someone who is pretty new to the field I can only offer what I did but frankly I feel my success is equal parts hard work and luck. I was working in retail for years, mostly in print when I decided I was going to pursue my new found passion. I had worked on getting some certifications to try and get some entry level help desk work being my only experience was personal, not work related. After a year of applying I got nothing. <br><br></div>
<div dir="auto">A year later I decided to go back to school for an IT degree and started applying again and got lucky and nailed a great desktop support job for an insurance company. Maybe it was the promise of a degree or coincidence, who knows. Only complaint was there was zero linux. So I focused on learning all I could there, and outside of work learned all I could about linux through reading, VM labs, Linux academy, just doing all I can. <br><br></div>
<div dir="auto">Finally, thanks to the ALE, a job posting came for a junior admin position saying they would take entry level. I didn't expect to get it but I did and I think its only because I could get through 50 minutes of various Linux related grilling and show how passionate I was about the job. <br><br></div>
<div dir="auto">So my suggestion is do all you can on your own, setup labs and vms, etc and shoot for the entry level jobs, and be ready to commit some time to learn because in the end my life is so much better for it. Thanks for getting me the job ALE!<br><br></div>
<div dir="auto">Sorry for the novel<br><br></div>
<div dir="auto">Sent from <a href="http://www.bluemail.me/r?b=10698" target="_blank">BlueMail</a> </div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Terror PUP a.k.a<br>Chuck "PUP" Payne<br>-----------------------------------------<br>Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux.<br>-----------------------------------------<br>openSUSE -- Terrorpup<br>openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member<br>skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup<br>freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein<br>Register Linux Userid: 155363<br> <br>Have you tried SUSE Studio? Need to create a Live CD, an app you want to package and distribute , or create your own linux distro. Give SUSE Studio a try.</div></div>
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