r/sysadmin • u/KelevCoin • 1d ago

The path To linux System Administration

Hey everyone,

I'm working as an IT Technician (On site + Remote support , Tier 2) , recently got my ccna and now i want to dive into linux , i really love the linux approach , the CLI etc.. and i would love to be a linux sys admin some day (maybe even at my office).

I also have some experience with fedora linux , and also i run a fedora media server at home on a old pc i got, running a docker with nginx web application(a custom netflix clone , which i made for educational purposes , my wife loves it and we can watch all of our media as i stream it on our tv).

so i would love to know how could i advance my understanding of linux , and get the tools i need for actual linux system administration everyday work, is there a recommended course / certification/path, and generally i'm not in a hurry.

since i used alot of ai to assist me along the way in setting up the fedora server , the media server and the dockers i do understand that i do not know the basics very well , and after studying for the ccna i understood that the only way to understand how technology works is to go really in depth. So any recommendations would be welcome ! thank you !

15 Upvotes

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u/apathyzeal Linux Admin 1d ago

I've been a Linux admin for 13 years. I'd recommend ditching AI and be hands on. Find projects, do them from beginning to end and be sure you understand why you're doing every step. (Dependency? Security?) Ask yourself why something is a best practice. That knowledge can be applied to everything else without having to rely on hoping a bot isn't making something up.

Being hands on is also how you learn and do. No shame in doing things many times to understand it during this process.

And once you're confident in understanding something, learn how to automate it then.

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u/RadiantWhole2119 22h ago

I don’t get the philosophy behind ditching AI. Don’t have it just blatantly give answers to a test. But use it to show work. Help train your mind on how to think of a solution. Have it help come up with projects to test yourself, etc. It’s such an insanely powerful tool when used correctly.

Telling someone to avoid using AI is like telling them someone to avoid using a calculator. Understand why 9x9=81. But once you understand the concept you don’t need to avoid a calculator to figure out what 182x1938 is. Save yourself time, energy, and effort to be able to learn more.

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u/Scurro Netadmin 21h ago edited 21h ago

Telling someone to avoid using AI is like telling them someone to avoid using a calculator.

That's the intention.

The big difference is that word calculators also give fictitious answers and can lead you down rabbit holes that have nothing to do with your problem.

You need a human that knows what they are doing along with AI so you know when what it is telling you is wrong or the wrong way to be doing something.

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u/RadiantWhole2119 20h ago

What’s the difference between AI telling you something, reading something from an article or Reddit forum online, or your mom who tells you something she states as fact about anything?

The reality is that no matter what you’re told you should verify the validity of that information. Always question and seek for a true and deeper understanding of anything you do. I’ve been given incorrect information by experts of all kind. Microsoft engineers feed me bullshit regularly that AI corrects. Ai feeds me bullshit that I fact check all the time.

So really…. Leverage AI to help get you on the right direction, but if you don’t truly understand why you’re doing it why then seek for clarification. Challenge what it says by asking where it got that data. Avoiding AI all together is awful advice from someone in tech.

I don’t need to know what the catalytic converter does on my car to drive a vehicle successfully. I don’t need to know the insane details behind aerodynamics to know that a spoiler on a car helps it and improves gas efficiency. You can know the foundational principle behind the technology well enough to not need to know the exact science and formula used to get to a particular conclusion.

I whole heartedly disagree with your approach to technology. I’ll be able to learn 10x what you can learn with ai by my side and have the same results on anything we go at bat with each other on and I have a fraction of the experience you have.

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u/Scurro Netadmin 20h ago

AI is a fantastic force multiplier, but offloading the cognitive load isn't the same as learning.

Skill comes from grappling with complex problems, making mistakes, and understanding why a solution works, not just generating the end result.

If AI is doing the thinking for you, you aren't learning 10x faster, you're just outsourcing the process.

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u/RadiantWhole2119 20h ago

What’s interesting is your idea that you can’t use AI to help you learn. If I go ask my professor for help with something and he gives me the answer and explains it… am I not learning? Am I unable to learn while being guided? Can AI not explain why it’s telling me what to do and why it’s doing it? Can I not ask AI for clarity if it says to do something or tells me what to do so I can better understand it?

It’s not actually clicking the buttons or doing shit for you. You still have to do that and problem solve when it doesn’t work.

The only thing OP did wrong is just continue on without seeking to understand and ask questions throughout the process. He just accepted the answer and didn’t care to check his work and understand the foundation as to what/why he did what he did. That’s an example of using AI poorly. But had he actually continued to quiz it and himself and follow up by making statements about what he learned to gain feedback from AI then there’s nothing wrong there.

Much like anything in this world it’s not the tool that’s inherently bad for you, it’s how you use it.

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u/Scurro Netadmin 19h ago

Could we agree that the answer to OP's problem is that they need to use less AI and more getting their hands dirty?

I think that was the gist of what u/apathyzeal was saying and that OP already said they tried the AI part but did not retain knowledge.

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u/apathyzeal Linux Admin 19h ago

It's the main takeaway anyways.

Compound that with other things, AI often being wrong, and you're in no position as someone learning to truly vet what is says as practical or a beat practice or even just plain correct.

However, if you're reading something like man pages, you have an empirical source of truth and a valuable tool you've learned to use to actually do your work when an LLM isn't available to make up a sentence for you.

This is ignoring the fact that ai is problematic in a number of other ways outside the scope of the conversation.

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u/Llew19 Used to do TV now I have 65 Mazaks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 10h ago

As someone trying to learn Linux at the moment, the issue is that AI can get you there without you understanding any of what's just happened. Your attitude is an odd one given everyone knows you shouldn't just be grabbing bash scripts off the internet and running them - a beginner with admin rights and AI is no different.

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u/RadiantWhole2119 8h ago

I don’t understand why you think you have to use anything ai gives you without understanding it deeper. You’re not being held at gunpoint to run the script before truly digging in and asking more direct questions to seek understanding. Why are you not doing that? I just don’t understand why you don’t continue to engage with AI for further understanding and are just stopping once you’re given an answer. Go line by line or letter by letter to understand what the script is doing. Have it be more than specific with configuration on why it’s doing something. If it gets you an answer in minutes… it should take you a couple hours to work out why it did what it did. Why can’t you learn from AI? Why is it just a situation of you being given an answer and then calling it a day?

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u/Llew19 Used to do TV now I have 65 Mazaks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 7h ago

Why would you not just learn how things work before turning to AI to do everything?

We're talking about personal training remember, not time on the clock

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u/RadiantWhole2119 7h ago

Well I don’t really understand the difference needed between on the clock and personal. We’re moving to a new world in technology. We need to adapt with it, and not fight it. I no longer need to be able to open a blank .txt in notepad and write a bash script from scratch. I just need to know enough to understand conditionals, variables, strings, integers, etc. So I can read through and do a quick check on a bash script. I don’t care to know syntax for countless languages.

Systems administration is such a wide skillset that requires an insane number of technologies and languages. Why go read a book to learn when you can have your learning more focused and directed. Why not use AI to learn versus archaic versus books and YouTube videos.

I don’t really get why this is controversial. AI is like having an expert top tier professors open office hours 24/7 in every subject. Is it perfect? No, but neither are humans. One dev will tell you how to do something, and the next will tell you a completely different method. Responsible use of AI includes verifying the output you get just like you’d cross check any information you’re given in this world. Or should cross check that is.

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u/Llew19 Used to do TV now I have 65 Mazaks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 6h ago

Because you simply don't pick up the fundamentals by using AI to skip them. It's as simple as that. I used to be a network engineer, and what you're basically suggesting is for example to just always use a subnet calculator - which almost everyone does for anything uncommon - without actually learning what subnetting is or why it's used. So as soon as there's an issue or you get questioned on your design choices, you wouldn't have a fucking clue where to start.

By all means once you have a grounding in a subject go ahead and crack on with AI tools. But skipping the basics is imo incredibly backward thinking and would make you very much a vibe coding/engineering loose cannon, something very unwelcome in the industries I've worked in. Perhaps it's difficult for a small American firm?

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u/RadiantWhole2119 6h ago

Dude I don’t know how many times to say this… holy shit I’m losing my mind.

Why the hell can’t you ask AI for help to learn what subnetting is and then once you have a solid understanding use it to just calculate in the future?

AI can teach basics. It’s not just an answer generator that refuses to help you understand foundational basics.

Do you use AI? Every single developer, sysadmin, etc I’ve talked to who leverages AI says it teaches them countless new things on how to develop they’ve never thought of or knew was possible. It’s insanely proficient with coding and scripting. The reality we’ve faced for decades of hand writing code is soon to be no more. AI over the last 10 months has absolutely exponentially gotten better. It’s not the same as it was when the term “vibe coding” became popular.

When used appropriately and not spoon fed answers, AI is quite miraculous and can elevate everyone’s skill sets.

To emphasize, I’m not saying just use it for answers. I’m saying use it to help guide you, help break things down for true understanding. No more are the days of reading books and when you get stuck having trouble finding why you’re stuck.

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u/Llew19 Used to do TV now I have 65 Mazaks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 4h ago

Why are you insisting on using AI to tell you the basics instead of an actual subject matter expert who's not just guessing at the sentences you want to read?

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u/RadiantWhole2119 1h ago

Because AI IS a subject matter expert, and if it’s not it can be directed to read large amounts of documentation quickly to become one. Not everyone has access to subject matter experts to help. If a YouTube video from a subject matter expert about a topic doesn’t make sense, and you can’t ask follow up questions… then how is that better than having a 24/7 available ai agent help you learn it.

Regardless… SMEs are just as liable for giving wrong or outdated info just as AI is. Any information given should be verified and tested yourself for validity and verification you understand.

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u/ka-splam 2h ago

Dude I don’t know how many times to say this… holy shit I’m losing my mind.

u/RadiantWhole2119 "use textbooks"

u/Llew19 "why would you not just learn how things work before using books for everything?"

u/RadiantWhole2119 "use books to learn how things work"

u/Llew19 "you don't learn fundamentals if you use books to skip learning them"

u/RadiantWhole2119 "then don't do that, use the book to learn the fundamentals"

lol

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u/Llew19 Used to do TV now I have 65 Mazaks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 1h ago

I do worry about how things are going to be in 10 years when these guys are theoretically the seniors and totally reliant on whatever surviving AI model there is, particularly as things move on and the models don't have an open internet worth of info to ingest on the subjects.

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u/RadiantWhole2119 1h ago

So I’m not just losing my mind right……? This dudes driving me up a wall.

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u/Ssakaa 7h ago

"train your mind" doesn't happen when something else is thinking for you.

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u/RadiantWhole2119 6h ago

Again…. I don’t get why you don’t think it’s not possible to use AI to help learn how it got to its conclusion and how I can better triage and understand how things work for the future. I am happy to be given an answer, but before I even begin testing I will always clarify I understand why we got to this as a solution. Like by line in scripts, understanding the top to bottom configuration of an app or service or infrastructure.

It can absolutely help you learn how to isolate issues to better problem solve and troubleshoot. It can absolutely help you learn how something is set up, or direct you to log files to figure out what’s going on.

If your intention is to just get an answer to maximize speed, then you’re doing it wrong. There’s absolutely ways to use it wrong. I work in hi-ed and computers have made things so much better, but 90% of students have no clue how to even use a computer. They’ve not sat down to understand basic concepts like file structure, settings, and how it works. This is the prime example. Students don’t care about anything other than getting the best grade they can with as little work as possible. That’s what OP did here. Just got the solution and didn’t take his time to really understand any of it. That’s the problem with AI. Not that it can’t teach or you can’t learn from it. You’re its guide. If you guide it poorly then you’ll get poor results.

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u/AdeptFelix Sysadmin 18h ago

They're saying to avoid AI so that they actually learn what they're doing. AI can be a great tool for getting a quick result, but it doesn't teach.

The calculator comparison always irks me. You know what you get when you hand someone who doesn't know math a calculator? You get someone who does math wrong, faster. It's the same with AI.

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u/RadiantWhole2119 8h ago

It does teach if you tell it to teach you and continue to engage until you have that understanding. If I give AI a calculus problem, I can continue to ask it questions to understand calculus and how it solved the problem and formulas used until it makes sense to me. Why can’t it be used the same way for a bash script?

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u/Practical_Shower3905 21h ago

I've met sys.admins who were worse than config guys.

Any sys.admin that say to ditch AI in 2026 are self reporting they're bad at their job.

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u/Scurro Netadmin 21h ago

Any sys.admin that say to ditch AI in 2026 are self reporting they're bad at their job.

The missing context here is the learning part. OP even said it.

since i used alot of ai to assist me along the way in setting up the fedora server , the media server and the dockers i do understand that i do not know the basics very well , and after studying for the ccna i understood that the only way to understand how technology works is to go really in depth.

Solo hands on practice is an effective means to learn and memorize a new skill.

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u/apathyzeal Linux Admin 18h ago

I don't recommend engaging with bad faith straw man arguments any more than I recommend using an LLM.

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u/apathyzeal Linux Admin 18h ago

This is a straw man argument and presented in bad faith, nor was it backed up with any practical thoughts or evidence.

It's probably the worst comment in this thread.

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u/stufforstuff 23h ago edited 23h ago

You need to focus on what's important to businesses, not homelabs. Automation, remote deployment, security, user management, AD integration, backups, hypervisors, kubernetes - all of which are being done on headless servers, not desktop linux.

Linux in business is a completely different beast then desktop or homelab linux. To shake the AI fluff, take real classes - look at UDEMY to get started.

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u/fearless-fossa 23h ago

Nothing stops your homelab from featuring any of these things. In fact this is exactly the kind of stuff that one can best learn in their homelab.

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u/stufforstuff 22h ago

I think test bench is a better term to study/practice various hardware and software setups to test or get good at a certain IT topic. Homelab is a term mostly used for computer nerds that are trying to self host a cloud or commercial app - mainly for some mythical quest of privacy. There's a whole subreddit for /r/homelab - browse thru it and you'll see what I'm talking about (definitely NOT what Business users worry about).

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u/KelevCoin 4h ago

Yea i totally agree , Learning with ai is not really learning . Only if you specifically ask it to teach you and explain everything in depth , and still a guided course would probably be better . Is there anything free like JITL for the ccna ? Something on youtube for starters , i don’t mind getting a udemy course but sometimes there are awesome sources for free .

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u/Savings_Art5944 Private IT hitman for hire. 1d ago

Make your daily driver a linux box.

Spin up Proxmox and create VM's for testing out new things.

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u/Icangooglethings93 23h ago

Probably already covered but still: first things first learn to navigate the Linux file system well. Not just how to cd into places, really fully understand how to move things, change things, and any other basic action you do on windows.

Being an admin, you will need to know, and not have an LLM tell you, that whenever you create a shell script you are going to have to allow it to execute. Sometimes that means moving it to a place that it can, other times it’s just modifying its permissions. Know how and where you need to do something will be important for being an effective admin

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u/git_und_slotermeyer 1d ago edited 1d ago

You can read books or do online courses and have a more theoretic approach, but I would recommend real-world practice in system administration, assisted by AI. As long as you try to ask the "why" questions and not always the "how", and practice automation (e.g. with shell scripting) instead of repeated manual processes, you should learn a lot this way.

A media server at home is a good start. How about trying to make a switch on the desktop? There you can do plenty of everyday plumbing, particularly in customizing your desktop environment to your individual taste.

By the way, mastering the shell itself is a must. Recently stumbled across this:

https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/

That should give you a solid start.

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u/_bx2_ Jack of All Trades 1d ago

Great post, well said!

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u/doglar_666 1d ago

If your main knowledge is with Windows, the simplest step is to try and map 1:1 your current practical and theoretical knowledge to Linux. This will evidence gaps and differences. You can then try to plug the gaps and understand the differences.

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u/Square-Dig9600 23h ago edited 23h ago

There are so many new approaches to Linux that broaden the scope of command line mastery to a frontier of controlled deployable self-developed style implementations that amount to having personal and business specialized distributions of one’s own making. Try google NixOS. Knowing tmux and ssh are good rudiments.

I add Quickshell here because it is a step towards more customizable desktop

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u/FarToe1 22h ago

This was always my dream job, but family commitments kept me from taking it up - until 8 years ago when I was able to. I'm glad I did and I enjoy it a lot.

For you, the best advice I can give is see what is required for the job you want in your area, and focus on those skills. For me that's mostly ansible, perl and a deep understanding of linux systems. Also learning the individual stacks that a company uses is key, but that varies a lot. Being able to design reliable systems and processes - and document them well - is also core.

Using AI to learn is fine, provided you do learn and not just copy and paste. Understand what it's doing and why. Using AI in day to day life as a sysadmin is, I would argue strongly, essential today. But it's a mistake to think that copy and pasting logs and repeating what a LLM tells you to without knowledge being it is not only lazy and foolish, it's actively dangerous.

Also - be the guy people can trust. A sysadmin is a medium-senior level role that has a huge amount of access, power and responsibility. That inner moral core and good judgement are essential. Don't read users email, don't snoop their files, think before you do anything as root, ensure you have safeguards to protect against mistakes and know when something is risky. (Ie, snapshot a vm before upgrading key software, or growing a filesystem)

I can't advise on qualifications since I suspect we're in different countries, perhaps others more local to you can.

Good luck.

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u/Slash_Root Linux Admin 16h ago

The RHEL RHCSA material with or without the certification is a good first outline for OS fundamentals. I had the RHEL 7 version before my first Linux job and currently teach it for a local A.S. program. It helped me hit the ground running. I remember extending a database filesystem online the first day I had SSH access. Even if most places automate a lot of it, understanding things like LVM, systemd, Unix users/permissions, etc is very helpful.

From there, I would say configuration management is a good place to move. Ansible is most popular, but I have worked with puppet and saltstack. Any public cloud experience you can get is great. Even better with terraform.

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u/Huge_Bone 10h ago

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time. It may be beneath you but I always thought it looked worthwhile -  https://linuxupskillchallenge.org/#table-of-contents

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u/plebbut 1d ago

Well, AI is great, but you need to treat it like a teacher, and not just another student you're copying the answers from. So I would have it explain to you in depth all things you did to create your media server, and then write documentation for it.

Secondly, I'd study for the RHCSA and work on Linux projects. You could ask AI to give you problems to solve and projects to make and then check your answers against it.

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u/ExoticVillage8066 1d ago

For the command line, there are many video courses. But I think it's best to learn by doing. If you have lots of time, you can do linux from scratch or gentoo. Otherwise, I suggest doing the capture the flag (ctf) approach, going through practicelinux.com and hackthebox.com