What is on Your Mind?

Hi everybody.

I am just one 2 months old in the world of linux. I have learnt a lot of things in this two months.
I successfully rectified one firewall postrouting related problem in my company, I installed gcc, mailserver etc.
But buddies sometimes I feel lost... I mean I don't have any clue where do I go from here.
It's true I am learning great things every minute but its like face the problem, troublshoot it and learn from it. Its not in proper way. I want to learn shell scripting, perl etc. But I dont have any systematic approach. I never got any education in programming or linux. I am devoting at least five hours of may day in front of internet, reading about linux.
Is there any path to which I can follow ??? Just like a computer program!!! I just want to become a linux geek.

I know this post does not add anything great to the knowledge base of our forum but I am posting it because you people have been very helpful.

Thanx in advance.
Btw I am a system admin in a small company.

It sounds like you have the motivation.

I'm self taught as a programmer. I took half of a C class once and went to CLC to learn Cobol, Assembler and Fortran. Mainly though I learned Structured Programming. Because of my programming I participated in the Nethack project which exposed me to VMS and Unix (this was around 1990). I downloaded Slackware and played with that while I administered 3+Share and 3+Open then NT. Because of my exposure to Usenet and Unix, when I was going to leave my last job, they offered me a full time position as a Unix admin. I was given the Usenet server to learn on and a copy of Essential System Administration. Eventually I took over the entire Unix department.

But that's since 1979.

I happen to like the O'Reilly books when I want to learn about how to do something. Most of them have been very helpful. New Riders has some good books too but I'd pick O'Reilly first. For the indepth knowledge, Addison Wesley seems to have the edge. I've subscribed to the O'Reilly Safari Bookshelf which gives me access to a lot of books without having to shell out the 50 or so bucks for the book.

Personally I can't seem to do well in classes which is why I tend to read books when I want to know something.

Carl

Thanx Carl...
It's so nice of you to share your experience. I myself was not the brightest in my class. I was studying microbiology, but soon took a drop co'z I was not able to support my educational expences and microbiology was not able to provide me a good part time job. So
I joined an institute to learn computer hardware and networking and soon I got my first job.
Since then it's been a hilarious journey. I take great interest in computers co'z you dont need a lab to develope something.
anywayz...
thanx everybody...

You do need a lab to "develop something" even when dealing with computers.

You are right Shock, but I think two computers will do.
Anywayz thanx for reading

... unless of course your environment is clustered, or is load balanced, or attached to NAS, etc...

zzz

All, I've shifted this thread away from the technical discussion forums.

Cheers
ZB