| Depends. If you install Ubuntu, for example, and do nothing but be an end user, no. If you install Debian or Slackware or Fedora, or CentOS and actually learn how the internals work by installing software, setting up networks, firewalls, proxy server, Web servers, then yes. I started with Linux back in 1998 and it's still my primary desktop flavour (Debian). I prefer BSDs for servers being they are arguably more stable and nothing beats ZFS, the BSD notion of jails, and the TCP/IP stack. Gentoo is a good learning experience, but only if you have a full weekend to start it. Last time I ran a stage 1 Gentoo tarball, it took 12 hours to bootstrap. Never again. Slackware or CRUX Linux are great learning flavours. As is Debian if you do the expert install and make mistakes. Go to a Linux Users Group when they have installfests. Have an experienced Linux sysadmin "break" your installation and try to fix it. This is how I learned. Going to my LUG and getting jobs where Linux and UNIX were prevalent. I'm making inroads with bosses where I work now to displace Windows. Slowly but surely. They see the savings and they see the stability. Win. |