"Vaughn L. Treude" wrote: > Hello all: > I've been doing custom industrial-control-type software in the MS world for > a few years now. For the last couple of years, I've been playing with Linux > in my spare time. I wouldn't call myself a guru, but I've had lots of Unix > experience in the past so I think it wouldn't be a real steep learning curve > to get back into it. The trouble is getting an initial (paying) Linux > contract in order to get that crucial real-world experience. In a world where most people have to shell out cash to a university or trade school or some such in order to get experience working with absurdly expensive hardware such as the systems sold by DEC, Sun, HP, etc ... I think one of the coolest things about Linux is that not only is everything you need to know to run it avaiable for the cost of the bandwidth on the web (even nicely written HOWTOs!), but it will run on inexpensive mass produced PC hardware. If you want to get to know your system real well, dont install binaries. Only install source. Sure, its a PITA, but you get a real fundamental knowledge of how Linux/Unix actually works, as opposed to the "this-goes-here" knowledge that is actually entirely all too distribution specific. (when I get another machine, however, I am going to start it off with something new, I'd like to be more familiar with the GUI's everyone else is using now :-) -- jkenner @ mindspring . com__ I Support Linux: _> _ _ |_ _ _ _| Working Together To <__(_||_)| )| `(_|(_)(_| To Build A Better Future. |