I'd add that if your students want to learn linux well, they should use one
of the other distros as well. Arch, gentoo, LFS, etc. Get the whole
experience of setting up boot, organizing filesystems by hand, maybe even
figuring out how to bootstrap compile things. This is dependent on how
deep the students want to go, of course. However, I always have to make
new sysadmins do this to learn how to troubleshoot linux that they don't
learn with installing rhel or ubuntu.
On Sun, Feb 2, 2025 at 2:01 AM Arun Khan via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
> My two cents on distros to teach students (changed the subject line)
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2025 at 9:35 AM rusty carruth via PLUG-discuss
> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
> >
> ... snip ...
> > First, why I have an opinion: I sometimes teach a course on Linux at a
> > local community college in the Phoenix Metro area. My course uses -
> > well, used - CentOS 7, OpenSuSE (I forget which version), and Ubuntu as
> > the distributions the students are required to install (in usually
> > using VirtualBox).
> >
> > I'm using CentOS to give the students experience in what is extremely
> > close to RedHat, Ubuntu to give them experience in one of the larger
> > families of distribution derivative trees that I know of (which doesn't
> > mean much!), and OpenSuSE because that's what the course designer chose
> > (and I believe it was to give the students a wider range of
> > distributions than just RedHat and Debian-flavored distros).
> >
> > CentOS 7 went totally unusable last year when RedHat, in their infinite
> > wisdom, turned off their RPM servers, so I switched to CentOS Stream 9
> > (I think its 9). Fortunately not much changed from the course's point
> > of view.
> ... snip ...
>
> As I recall, CentOS started as a community supported server OS (RHEL
> clone) and transitioned to an upstream distro for RHEL, after Redhat
> acquired the distro.
> Alma / Rocky Linux are the present day distros that CentOS used to be
> till CentOS 7 -- feature for feature and bug for bug clone of RHEL,
> built from RHEL src RPMS without the branding.
>
> >
> > (Anyone have recommendations on what would make up a good, well-rounded
> > balance of distros for the students? Please email me off-list about
> > this. If we get enough people interested in an entire discussion
> > 'group' on that, maybe we'll bring it back here, or I'll try to
> > summarize if there's interest.)
>
> I also taught Linux admin from the mid 90s to mid 2000s. Here's a
> list of my recommendations for production environments, to teach the
> students of what they may encounter at jobs.
>
> Alma / Rocky Linux (for RHEL experience)
> Ubuntu (covers Debian)
> Amazon Linux (RHEL clone with AWS's enhancements for deployment in
> their cloud. IIRC, they do point releases with kernel upgrades v/s
> backporting the RHEL way)
> Alpine (niche server deployments)
>
> It may be worthwhile for your students to document the equivalent
> tools on each of these distros. IMO, a good way to learn the
> similarities and differences.
>
> HTH
> --
> Arun Khan
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>
--
James McPhee
jmcphe@gmail.com
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