Developing your Linux knowledge?

[ally_uk]

I have to say I am a keen user of Linux and have been dabbling with Debian and Ubuntu for just over a year now. I wish to improve my linux knowledge but want to know what key areas of development could aid me with career progression, I am looking at the possibility of putting my skills to use for charities but would like to improve upon my Linux skills, I'm not a programmer or web developer so I would say networking / servers / administration are things that interest me.

I have experimented with Samba at home I kinda implemented it succesfully lol I got my linux box to talk with windows and could see the Samba shares created in windows but due to a cock up with permissions somewhere along the line I couldn't seen to create folders or copy files across into the share.

Secondly Mail servers are a interest but I have heard reports that setting up a Home mail server can be difficult due to ISP restrictions and you have to get them to setup a reverse lookup for you which sounds complicated.

Any other projects you guys have undertaken? share you linux experiences here as I could do with some inspiration

[tripwire45]

It's not just Linux but the larger arena of open source. In my current contract job, I'm the technical writer for a company developing a web application that detects Internet fraud. We're pretty much a Linux shop. All of the developers use Ubuntu/Kubuntu. For my documentation, I write in the LaTeX markup language, using a KDE application called Kile. I develop all of the necessary graphics using the GIMP and my work desktop is Ubuntu 7.10.

As far as what you can do career/charity-wise in open source...probably anything you could do with proprietary software. First think of what kinds of tasks/jobs you'd like to do and then research the specific skill sets that are necessary to fulfill those tasks on a Linux/Open Source platform.

For instance, I Googled "linux network skills" and came up with this set of search results. It's not wrapped up in a neat little package, but by exploring the links presented in the results, you'll start to get an idea of what you might need to learn.

I'm not sure at what level your Linux knowledge is, but a great online tutorial for general learning is [urlhttp://www.linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=MContent&pageid=224]The Linux Tutorial[/url]. It's maintained by a US ex-pat living in Germany. I help him out with his site periodically, and while the forums aren't particularly active (especially compared with CF), the feedback I get about the tutorials is that they are very helpful.

Anyway, there's my 2 cents. Good luck.