What kind of a learning curve am I looking at?

[circuithead64]

rule numero uno : no pienses como un hijo de microsoft

[Primey]

rule number one: dont think like a Microsoft's son??

i think that's wrong, you have to have seen Winblows so you can see the bad things about it, and i think most of the people here started using Windows (myself included), then we found something that caught our eye and went to Linux (for me it was this forum and my interships, my boss made me use backtrack and i fell in love ever since)...so yeah, you have to see Microsoft and go "ewww" and then go to Linux and go ""

[purehate]

I believe that we should be competent in all systems and be able to use them all. Windows just gets the short end of the stick because it costs money and has become the trendy target for hackers and the software is a target for crackers. What would you do if you were in a situation where the only machine you had to use was windows. Granted I'm not a professional pentester or even a network admin but I do work with computers and I do go to school for networking. When I attack my victim computer I have two laptops to attack one BT and the other windows and it works quite well.

[thorin]

I want to sit down and learn linux. My plan is to sit down at work and read through the slackware basics and mess around with Linux a bit on a VM in between helpdesk calls and stuff.

How much time give or take, I know this is a relative question, do I need to put in before I can actually sit down and be able to play with backtrack without sitting there and scratching my head.

Your best bet is to install Linux (Ubuntu or whatever) and use it as your daily use OS. When you find yourself comfortable working in it, doing all the same tasks you do normally under windows and a bit more then you're ready. As for how long it will take, that's totally up to you.

Personally I worked with *nix (Solaris and Red Hat) for a anywhere from 2 to 16 hours a week for a year before I would classify myself as even a 2 on a 5 pt scale.

0 - Sub-Noob (Linoox? Lynux? what's an ISO?)

1 - Noob (wtf is ls? ps -ef .... is that a bad word? wtf is a commandline?)
2 - Not a Noob (I can ls, ps, cut, grep, pipe output, and script a bit and I know why #/usr/bin/girl is funny and understand why there is no place like 127.0.0.1. I get what $PATH and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH are and why they're significant.)
3 - Intermediate (I can comfortably get around in a few different Linux GUIs, I can update the OS without breaking things too badly and recover if I do. My boxen send me alerts when things are busted or breaking. My friends sometimes call me with *nix questions. I admin a few boxes, email flows, web pages are served, etc.)
4 - Expert (I have my own distro...no one uses it but me but I did it just to say I had. I make my own patches/modules/installers. I contribute back to the OS community.)
5 - Professional (Got root? I have my own Beowulf cluster.)

5+ - /me is god, my cluster made the top 500 list

Currently I'd say I'm a 2.5.

[BigTone]

Wow,

What a great community I make a post and 2 pages of helpful responses!....



Ok 2 helpful responses but 2 pages of responses none the less. (I'm gonna love this place )

The question now is, is running Slackware on VMware enough or do I need to get a garbage machine and get nitty gritty on setting it up from scratch?

[webtrol]

I feel very optimistic today so I will say i'm 2 on thorin's scale.
It was kind of easy.....just grab an old machine and install Linux on it and run it as a server for fun. (Im useing Fedora 8 currently - dude it is called WEREWOLF how can you not use it.) The thing that helped me most was learning how to administer it remotely using SSH (previously i used Fedora 7 - dude MOONSHINE!!! etc). If you run server be prepared for defending it from visitors from mainly Asia. (researching all cool tools was fun- but lately i just block that continent in my firewall)
Also it gives you a good legal target to practice against later (your linux machine - not asia).

Ans yes this forum has a great community... they don't always get my humor, and there is that place called "idiots corner"... but many people here REALLY do know about those things with keyboards.

[Andy90]

Always wanted to get into linux on a level, 10 months ago I settled into new job (been there 2-3 months) and someone (from technology department) asked if I had ever had used linux at all, and that this months latest DVD came with ubuntu on... anyway, 10 months later and I'm STARTING to get handy, still need to google everything with drivers and kernels etc, but things like disk management, installing and configuring are all easy to do.

I also learnt VMware in this time, only GSX but enough to be able to use it well, again quite comfortable now, common tasks just roll off my fingers.

Been tinkering with BT2 for about 6-8 weeks now, been doing all scanning and footprinting, and managed first full exploit last night (ms06_040 stuff), and still going (took a while to get a dedicated machine for it and then get WPA working (thanks to these forums and search button)) (just going through that MSF3 book, interesting but complicated lol).

I spend about 15-20 hours a week reading forums and tuts and the lot, and I get a small talk with the guy at work once a week for a 10 minutes when i'm free and he just tells me things to look out for and new things he has heard of.

So yeah in summary, took me 7-8 months to actually start being productive (was already pretty handy-ish on windows) and getting something back, though i do read around a lot, as in just reading posts related to linux and not my problem to learn all sorts, so if I was really pointing in one direction, and dedicated to my problems...... probably 9!!! haha.

Hope it helps.

[circuithead64]

Nobody said not to use Micro$hit I have used it and still have to deal with it on a day to day basis, i also have a WinXP box, a linux laptop,and a freenas server to play with aside from my main PC . My point is that, i say this from experience mind you, the two platforms are very different aside from superficial similarities, approaching a problem on a Linux box from a microsoft perspective often makes things worse not better, you must not confuse the two platforms just because they run on the same hardware (x86), for example : how do you update drivers on a Win Box ? how do you do it on a Linux box?

Linux will run on everything from thumb drives to mainframes...........you'll be lucky if Windows runs at all ( so i am exaggerating a bit....but not much , especially as the OS ages) I am using linux on a workstation at work where i did not get anything but blue screens from XP because of a video driver and minor hardware problem. Linux may require more tweaking in some cases to get it running well but only initially then your usually good to go........winxp, server 2003......i 've worked them both and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't no matter what you do. I have found Windows useful but not rock solid....Linux on the other hand , well all the problems i've had have been caused by my own tinkering . Then of course there is Microsoft's way of doing business but i don't want to get into that...........

[Archangel-Amael]

hxxp://linux dot oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

I read the following last night its a bit long but however it lays out some of the different thought processes about linux vs windows

both have there plus and minuses. If however one is not content with windows then the need for something else arises. I like the challenge in using linux and the fact that I can " mold" it.

Linux forums dot org is also a good place to find information to help learn linux.

[Barry]

Your best bet is to install Linux (Ubuntu or whatever) and use it as your daily use OS. When you find yourself comfortable working in it, doing all the same tasks you do normally under windows and a bit more then you're ready. As for how long it will take, that's totally up to you.

Personally I worked with *nix (Solaris and Red Hat) for a anywhere from 2 to 16 hours a week for a year before I would classify myself as even a 2 on a 5 pt scale.

0 - Sub-Noob (Linoox? Lynux? what's an ISO?)

1 - Noob (wtf is ls? ps -ef .... is that a bad word? wtf is a commandline?)
2 - Not a Noob (I can ls, ps, cut, grep, pipe output, and script a bit and I know why #/usr/bin/girl is funny and understand why there is no place like 127.0.0.1. I get what $PATH and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH are and why they're significant.)
3 - Intermediate (I can comfortably get around in a few different Linux GUIs, I can update the OS without breaking things too badly and recover if I do. My boxen send me alerts when things are busted or breaking. My friends sometimes call me with *nix questions. I admin a few boxes, email flows, web pages are served, etc.)
4 - Expert (I have my own distro...no one uses it but me but I did it just to say I had. I make my own patches/modules/installers. I contribute back to the OS community.)
5 - Professional (Got root? I have my own Beowulf cluster.)

5+ - /me is god, my cluster made the top 500 list

Currently I'd say I'm a 2.5.

Who hoo!!! I'm right around a 2.75 to 3!! Though it helps supporting bsd based boxen on a daily basis. Hell, both my pda's run linux. My current phone doesn't, but the next one might be bsd based, still on the fence on that one. Just keep me away from having to do any real heavy configuration on windows boxen, not up to speed on them. I can get around them okay, but I have to have a screen open in front of me to be able to help people on the phone. I don't know if a vmware image would help much, too much temptation to not use it. Dual booting is a better idea, though there's the possibility of totally hosing both operating systems getting it going. The way I started was picking up a couple of those removable drive bays. Put your windows drive in one and set up a second for linux. Try to do as much of your day to day stuff on the linux drive, and the stuff you can only do in windows on the windows drive. After a while the only thing you'll be using the windows drive for is playing games, that's the only reason I have a windows box down by my feet now, though it does make a good foot rest.