Teaching Linux/Unix Basics to Microsoft Junkies?

flupps asks: "I've been asked to hold a two-day crash course in a class of students that currently are studying to become MCSD certified. I'm looking for ideas how to set this up. I was thinking about starting with some general file system descriptions, where to find what files, the man pages, the tab-button, etc. After that move on to some of the daemons and just explain what they do." He's got at least one idea to start with (below), but what must-have skills or demonstrations would you add?

I also plan to set a database program in VB (one of the certificates in the MCSD suite) against a MySQL or Postresql db and show that there are free alternatives that works as well as SQL server.

What would you think could be a good addition to teach them?

This is in no way meant to be a very advanced course, but I want to show some of the excellence of *nix and why you sometimes can save time and stability and maybe make them interested and read up more by themselves afterwards.

Any suggestions very welcome.

Comments

Re:Dont get carried away

[slamb]

I dont mean to cast dispersions on MySQL or PostreSQL, they are very good databases, but not in the same league as SQLServer, IMHO.

I'm also interested in hearing why you think Microsoft SQL Server is better than PostgreSQL. I've used PostgreSQL and Oracle and feel that PostgreSQL is as good or better in many situations. I'd be surprised if MS SQL Server had any real advantages over Oracle (except price, and it can't compete with PostgreSQL there).

Oracle's two big advantages, as I see them, are:

• Large database features. There are a million features that contribute to this. Manufactured views, clustering, different tablespaces, quotas, replication, etc.
• Extra software. Stuff like Oracle Forms & Reports is really great for rapid development. I haven't seen anything cross-database or PostgreSQL-specific that can match that at all.

On the other hand, PostgreSQL has:

• Ease of administration. Oracle administration seems really, really complicated, even when you don't use any of those extra features. [*] PostgreSQL is very simple to set up correctly and keep running correctly. In my experience, keeping a database healthy is little more than doing a vacuum analyze in a cron job or something.
• Lower cost. You can get the database free, with volunteer support from the mailing lists. If you want paid support, you can buy it as the RedHat Database, still with a much lower cost than Oracle.
• Open source. I don't think I need to say here why this is good.

Now, MySQL...I don't understand why you'd use it when PostgreSQL is available. I certainly won't take quite as seriously anyone who advocates using it. It's not even a relational database, by definition. See Codd's Rule #10, for example. (I don't think any database supports all of these rules perfectly, but MySQL in particular is quite sad.)

[*] - I don't actually administer an Oracle database. I just use one and try to have some understanding of how its administration is done.