Seeking Hands-on Training Programs?

thekernel32 asks: "Recently the topic of getting people trained in the Linux/UNIX environment has troubled me. Where are people going for this stuff? I recall taking an Microsoft Networking Essentials class that I dropped out of. The reason why I dropped the Microsoft class was because we were being taught about the existence of Routers, File Servers and other networking topics, but we never saw or [worked with] any of them. I really feel that it would have been more useful to get hands on experience with daemons and real hardware, rather than just being told that they exist. What decent training programs out there have a hands on approach?"

Comments

hands on approach?

[orthogonal]

Recently the topic of getting people trained in the Linux/UNIX environment has troubled me.... What decent training programs out there have a hands on approach?

Well, with linux, you have three choices:

• a turgid man page: it's guaranteed to list every command line switch, and possibly even describe a few of those switches. Unless it's a GNU/utility, in which case you should see the Info page. The Info page is hidden somewhere inside of emacs, which is the real OS.
  
• the source code itself: it's GPL'd after all, and if we have to write it to produce the functionality, you ought to have to read it to use the functionality. Please disregard (but only at your peril) any comments; they're probably out of date, and certainly obscure. Unless the comment mentions "here be dragons" or "may overflow on some architectures".
  
• the hairy ass: kissing the ass of a linux guru will sometimes get you an answer, along with condescension, contempt and strong body odor whilst you're told (between muttered "umask 077" calculations) how it's intuitively obvious.
  

Hands on. Yeh.

Linux is free: download it, install it, disconnect it from the modem until you know what you're doing, and play with it. That's about as hands on as you can get.

Did I mention it's free? And that rabid OS zealots will be more than happy to help you install it if you act at all attracted to the Kool Aid they're pushing? And did I mention it's free?