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Where Should One Go for Unix/Linux Training?
jwitko asks: "I work for an international telecommunications company. They're pretty enormous when it comes to size/budget so their willingness to send employees to get training and to better themselves is pretty strong. I am simply a student who got lucky to become a part-time contractor with this company and I've loved every minute of it. My job primarily relies on working on Unix platforms and installing/configuring our product on laptops for sales people to go out and sell to telecommunications company's (ex: T-Mobile, Verizon, and so forth). However, before I came to this company I had barely ever even touched a Unix-based OS. This summer, I would like to travel to as many different seminars, lectures, and classes to really get experience with *nix based operating systems and learn a lot more about how to use them. Where are some good places to find ongoing seminars, lectures, etc. in Unix and Linux that you think would really help a somewhat-new guy learn a lot and become more experienced?"
There has already been some good feedback - get a book, put up a sandbox system of your own to try, and finally, at the end of the day, there is no substitute for real world hands-on training.
That said, I presume you work with a finite set of operating systems. In my experience, the best training courses tend to be the certification track offerings from the OS vendor. Sun, HP, IBM, Red Hat, Novell, and the others know their operating systems very well. The drawback to this approach is that most companies depend on third-party software to perform critical functions - backup/recovery, authentication, remote management, etc. No single source will typically offer formal training on your company's stack unless you have a large training organization.
That said, many large companies do have just such a large training organization that offers specialized courses on their own environment. Take advantage of that to get better at your job, but look to the vendors for more general and reusable training.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
I recommend Slackware (www.slackware.com) along with the official book, Slackbook: www.slackbook.org. Slackware and Slackbook is a nice introduction to Linux. You can view it online or download a PDF.
Slackware is, as far as I know, the oldest Linux distribution in existance. It is simple and clear. I hear comments say that it is very close to pure Unix (I can't say myself, I haven't used Unix, nor any of the modern BSDs). It's a a "do it yourself" fashion, it doesn't rely on configuration "wizards". From an educational point of view, I think that it is the best way to go.
There is a "slogan" saying, "When you learn a X/Y/Z distribution (Fedora, Suse, etc), you know that X/Y/Z distribution. When you learn Slackware, you know Linux."
One suggestion: You can have a dual-boot with Slackware and another, more "automated", distribution, like Ubuntu, Suse, Fedora, etc.
I have no idea what *nix-based operating systems you use at work, and, thusly, I have no idea which sorts of *nix you'd really like to learn; please do keep that in mind.
Pick a Linux distribution that doesn't hold your hand with graphical installers and graphical system administration tools, and preferably one without a crutch like apt-get or rpm. I would recommend Slackware, because it's one of the best distributions for learning how to run a Linux system. Google is your friend, alongside forums like Linux Questions. You might give a basic book like O'Rielly's Running Linux a look, as well, but the actual learning is going to come from your experience.
Next, pick a BSD distribution and do the same thing. FreeBSD is pretty popular, but you might also want to try OpenBSD.
Going to conferences and symposia probably wont teach you very much, unless they're intensive introduction to Linux/BSD/*nix flavour events.