You need to familiarize yourself with the unix feel as most here have suggested. But if you are going to be sys admin, *just* installing/using on your home machine won't do you a whole lot of good. Using != administering. I don't use NIS or LDAP at home on linux, but I do at work. I don't evern bother with NFS at home though I do use a trivial Samba setup.
There are a lot of things you might do when administering a network of linux/unix machines that you wouldn't do when using linux as your desktop os at home. i.e., I know window quite well, and have used for long time, but I couldn't administer it for shit (services/security/updates).
A couple of suggestions:
1. take a ADMIN course as you are looking into. I would install linux as a desktop os at home to familiarize yourself with it for a month before taking the admin course. the more familiar you are with it the more you will get out of the admin course. I would install a "just works" distro like Mandrake/Suse/RedHat, as most likely your course will focus on Suse or Redhat anyway. Take debian/slack/gentoo later ( you may find them easier than M/S/RH once you know linux).
2. install linux at home on *multiple* machines. Two should be enough. set up stuff that you would use in industry like NIS/LDAP, NFS, etc, etc.
No matter what, you will learn more on the job than anywhere else so...
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You need to familiarize yourself with the unix feel as most here have suggested. But if you are going to be sys admin, *just* installing/using on your home machine won't do you a whole lot of good. Using != administering. I don't use NIS or LDAP at home on linux, but I do at work. I don't evern bother with NFS at home though I do use a trivial Samba setup. There are a lot of things you might do when administering a network of linux/unix machines that you wouldn't do when using linux as your desktop os at home. i.e., I know window quite well, and have used for long time, but I couldn't administer it for shit (services/security/updates). A couple of suggestions: 1. take a ADMIN course as you are looking into. I would install linux as a desktop os at home to familiarize yourself with it for a month before taking the admin course. the more familiar you are with it the more you will get out of the admin course. I would install a "just works" distro like Mandrake/Suse/RedHat, as most likely your course will focus on Suse or Redhat anyway. Take debian/slack/gentoo later ( you may find them easier than M/S/RH once you know linux). 2. install linux at home on *multiple* machines. Two should be enough. set up stuff that you would use in industry like NIS/LDAP, NFS, etc, etc. No matter what, you will learn more on the job than anywhere else so...