How to proceed with the transition to Linux administration?

Question

linux

Greetings.
A completely banal question. As a system administrator - an administrator of Windows environments, I am tired of the pluralism of duties and consider it necessary to move into more specific administration. Namely the world of Linux. Of course, I have experience in deploying and supporting some basic Linux-based services, but this is not enough to work as a "Linux System Administrator".
I'm interested in Big Data (but I'm very bad at math), and highload (by this I mean load balancers, caching servers as a frontend and web servers with replication using the same GlusterFS with separate databases as a backend). CI tools like SaltStack, Ansible and Docker containerization, plus deployment with Vagrant. I tried all this in the labs, something even took root on non-critical services.
One of the best options, I see a change of employer with a decrease in salary and position, because. in battle, I will quickly master the necessary technologies. Perhaps someone will share the transition experience and / or ideas?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Almost all my life I changed jobs with a decrease in salary and then its sharp increase, if it’s boring in the old place, then it makes sense to sit there.

Answer 2

Look for a place for a Linux padawan, there will be a guru who will coach you.
Another point - on the desktop, change the OS to Linux, this will speed up the transition process

Answer 3

I sat under Windows all my life, then got a job, where everything was also under it, but the brakes of many services became noticeable, for example, those written in Python. It is understandable - where did you see a fast Apache under Windows?
I made myself a couple of virtual machines with Linux, poked around different distributions, slowly transferred almost all the servers of the company and serviced organizations to Linux (Debian 7, now I put 8).
Conclusions after three years of use:
Manjaro - the same Arch, only with a human face, rolling releases, new kernels and proprietary drivers, ideal for the desktop, but better take the build with XFCE4, the sneaker is terribly slow and often crashes. Niasilil, in short.
Debian8 - easy to learn, huge community and number of manuals, the best solution for servers. There are certain problems, for example, anal fencing in terms of software licenses (which prevents local Linux ladies from adding non-free contrib to the lines in /etc/apt/sources.list - I don’t know), there are not always drivers for new equipment, and even for old too. I didn’t get up on one of the servers, because after a reboot at the end of the installation, it ceases to consider the FakeRAID array as a RAID array. Oh, yes, you can red-eye and compile a bucket and almost all other software, just like in Source-based distributions! Would it come in handy? Google apt-build. There is an official repository with backports, I just helped out yesterday when I needed to update Redis on the 7th version of Debian to 2.8.
CentOS is a free and stripped down RHEL. Good for servers, but a lot of what Debian has in standard turnips needs to be installed there from some wet left-hand repositories, where three and a half people monitor quality and reliability (unlike Debian). However, it supports more hardware and problems with it (iron, not distro) are usually less. In addition, the support period is 10 years, unlike Debian, where it is much shorter. Read more on Wiki for free without SMS.
ubuntu- buggy crooked shit even in LTS. What we have now: 14.04.3 LTS, half of the packages in which are much older than in Debian 8 (everything gets a little better with ppa, but you still need to build EMACS from sorts, or use PPA with the tested branch). Stability? Yes, you are playing me! Unity? Who the hell needs her anyway? Maybe the distribution kit is good for absolute noobs, since there are a lot of programs for setting up, the same AppCenter, you can still screw ppa ... You already hear the sound of a tambourine, right? I will also throw in the fact that any Ubuntu is created on the basis of the current tested branch of Debian. Ah, Valve with their SteamOS built on Debian-stable...
OpenSUSE. Maybe this susia is good, but I was scared away by the lack of codecs out of the box and a complex package management system. To earn what I need, I spent a lot of time and nerves. I did not install it on the server, because there are CentOS and Debian. One friend recommends this distribution and has been using it for 5 years already, but he could not convince me. It is worth at least paying attention to it. There is Thumbleweed, which allows you to use fresh software (not all, but some) even on LTS.
FreeBSD . Pure server system. Assembling packages from sorts. Stability. Reliability. All this is covered by the complexity of configuration and administration, i.e. requires a competent, thoughtful approach and a lot of free time and literature. Not for the sake of holivar, but many major IT players, the same Yandex, have long been dumped from fryahi to Linux.
OpenBSD . * nix-system in its classical sense. Perhaps the best of the distributions, but personally I even had to google to turn off the virtual machine normally, and not by sending an ACPI signal.

Answer 4

Who told you that this is not enough? Have you gone to interviews yet?

Answer 5

Start by installing linux on the desktop, and then experiment and develop.

Answer 6

"Being a system administrator - an administrator of Windows environments" - for a start, transfer all these "environments" to Linux, then you can already become a filed.