In order to learn Linux (or most things) an excellent way besides tinkering randomly is to set specific goals.
When I was a kid I was taking a sailing course when my uncle (a seasoned sailor) asked me what we've been doing. I told him we've been just sailing around as we pleased and he said that was pretty bad, like learning how to drive by driving in an empty parking lot. He said we should try to get to this buoy first, then to this one etc.
I suggest (unless you are very interested in desktops) you get a Linux server in the cloud (rackspace is $12/mo), this will get you connectivity, it will force you to use the command line and you can always re-install it with a click if you mess up.
Make a list of objectives. If you need some suggestions:
- create a mail server, add users, manage forwarders, aliases, spam, why your messages don't reach hotmail etc.
- play with the firewall, how to deal with a bit of DoS, what about those pesky ssh brute-force scans?
- install a honeypot
- create DNS server
- install monitoring tools
- get some web app (wordpress, drupal for example), benchmark/stress test the heck out of them, try changing caching and other things, how to optimize apache etc
- write some shell scripts to automate/check some of the things you've done
When I was a kid I was taking a sailing course when my uncle (a seasoned sailor) asked me what we've been doing. I told him we've been just sailing around as we pleased and he said that was pretty bad, like learning how to drive by driving in an empty parking lot. He said we should try to get to this buoy first, then to this one etc.
I suggest (unless you are very interested in desktops) you get a Linux server in the cloud (rackspace is $12/mo), this will get you connectivity, it will force you to use the command line and you can always re-install it with a click if you mess up.
Make a list of objectives. If you need some suggestions:
- create a mail server, add users, manage forwarders, aliases, spam, why your messages don't reach hotmail etc.
- play with the firewall, how to deal with a bit of DoS, what about those pesky ssh brute-force scans?
- install a honeypot
- create DNS server
- install monitoring tools
- get some web app (wordpress, drupal for example), benchmark/stress test the heck out of them, try changing caching and other things, how to optimize apache etc
- write some shell scripts to automate/check some of the things you've done
etc