Me and my encounter with Linux

About me:

I am Prayag Sangode, a Linux enthusiast and Linux System Administrator by Professional with almost 5+ years of Experience in administration of hybrid networks containing Linux,Solaris,HP-UX and Windows.I have a sound knowledge on Unix based OS like Linux/Solaris/HP-UX and on Microsoft Windows.In last few years have worked extensively on IBM SAN ,VMWare ESX virtualization and scripting languages like Bash,Perl and PHP.Now days having some hands on CMS like Joomla,Drupal and Mambo.

My Encounter with Linux:

I never wanted to make a career in Computers and never thought would ever teach Linux.But Linux helped me in making a bright career in Linux and I have enjoyed teaching Linux to Linux Enthusiast,Students and Professionals.

It was in 2003 i was having apprenticeship training in one of Government Organisation in India. I was having a general talk with one of my friend. I asked him is there only Windows OS in market or in any Research organisation.I was of the view that only only Microsoft Windows existed in the market.He explained to me,as he was more aware of computers than me, that there are so many OS that exist and he named few. One of those was Linux(other names I still don't remember).Few days passed and I asked him,as I always wanted to know how google.com and rediff.com work and can we ever get to work on such websites or servers, what to learn to know how ".com" business runs and he said learn Linux.He said few days back there was an advertisement in news paper where some body is teaching Linux Course.I said lets join it.

So we went to the Linux Class with so much of enthusiasm that we will get to learn Linux,something different.But our enthusiasm lasted only for two days as the trainer, who used to very proud of himself, as if he is the only superior person who knows Linux and used to make look Linux very difficult,left the training.Now there was no one to teach us Linux.The trainer had taught us just Linux installation and few basic commands and we wanted to learn more.It took several weeks for the Course conductor to get another Linux Trainer,so I bought one second hand Celeron PC with just 333Mz CPU and 64MB RAM.

I was having apprenticeship training in Telecom domain which I didn't enjoy.I started learning Linux on my own.Installed PC Linux which was based on RedHat 7 with only CLI as my PC didn't support GUI and was not aware as to how to trouble shoot GUI problems.I bought book "Linux Complete" and first server which i configured was DNS. Later on after so much of effort installed Apache with virtual host.After installing Apache sever I started gaining confidence and then decide to make career Linux. Thus I started learning Linux on my own and in that Institute started teaching that so some of friends and fellow friends.

This way I got aware about Linux.This was my first encounter with Linux.Now I started enjoying working on Linux,especially on CLI mode. Still love CLI of Linux most rather than GUI part.I really have zest for Linux and it fascinates me.Now I know how the ".com" business runs and how servers and clusters are configured and feel so proud that because of Linux I learned all this.

After working on Linux on my own and with some workshops on Linux in Hyderabad,India I decide to go for RHCE.After gaining RHCE got a job as Linux System Administrator in Mumbai,India and my professional journey of Linux got a new turn.

I would like to urge all the Linux enthusiast and students to go for Linux and promote Linux.I would also like to tell the new-bies,professionals and students that if you know computers and doesn't know Linux,then you are missing so much.

I always say(though people may not like as it being universal truth,also i am not saying its universal truth but my personal opinion), that:

"Who will be called Computer Literate if they don't know anything about Linux?"