Preface

No matter what you do or how long you’ve been doing it in the IT or programming world, if you’re not learning new stuff, you’re probably not doing it right. It’s not that the platforms and paradigms are constantly changing. Nor is it that new business demands require fresh thinking. Or that the bad guys are constantly coming up with new ways to attack your servers. It’s all of those things and more. You can’t afford to stop learning. The trick is finding a way to learn the high-priority skills without turning the experience into a major detour.

It’s my intention and desire that you should be able to read even a single chapter from this book, Linux in Action, and walk away feeling confident enough to take on something challenging and productive—something you wouldn’t previously have even considered. If you hang around until the bitter end, you’ll learn to work with critical and current technologies powering virtualization, disaster recovery, infrastructure security, data backups, web servers, DevOps, and system troubleshooting.

But why Linux? Because Linux powers most of the internet, most scientific research, and most commerce—in fact, most of the world’s servers. Those servers need to be provisioned, launched, secured, and managed effectively by smart and well-trained people. Smart is what you bring to the table, and I think I can help with well trained.

Not sure you know enough about Linux to embark on such an ambitious project? Chapter 1 will quickly fill in the holes. After that, fasten your seat belt and prepare for a serious learning curve.