The Best Linux Distro For Network Engineers

It serves as the upstream edition of RHEL, meaning that the content in the latest edition of CentOS Stream is likely to appear in RHEL’s next release. By using RHEL, you’ll also become familiar with many of the systems you’re likely to encounter on the job.

Knowing which TCP/IP ports of a host are listening for incoming connections is crucial, especially when you’re hardening a server or locking down network equipment. Nmap allows you to quickly verify that; just run the Nmap command followed by the hostname or fully qualified domain name. In this series of posts we will try to make a smooth introduction to Linux for network engineers that have zero to very little knowledge of Linux. The monetary investment will be of minimal cost to you since you will only need to spend $60 (at most) to buy a Raspberry Pi (this includes the board, power supply, SD card, enclosure).

Connecting to Your Linux Device

SDN controllers such as OpenDaylight, ONOS, RYU and APIC-EM run on Linux. A new breed of network devices from companies like Facebook, Microsoft and Cumulus Linux use Linux. OpenSUSE is impressively stable and offers frequent new releases, making it a good option if you prefer to avoid broken packages while still taking advantage of the latest software releases.

When I worked full-time as a network engineer, my Linux skills helped me with the tasks of design, implementation, and support of enterprise networks. Here is a list of some of the command-line utilities I recommend to network engineers. If you want to be the MacGyver of your network, you must know the basics of netcat. If you use it in client linux network engineer mode, it’s similar to telnet, and you can create a TCP connection to a specific port and send anything that you type. Another use case is testing whether your firewall is blocking certain traffic. For example, execute netcat in server mode on a host behind your firewall and then execute netcat in client mode from outside the firewall.

How to Install Linux

This proven reliability is the reason why so many other Linux Server Distributions are based on Debian, including Ubuntu. SLES is fairly agnostic towards architectures and will happily mesh with contemporary hardware environments like ARM SoC, z Systems, Intel, AMD, SAP HANA, and NVM Express over Fabric. Just like with OpenSUSE you get YaST Control Center’s array of features and tools for creating tailored server solutions to fit your precise remit. The world of Linux is growing, and there’s demand for up-and-coming engineers. Linux can be a complex system to learn, but it’s a valuable skill for IT professionals.

This gives the distro good performance, and also, it offers full-fledged customization. At the core, it is designed to follow a strict design principle, and this makes it hard to work with. So, if you are someone with an understanding of the system’s core operation, then the distro is for you.

Why Linux Skills are Important for Network Engineers

Of all the Linux distributions, one of the most highly regarded among network engineers is Fedora—and there’s a simple reason why. The role of a Linux engineer may vary depending on the organization but overall is the same. They’re typically more needed and involved within a tech company than other organizations. Those with Linux skills are sought after in the industry which is why Linux jobs are currently on the rise. Being a Linux engineer allows you to fully support and improve an organization while operating and troubleshooting multiple systems. Tpcdump is a great utility to troubleshoot network and application issues.

• Linux is the #1 operating system for web servers, cloud computing, smart phones and consumer electronics.
• They are the recommended requirement, but you can install Ubuntu on a machine with 512 MB RAM, a 700 Mhz processor, and 5 GB hard-drive space.
• Debian dates back to 1993, so it’s been established to be a stable and reliable partner.
• Bottom line is do you research, I love MATE but im not sure about the developers for Mint because of their past history when it comes to limiting updates.
• Many of the qualities of RHEL that make it attractive as an enterprise solution are just as appealing for independent users.