observations

my first observation regarding linux is that no matter what linux believers claim it wasn't designed for having fun, linux machines tend to be serious servers that refuse to play movies, music or even accept tv tuner cards. not to mention there isnt a single acceptable linux game (Even though linux servers are widely used for gaming networks), ah also it doesn't run msn/yahoo voice/vedio chat.

linux machines are killer servers though, they run smoothly and are extremely resilient (i've had a linux machine up for 12 days and performance didnt drop a bit), the amount of services a machine running linux can be almost limitless, not to mention they are way easier to start stop and maintain than windows servers (that always tend to restart whenever needed the most).

my final conclusion though is that i can't not have a windows machine somewhere when needed to run movies, play games and vedio chat on, anything else i'd go for linux all the time.

the start

I first came in contact with oracle in my junior year in university, and instantly I was totally hooked, for some reason Oracle came as a second nature to me, as my friends cursed and swore at their computers trying to install oracle and failing miserably every time, I failed miserably at first but being the over achiever i am i locked my self home and read all the material I could find and finally I managed to install it successfully, as the news spread every body in my class started showing at my home with their computers to have me install oracle for them. I loved the attention i got, and how things that made perfect sense for me were so impossible for everybody else to understand, doing some calculation I figured out that I'd never be a superstar developers even though I enjoyed development far more than administration but as a career development isn't as fruitful as administration.

I attended oracle 10 g administration workshop I, I just sailed through it, knowing that no way real life was that easy (surprisingly I was perfectly right) the instructor just pointed out things to us, what really was useful though was the interaction with the people who attended the course, they were seasoned 8i/9i administrators who wanted to upgrade to 10g...I tried to gain as much as i could interacting with them...not much later I got my OCA certificate in the mail, with that lovely red oracle seal on it.

That was a year ago, ever since I started serving in the military everything was put on pause, now that i have less than 2 months left I started studying again revising everything I learnt and trying to learn linux administration as well.

this blog will be mostly about me trying to learn oracle/linux administration.