Okay, so I'm not a complete newb when it comes to using Unix/Linux. I've been using Ubuntu for a few years now and I've dipped my toes into a few other distros but now I want to get a bit serious.
I'm looking at becoming a sysadmin but the trouble is...I have no idea where to start. What I'm looking for is:
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Which distro would be best for some home-based practise? I know a lot of companies use Red-Hat so maybe Fedora? Or Debian?
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What skills are essential even for a beginner sysadmin?
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Where is a good website/place to start learning?
Thanks for your patience in advance.
I suggest either CentOS or Debian. Both of these are extensively used in production systems.
As for skills: I suggest you learn how to quickly install and configure a system, add and configure users using various authentication schemes, software package management, log and scheduled job (cron, at, etc.) management, printer management (CUPS) and user quotas.
Then learn how to quickly and accurately install and configure web servers, mail (Sendmail, Postfix, etc.), IPtables, NFS, Samba, ACLs, Squid, DNS (Server, Client, Caching), vsftpd, SSH, NIS, automount, SELinux.
That should keep you busy for a month or two!