Will Your Next Job Be Linux-Related?

17 Years Ago khess 0 305 Views

Here's some good news for a change: Linux-related jobs are on the rise. According to the freelance marketplace, Odesk, the number of Linux jobs has increased more than 1,400% since 2006. This sharp increase as raised some eyebrows over at The Linux Foundation and they're responding appropriately.

The Linux Foundation is kicking off Linux training classes starting with:
Essential Linux Device Driver Development Skills
Creating Applications for Linux
Kernel Debugging and Performance

Of course, this career boost comes at a price--a pretty high one too. The two-day training will set you back $1,099. You also receive a full pass for the 3-day .

It might be worth the $1,100 plus travel and expenses to make the trip to meet up with others like yourself and the influential minds in the Linux development world. Bring some resumes with you. I suggest you purchase several dozen small USB thumb drives, put your resume on them with samples of your work, and hand them out like candy at this conference.

If you snag a job while you're there, remember where you read about it. Drop me a line to let me know how you do.

Dani AI

Generated 9 Months Ago

is right that Linux-focused openings are plentiful, and to answer directly: a "Linux job" is any role where Linux is the primary platform or the core of the work you do. That can mean running and supporting Linux servers, developing kernel code or device drivers, building embedded Linux images, creating Linux-native applications or services, or operating platform/cloud infrastructure where Linux is the runtime. The common thread is that employers expect day‑to‑day fluency with Linux internals, tooling, or ecosystems.

Typical job families include:

System / Linux Administrator or Engineer
Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) / DevOps Engineer
Linux Kernel Developer / Driver Engineer
Embedded Linux / Firmware Engineer
Cloud Platform / Container Engineer
Security / Incident Response focused on Linux
Build, Packaging, or Release Engineer
Application Developer targeting Linux environments

Practical skills to demonstrate: strong shell skills, text tooling, Git, C (for kernel/driver work), a scripting language (Bash/Python/Go), service management (systemd), networking basics, containers/VMs, and debugging/tracing (strace, perf, ftrace, gdb). Be ready to show concrete, reproducible work — a small repo, a patch, or a demo environment. Quick examples interviewers may ask you to run locally:

# Check recent boot/kernel messages
journalctl -b | tail -n 50
dmesg | tail -n 50

# Trace a userspace program
strace -f -o /tmp/trace.txt ./your-binary

# Basic kernel build steps (from kernel tree)
make defconfig
make -j$(nproc)

Preparation checklist: choose a target role, build 2–3 polished artifacts (GitHub repos, a one‑page résumé, and a short demo), contribute a small patch you can explain, and practice troubleshooting live. On networking: as points out, meeting people at events helps — prefer shareable, verifiable links or QR codes to a portfolio rather than handing out anonymous USB drives, and be ready to talk concretely about what you built and how you tested it.

Rashakil Fol 978 Super Senior Demiposter

17 Years Ago

Could you define the term "linux job"?

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