Providing tech support for your children can be even more challenging than your IT day job. Jack Wallen explains why he thinks Linux is better suited for those young users.

Here on TechRepublic (and many IT-related forums), we speak mostly of the professional aspects of our IT jobs. The problem is, we go home and, in many cases, our IT work continues. Part of it involves keeping our children’s computers running and running well. Sometimes, that job can be a bigger challenge than the task of keeping the adults in our business up and running.

But why put yourself through this when you can install Linux on a machine for your child/teen and avoid the headaches? In this article, I will give you 10 good reasons why you should do just this. In the end, you can decide for yourself whether they’re reason enough to migrate those young users away from other operating systems.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: Viruses/malware

This reason is always at the top of my list. We all know kids are prone to opening and installing things they shouldn’t. Because you can’t watch your children 100 percent of the time, you can’t know where they’re getting those applications or attachments from. You can make sure those machines have antivirus and anti-spyware, but why even take the chance? When your kids are using the Linux operating system, this concern becomes moot.

2: Security

This can be summed up easily. If you don’t give your children the root password, they can’t run with root privileges. Of course, you hit a little snag when using a distribution like Ubuntu. For any sudo-based operating system, you will need to edit the /etc/sudoers file to give your young users the privileges they need.

3: Cost effectiveness

Let’s say you have a younger user who is getting a hand-me-down machine that needs an OS reinstall. If you don’t have that copy of Windows around, you’re stuck purchasing a new copy. This can also be applied to any number of applications you might have to pay for. Avoid these costs altogether by handing that child the same machine running Linux. You won’t have pay for the OS license or any application that child might need or want. On top of that, they’ll have the Add/Remove Software tool ,where they can hunt around and find just about anything they would need… all on their own! You can also run a modern distribution on much less hardware than you will need for Vista or Windows 7.

4: Age-specific tools

Did you know there are distributions/software groups designed specifically for young adults and children? There is Sugar, geared for K-6, Edubuntu, for ages 3-18, LinuxKidX, for ages 2-15, Foresight Kids, for ages 3-12, and many others. These age-specific tools are well suited for the group they target with graphics and language tuned for the age range. And some of the distributions geared specifically for younger kids lock the operating system down tightly so that only certain tasks can be run.

5: Netbooks

Little kids make great netbook users. They have smaller hands and fingers that can handle a cramped keyboard, and they can easily sit with a small machine in their lap. And the Linux operating system is ideally suited to run on netbooks. You can install either a full-blown OS or a netbook-specific OS, along with whatever software you need on the netbook, making it an excellent choice for the younger audiences.

6: Agile learners

If you put a Linux-based machine in front of a young user, you won’t hear complaints like, “Why can’t it run Quicken!” or “I need my custom payroll app to run on this!” Most kids will master the Linux operating system quickly (and adroitly), with a minimal learning curve. Young minds adapt so well, your kids won’t have any trouble adjusting to any differences. You could probably sit a child down with a Gentoo box running CDE or AfterStep and he or she would have it figured out in less time than it took you to explain what Linux means.

7: Staying in step

I know this one will bring out the ire in many readers. I’m not saying any operating system is used more than any other. But Linux is used worldwide. Many countries as a whole have adopted Linux. The future of Linux is very bright — and it seems to be getting brighter. So why not give your children a head start on what could possibly be the future of the PC? This also applies for those fledgling IT pros out there. If Windows is so user friendly, kids spending most of their time on Linux should have no problem grasping Windows. In fact, I would argue that it will enhance the child’s ability to fully grasp the operating system and how the PC really works.

8: Learning opportunities

Open source emboldens education. It practically screams, “Open me up and learn!” What better way to help youngsters learn than by giving them the ability to do just that? With really curious children, the desire to learn is extraordinary — so why lock them down with closed source software? When a child is exposed to open source software and an open source operating system, the educational opportunities are limitless.

9: A lesson in community

This one might seem a bit of a stretch… but I am an idealist, so I hope you’ll go with it. Teaching children the value of open source software helps them understand community. Although your young users aren’t likely to open up the source code of the applications they’re using, in today’s constantly evolving, community-driven world, they need every advantage they can get as they grow up. Having a sound understanding of open source will help them to understand, at an early age, what it means to really work with and for a team. Using Linux at such an early age also indirectly teaches children the benefit of volunteering — something many of us need to learn more about.

10: Content filtering

Linux has numerous ways to handle content filtering for your young users. From DansGuardian to SquidGuard to the manual editing of the /etc/hosts file, you can filter content in Linux far more granularly than you can in Windows — and just as easily. Add to this the ability to lock down what your young user can and can’t do (without having to add third-party software), and Linux quickly becomes a safe computing environment for your child.

Found at http://www.globalknowledge.com/articles/generic.asp?pageid=2475&country=United+States

Linda Leung

August 2009

No matter which IT field you’re working in, there are several skills that are useful for every IT professional to know. Here, seven experienced IT professionals working in the networking, programming, project management, and security fields share what they believe are the most important skills that every IT pro should know.

1. Programming

Even if your job doesn’t require software development, it’s useful to understand how applications are built because everything we do — from following Twitter feeds to filling out expense forms — is enabled by software. IT professionals with an academic background in computer science will likely have done some programming as part of their education. For others, there are many ways of learning programming.

Martin Harvey, PMP, managing consultant at Coroware, says: “The language I’d recommend learning would be any C-based language. It’s a fairly common language that can be found in Microsoft and Java platforms, but it’s not trivial. At the other end of the spectrum there are more interpretive languages such as Visual Basic and Python. It’s easy to mess around with Visual Basic and Excel macros on your PC. You’ll learn about the fundamentals of programming and the logic of how data is stored.”

2. Learning from the book The Mythical Man-Month

Publisher Addison-Wesley Professional describes the book The Mythical Man-Month as “influential and timeless.” Originally published in 1975, author Fred Brooks shares his experiences as project manager for IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Brooks made several mistakes including adding more workers to a project falling behind schedule, and underestimating the time it would take to complete a project. The book was republished in 1995 with new thoughts and advice from Brooks. Harvey says: “It’s like 100 things your mother told you. I still made some of the mistakes after reading it. But if you read the book, maybe you won’t make the mistakes or you will recognize that you are making them and know when to duck.”

3. Understanding the basics of networking

“The network is how everything connects and every IT pro should know how that happens,” says George Morton, a dual CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert). Morton says IT pros should study and understand the following:

• Who is Cisco, Juniper, etc., and what do they offer. “Knowing that Dell makes switches won’t get you to the top of the game,” says Morton.
• TCP/IP and IP addressing
• Network Address Translation and Port Address Translation
• IPv6. “It is coming and the sooner you get on board the better for your career,” Morton says.
• IP telephony: packet vs. switched
• What are routers, switches, and firewalls?
• Basic Access-List configuration for Cisco
• To be able to read a Cisco IOS running configuration; not so you administer the router but just understand what it is or isn’t doing for you.
• Be familiar with guidance from the National Security Agency’s Information Assurance for securing your network.

Morton recommends several books:

• Cisco Networking Simplified
  A first-class introduction to networking
• Cisco IOS Cookbook, Second Edition
  This book should be on every IT manager’s desk. I use it to build some of the world’s most complex networks. Why? It’s easy to read, creates standards for the client, and covers almost everything I need.
• JUNOS Cookbook and ScreenOS Cookbook

4. Know security best practices within your IT discipline

Given that businesses are moving or have moved aggressively toward relying on online digital resources to conduct their day-to-day operations, it is critical that those resources stay highly available and secure. Jamey Heary, CCIE, a security consulting systems engineer at Cisco, explains: “Without exception, the IT discipline that you choose will have security risks associated with it. To be successful at your discipline you must be aware of what those risks are and what the best practices are to lower those risks. You must understand the risk/benefit trade offs as well so you can make the right business decisions and apply the proper amount of security controls. Too much security is just as bad as too little. With too much security it is likely that your users will view your IT services as unusable. With too little security you open yourself up to attack and risk great damage to the company, customers, and the brand name you work for. Security is a balancing act that you need to understand (at least at a high level) for your specific job role.

“For network security you can implement security controls like firewalls, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS), etc. For Windows Server security, you can implement controls like strong passwords, expiring passwords, disk encryption, antivirus, etc. For e-mail security you can implement antispam, antivirus, antimalware engines that scrub the mail before delivery. Every IT discipline will have its own set of security best practices that should be adopted to decrease your risk of being compromised by a hacker.”

5. The benefits and caveats of capital expenditures

IT is a capital-intensive business and all IT people should understand the process of capital investments, says Michael Morris, CCIE, CCDE (Cisco Certified Design Expert), a communications engineering manager at a $3 billion high-tech company.

He says: “IT makes huge capital investments. Capital investments are purchases (servers, network gear, software applications) that are bought with cash, but are categorized as assets. The actual “cost” of these purchases is not incurred immediately. Instead, this cost is expensed in the form of depreciation, generally over three years. This provides the IT organization the ability to buy equipment now, but doesn’t cause a huge impact to the company’s bottom line. This is good, because companies can get what they need immediately.

“The problem is that these costs (depreciation) are now “fixed costs” and cannot be avoided. Every quarter, a portion of the cost of that new server you bought a year ago will hit the books (both the IT budget and the company’s expenses). If the economy gets worse (sound familiar?), these costs cannot be avoided so companies must find other costs to cut. These other costs – called “variable” costs – include employees, who are often the first to go.

“Capital spending is a balancing act. It is needed and provides a great way to spread out costs, but can lead to sticky situations when hard choices have to be made.”

6. IP addressing

At the root of almost all online communications today is the Internet Protocol (IP). At the heart of IP communications is IP addressing. Jamey Heary explains: “Knowing how IP addressing works is crucial knowledge for any IT professional. Every host, server, router, firewall, and network device must have at least one IP address assigned to it in order to communicate with other network hosts/devices. If you assign IP addresses incorrectly not only will the device not be able to ‘talk’ on the network, but you could also do harm to existing network devices.

“An IP address is a numerical 32-bit numbering scheme used by the IP protocol for identifying where something is. In many ways, an IP address is analogous to your house address. For example, to send a letter to someone I first put my return address on the envelope and second I put their house address on the envelope. The source IP address field in an IP packet is just like the return address on an envelope. It defines who sent or is sending the data packet. The destination IP address field in an IP packet is just like the house address on an envelope. It defines to whom I want the data packet to go.

“An IP address is represented in dotted decimal notation; four numbers from 0-255 that are separated by a decimal point (172.16.1.200). The IP address itself is broken up into two parts, the network address and the host address. The network address is very much like a zip code on an envelope; it provides the general area to deliver the message to. The host address portion of an IP address is very much like the house number and street address on an envelope, it defines exactly what location to deliver the message to.

The post office will quickly sort mail based on zip code, and send it to a local zip code post office where the street number, etc., are then parsed and given to the correct postman for delivery to the right house. In IP, the post office job is done by IP routing. It looks at the network portion (also called a subnet) of the IP address and delivers the data packet to the general location or subnet.

Once at the subnet a switch takes over (acting as the postman) and delivers the data packet to the host using the host portion of the IP address. Host IP addresses must be unique for every device in a given subnetwork. For the same reasons you can’t have two “12 East Lane Rd, Tinytown, NY 22121,” addresses, you also can’t have duplicate IP addresses. If you did, there would be no way to uniquely identify who to deliver a message to. Note: There is a thing called Network Address Translation in IP that helps with this problem, but that is for another discussion.

7. Perl and Tcl

Jimmy Ray Purser, network engineer at Cisco and technical co-host for Cisco’s TechWise and BizWise TV, believes all IT pros should understand and be able to write a simple Perl or Tcl script. “The entire world of networking opens up to an IT pro who can write even the most basic of scripts.” It is easier to learn than IP subnetting, and there are many great free resources on the Internet to learn it,” he says. He points to two useful resources: Perl scripting 101 and Tcl scripting 101.

8. Using the OSI model for network troubleshooting

Networks are built on the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) reference model, a seven-layer stack where control is passed from one layer to the next. Having an understanding of the model will enable you to better troubleshoot networking problems, as Michael Patterson, co-founder of network monitoring company Plixer International explains. Below, Patterson maps the seven layers to their related troubleshooting questions.

1. Physical layer: Do you understand the topology? Is the user plugged into the network?
2. Data Link layer: Can the technician use a packet analyzer like Wireshark?
3. Network layer: Does the tech understand IP logic and subnet masks? How is a packet routed on the businesses network?
4. Transport layer: How does TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) operate Vs. UDP (User Datagram Protocol)? Is it an ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) packet or an IP Frame?
5. Session layer: Can the user connect to or ping the server? What is the time out for idle connections?
6. Presentation layer: Does the tech understand basic HTML code, SNMP, and ASN.1?
7. Application layer: The tech may not understand the application, but he or she should understand how applications can impact the network.

The technician should also be able to set up NetFlow on Cisco equipment or the industry standard sFlow to capture traffic data for analytical purposes.

9. Packet sniffing

Before you even use a packet sniffer – a network monitoring tool for network troubleshooting – understand how to set it up. “This means understanding the impact of the NIC (network interface controller) on accuracy and performance; when to use a SPAN (Switched Port Analyzer) port over a TAP (test access point) and vice-versa; and when to TCPDump/Tethereal over Wireshark,” says Jimmy Ray Purser. You’ll need to understand the various start-up options and how to configure Berkeley Packet Filters to clean up your packet stream, he adds.

10. Google is your friend

IT infrastructure expert Rocco (he didn’t want his full name revealed) says: “Don’t be afraid to ask for help.” Oftentimes, Google is your best friend. Rocco says: “I have a real tough time remembering acronyms. A quick link to a current list is always helpful (Google it!). For example, I’ve been working on Web infrastructure a long time; I know all the components. A business development guy asked me to set up a LAMP server for testing. This is how I remember the definition of LAMP:

“L – Linux. I don’t set up Windows servers anymore so of course it will be Linux
A- Apache. Come on get real. Is there really an alternative to Apache?
M – MySQL. Well duh! I’m not paying for Oracle unless I really need to.
P – PHP. It’s been a long, long time since I setup Apache without PHP.”

Rocco adds: “He could have asked me to set up a Web server and database and receive an instant answer, but instead he threw out acronyms he probably didn’t understand.”

11. Create a good PowerPoint presentation

All IT professionals – from VPs to individual engineers – need to be able to construct a logical and visually appealing PowerPoint presentation to communicate to other people, suggests Michael Morris. And don’t think you can get away with black-and-white PPTs with page after page of bullets. “Use of a slide master template along with proper logos and colors are a minimum,” Morris says. “Proper use of charts, models, and diagrams will also enhance your message and engage the audience.” And remember, when presenting to anyone more than two positions above you (like the CIO), you need to condense your presentation down to three slides. “If you can’t get it into three slides, it’s too confusing and too much for an executive. Consider yourself a PPT expert when you can create a visually engaging presentation with proper corporate logos and colors using a variety of tables, charts, and models in only three slides.”

12. Keep your e-mail under control

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by your e-mail inbox, but being 2,000 e-mails behind is just not acceptable these days, says Michael Morris. “For most companies, e-mail is the primary communications medium between people and especially groups. Being 2,000 e-mails behind and complaining you can’t catch up is a poor excuse. Today there are filters, organizers, alerts, webmail, and this new thingy call BlackBerry. Stay on top of your e-mail. No excuses.”

13. Know why network delay is bad

Almost all traffic that runs across networks today – including the Internet – uses Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). TCP requires an acknowledgement (ACK) from time to time during a data transfer session. When TCP reaches a point where it determines an ACK is needed, it stops sending traffic and waits for an ACK from the other end of the TCP session. Only after an ACK is received does the data transfer start again.

Michael Morris explains: “In this setup, when the user and the server are right next to each other (let’s say in the same building), the ACK arrives in very, very short time (under 1 ms). This creates a very short pause in the data transfer session. The TCP algorithm can then ramp up the data transfer rate to near 1Gbps.

“However, when the distance between user and server is great, it can take a while for an ACK to reach the server. It could take 300 ms to go from the U.S. to India over a WAN (300 times longer than when user and server are in the same building). Thus, the data transfer pause is much longer. TCP’s algorithms then can only send traffic at a much slower rate, which impacts user performance.

“All IT people should understand this simple paradigm. As network delay increases, data transfer rate will fall, precipitously. Remember this when your users in Germany are saying the server in California is slow in the morning.”

Resources:

The Mythical Man-Month
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0201835959

National Security Agency’s Information Assurance
http://www.nsa.gov/ia/

Cisco Networking Simplified

http://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=1587201992

Cisco IOS Cookbook, Second Edition
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527228

JUNOS Cookbook
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596100148

ScreenOS Cookbook
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510039/?CMP=AFC-ak_book&ATT=ScreenOS+Cookbook%2c

Perl scripting101
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/10/begperl1.html

Tcl scripting 101
http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/tutorial/tcltutorial.html

Operating System Best Practices
www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/bestprac/system_administrator_security_
_best_practices_657+security+best+practices&hl=en&gl=us

Network Security Best Practices
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk869/tk769/technologies_white_paper09186a008014f945.shtml

IP Addressing and Subnetting for New Users
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a00800a67f5.shtml

Book: Routing TCP/IP Volume II
http://www.amazon.com/Routing-TCP-CCIE-Professional-Development/dp/1578700892

Wireshark University
http://www.wiresharktraining.com

Page found at http://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery_directory.cfm?photo_id=5B11E498-A639-3996-6D74347AFB957CAA

Forty years ago—on December 5, 1969—the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) connected four computer network nodes at the University of California, Los Angeles, (U.C.L.A.), the Stanford Research Institute (S.R.I.) in Menlo Park, Calif., U.C. Santa Barbara (UCSB), and the University of Utah. The “Sigma 7″ note next to the circle depicting the UCLA node refers to the Sigma 7 computer at UCLA’s Network Measurement Center that Vint Cerf connected to ARPANET.