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I want to get some hands on knowledge with linux servers (sine the last internship I applied for, required some experience with linux servers, but I had none), and I'm wondering if the RPi would give me the same server experience as any other computer (x86 or ARM). Everyone I've asked about "starting with servers" says to just use any old computer. The truth is. All I have is my laptop with Win7, and an RPi.

I want something that will give me real world experience with setting up a LAMP server, FreeNAS, some kind of media server, or anything else. I'm second guessing myself, because this runs on ARM, and most Linux OS's won't run on arm. I believe Ubuntu and CentOS (from what I heard) are the biggest name servers OS's. I also heard that archlinux runs on arm.

I know the above is a mess of questions, but any help and/or guidance is appreciated.

Main Question:

Can I get cmd line, server setup, and server maintenance experience from the RPi comparable to that of someone that works on x86 machines?

EGHDK
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6 Answers6

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If you just want to play with Linux without the chance of breaking stuff or wasting money I would suggest you install a virtual machine, for example virtualbox.
This is a lot faster than an RPi (ofcourse depending of your machine) and is a bit more convenient with installing and setting up (no cables, usbdisks, powerplugs, extra keyboards, delivery time and whatnot).

It doesn't really matter what distribution you pick. Ubuntu is a nice start with lots of documentation available (also look into Debian documentation). But pick the server version so you won't get spoiled with the GUI, a benefit you won't have while ssh'ing into your next employers webserver.

Joost
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Lets look at it the other way round. Lots of people who have only previously used linux on x86 are experiencing the linux on ARM for the first time with the RPi. Lots of what they know about linux doesn't really matter which platform it's running on.

Setting up a LAMP server will be quite similar on RPi vs x86, but you should be aware that the RPi performance will probably resemble a 300Mhz PIII or thereabouts.

Round here I have seen x86 PCs with better specs on the side of the road :)

John La Rooy
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The answer depends on what you mean by "server experience". The vast majority of what you do on a RPi running raspbian works the same way on any server based on a Debian derivative. Editing files. System configuration. Basic linux command line familiarity. Security. Remote access. All of this works the same regardless of what physical platform.

You may want a larger system for specific types of experience, but I'd say that the RPi is perfectly good way for somebody with no linux experience to get some practice in at low risk. Even if you configure a larger box later, the RPi gives you an expensive 2nd system for testing. The suggestions made above (dedicated or virtual linux, laptop) are all complementary. For experience, the more realistic your scenario, the better. Very few systems operate in isolation these days. The RPi is a great little add-on to any learning lab.

bobstro
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I have a little bit of experience with servers. The most popular are Debian and Red Hat IMHO, certainly not Ubuntu. Most of what you do involves general Linux commands, rather than anything server specific.

As for practice, whip up a cloud server on Amazon, Rackspace, or Brightbox and setup a webserver from start to finish. You learn a lot and it's pretty cheap. It's also nice to run on such fast CPUs and with a stupidly fast internet connection, for downloading source code etc.

Alex Chamberlain
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For real industry server experience, I feel you would be better off using even an old laptop to install CentOS 6 or 7. Even if the laptop is a Windows laptop, you can install CentOS and make it dual boot. This leaves Windows entirely alone and CentOS can work fine without even knowing Windows is in the other partition. CentOS is a clone of Redhat's Enterprise version with the branding and logo removed, and it's free.

Edward_178118
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You could certainly get a feel for it--especially if you have some specific software you were wanting to learn about and that software had a PI build available.

Limitations:

  1. Low memory
  2. Low speed.
  3. There are probably many server tools that won't run or aren't ported.
  4. Not a "Real" server environment (mostly because of the previous item)

Advantages:

  1. Low price.
  2. Lots of information on how to solve simple tasks.
  3. Many basic services you might want to deploy on a server are available
  4. Full time servers with low energy/low heat/low(no) fan noise. No reason to ever shut it down.
  5. Experience with linux remote management tools like ssh, screen, etc.
  6. Easily replicate a clustered environment
  7. Affordable enough to use a separate PI for each app if you wanted to.

As an example, I put a full minecraft server on one. Could carry it around and host a wifi game without any internet connectivity, but the speed was borderline and it was glitchy at times.

I still run SSH, RDP, Git, http and wiki services on it though and even if I don't use them much, they are always available. (forwarding SSH through your firewall makes almost anything not only possible but quite useful!)

Ghanima
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Bill K
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