What is the name of the Linux distros thats used for practicing system administration?

Question

Title says it all. I came across the list of distros somewhere on the internet but forgot to bookmark it. Does anyone here know what distros can be used for practicing linux system administration?

EDIT: I am aware of Debian, CentOS and other distros. I am running CentOS on one laptop and Ubuntu on the other. I am looking for specific distros which were developed for people aspiring to become sys admins and want to take the certification exams like RHCE. These distros introduce/have errors that are similar to real world issues that the sys admins work on their day-to-day basis. The user needs to find and fix these problems to get the distro up and running properly on your target machine.

Answer 1

Pretty much any distro will do, but I would suggest you start with:

Ubuntu Server: Smooth install with many apps available from the standard repositories.

CentOS: A bit more 'hardcore' as it's a repackaging of Red Hat linux, which is very much liked in corporate circles and used by many Internet Service Providers. Still an easy install though.

Both distros have good community support too. If you want to play the field, you can get some good insight about what's available over at DistroWatch.

If you have a spare computer with a half-decent processor (dual core) and at least 8GB RAM you could set up a virtual machine server and run several instances of whatever you like at the same time - this would also give you some good practice with this technology - especially if you make use of a free install/licence of, say, VMware vSphere. If you want to run some virtual machines on top of an existing machine/OS, have a look at VirtualBox

Answer 2

I would suggest Debian, it's more suitable for that purpose than Ubuntu (Debian based) IMHO. It's harder but at least you'll learn the proper way to get things done.