My son is a senior in HS and has decided to pursue cybersecurity in college. He's not yet taken any coding coursework. He is a problem solver, creative, and is proficient at getting where he needs to get to with computers. While hardly a useful coding skill, he's tackled setting up Minecraft loads, and skins or whatever the hell they're called. He's proficient in all the normal computer and web skills. Much of which learned from Google and Reddit etc.

I'm assuming there are a number of pretty good online resources that might be used to get a leg-up on these skills. Most importantly I think would be Python, as the college tour person from the cyber program said they work in that within the program. Hoping for a school-like program that I can turn him loose on. I got him a Raspberry Pi, so I thought some Linux knowledge would help too.

He's got six months until he starts his Freshman year. So that's the kind of time and baseline I've got to work with. Any thoughts or suggestions?

There are some very good and inexpensive online / On Demand courses at www.udemy.com

Search to see if there are any LUGs (Linux user group) near you. They will be familiar with Linux and the various distributions.


Some there will also be Python gurus.

In my experience LUGs are full of like minded people who wanted to get others involved in Linux.

Nothing like hands-on... If you have room in the budget and in the house, get him a cheap PC that he can install different flavors of Linux on.

Make him understand that this thing is
sacrificial, and that he shouldn't put data on it that he wants to keep. It's meant for repeated nuke-and-pave events as he finds out what works versus what breaks.

I know dual-boot of an existing PC is an option, but there's always the possibility of bricking the whole installation and losing everything on the machine. I have the T-shirt...

quote:

Originally posted by whanson_wi:
Nothing like hands-on... If you have room in the budget and in the house, get him a cheap PC that he can install different flavors of Linux on.

Or, perhaps a studly PC that he can run VMs and/or containers on. Virtualization is the current standard way of providing network services, he will need to have this on his resume. Setting up a VM host and a number of guests will provide the opportunity for far broader experiences than successive installs on hardware. As noted above, hands-on is key, research and assemble the hardware, research and install the host OS, choose, install, and configure guests, develop and/or provision services on the guests.

quote:

Make him understand that this thing is
sacrificial, and that he shouldn't put data on it that he wants to keep. It's meant for repeated nuke-and-pave events as he finds out what works versus what breaks.

Something else that a VM environment expedites.

quote:

I know dual-boot of an existing PC is an option, but there's always the possibility of bricking the whole installation and losing everything on the machine. I have the T-shirt...

WRT to breaking things, yes, it can be inconvenient, but doing so teaches some of the most valuable lessons. Being too afraid of breaking things can lead to inertia, and slower progression of skills. After all, it isn't really broken until the smoke escapes.

I would also give him a project as part of the condition of funding his hardware acquisition, something that would contribute to the household computing environment, maybe like building a NAS, firewall/IDS, or media server. Learning how to deal with users' requirements is at least as important as technical skills if your goal is to help him get and keep a job in the industry.

Nothing like taking a computer and installing, running and configuring Linux or whatever.
Lots of books, vids to start.
Get some experience.

It's how I got started in networking - took a couple of computers put in network cards and stumbled along until I figured it out.
The Internet was in it's infancy then*, I knew zero about network protocols.
I had to use books and documentation on the subject.
* There were only modems back then, some billboards, TC/IP needed a complicated proxy connection, no routers, very few web sites and the one that were around was spectacularly slow so books was my best source back then.
It was an amazing experience when I first got it to work.
Eventually I went to computer school for certification and basics but the initial experience(s) were helpful with the education.

So ultimately I am saying to setup a lab (computer or two and an Internet connection) and use the plentiful sources online and other.
He will find out what he needs (to learn) in the areas of his interest.

Set up a lab.

It’s best to give him a purpose. Something like setting up a NAS for the house or maybe a Proxmox box. And everyone needs a pi-hole for their homes network. Then a programming challenge like a cataloging app for movies, guns, books, etc.

I’m going to change my suggestion to start with Debian based Linux. Linux Mint, Ubuntu or, my favorite, Pop-OS. They’re easy to install and APT is simple to use.

YouTube:
Learn Linux TV
Craft Computing
Lawrence Systems

And I’m just over yonder, if you have any questions for an amateur or want to borrow some books.

Edit - I forgot that you have a NAS.

Take a python class at the local community College over the summer.

Thanks all!

Tell him to go to the Silicon Underground.
My stepson wrote a Book about Linux, it was a Amazon best seller for 5-6 Months.

quote:

Originally posted by john crusher:

Tell him to go to the Silicon Underground.
My stepson wrote a Book about Linux, it was a Amazon best seller for 5-6 Months.

Title?

Buy a couple Raspberry Pis (Pi 4 is the current gen) to have a quick Linux system. Install either the official raspberry PiOS image or the Ubuntu image for Raspberry Pis.

I believe the PiOS image comes out of the box ready for Python development (some IDE) for students to learn Python. The whole purpose of Raspberry Pis is to teach kids Linux and programming.

But generally, Python is generally installed by default on all modern Linux environments.

Once he gets familiar with it, he can always throw on other more interesting Linux flavors - like Kali Linux (used for penetration testing / cyber security).

quote:

Originally posted by cyanide357:
Buy a couple Raspberry Pis (Pi 4 is the current gen) to have a quick Linux system. Install either the official raspberry PiOS image or the Ubuntu image for Raspberry Pis.

I believe the PiOS image comes out of the box ready for Python development (some IDE) for students to learn Python. The whole purpose of Raspberry Pis is to teach kids Linux and programming.

But generally, Python is generally installed by default on all modern Linux environments.

Once he gets familiar with it, he can always throw on other more interesting Linux flavors - like Kali Linux (used for penetration testing / cyber security).

I did buy a Pi for him. But I hadn't heard of Kali Linux. Very interesting!

 
I taught myself unix almost entirely from the man pages, initially when I registered a domain name and took my BBS onto the internet for email and newsgroups. For that, I had to learn all about uucp. That experience got me my first network job in the early 1990s, first as a BBS sysop (govt. contracts), and shortly thereafter as the sysadmin, when the two main network guys quit.
 
Later, I purchased a few books that were also helpful. As others have mentioned, there is now a ton of online information/instruction, but don't overlook the man pages as an extremely helpful source.

quote:

Originally posted by r0gue:
I did buy a Pi for him. But I hadn't heard of Kali Linux. Very interesting!

There are (at least) dozens of special-purpose Linux distributions, Kali is actually one of the most well-known.

One nice thing about the Pi is that you can switch OS's easily and cheaply, just have a collection of micro SD cards with different OS's(*) installed on them, shut down -> swap SD cards -> boot. With an external USB drive you can have your personal files available with whatever you are running. It is also possible to boot/multi-boot from a USB drive if preferred.

* of course, Linux isn't the only OS that will run on the Pi, the big three BSDs (FreeBSD, NetBSD, & OpenBSD), Win10, and Haiku are fun alternatives to explore. Most (all?) of these are free of purchase/licensing costs, most are open source.

It is tremendously educational and confidence-building to compile an entire OS from source code on the machine on which you intend to run the code.