The Linux Academy provides training to teams and individuals via their online curriculum, which includes Linux Certification, Amazon Web Services, OpenStack, and DevOps. Courses are self-paced with plenty of material and videos covering the subjects, with guidance and mentoring provided by qualified instructors. You can also find the Linux Academy on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, and YouTube.
The Linux Foundation is a non-profit consortium that is focused on fostering the growth of Linux, and they sponsor the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. You can train with them directly and learn about nearly all the aspects and applications of Linux, from desktop, to enterprise, and on mobile (they also have a list of reasons here on why you should train with them). You can also connect to the Linux Foundation on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.
Red Hat provides one of the world's most widely-used and trusted Linux Distributions. They also provide training for IT professionals and developers on a range of courses along with certification. You can also get in touch with Red Hat via Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, and see them on YouTube.
Germany-based SUSE is one of the world's oldest and most well-known Linux distributions, providing a variety of Linux-based software packages and solutions for both the desktop user and enterprise. They also offer a variety of training courses and Linux Certification. Elsewhere, you can check them out on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Linkedin.
The Linux Learning Centre in India is the first Linux-exclusive training center and consultancy service in Asia. They provide training courses in Linux and open source software, and are officially partnered with Red Hat and Novell India, providing a variety of valuable specialized training courses and certifications. You can also find the Linux Learning Centre on Facebook.
Read MarketWired's report on the non-profit organization's two new community partnerships aimed at increasing diversity and opportunities through open source software education.
Ostatic's Sam Dean writes about the TODO Group initiative, which seeks to establish a cross-industry referendum and consultation on the best practices, tools and programs to support corporate open source engagement.
CIO's Swapnil Bhartiya reports on The Linux Foundation's partnership with Women Who Code in encouraging more women to participate and contribute to open source.
Can you really make money in the open source software industry and market? Join TechCrunch's Max Schireson and Dharmesh Thakker as they take a good look at the numbers and what you can learn from the data.
Wired's Klint Finley writes about the ever-increasing demand for Linux professionals, and what the Linux Foundation is doing to increase opportunities for the disadvantaged to get a chance to step into these.
Linux is the operating system that has been quietly dominating the tech world, powering just about everything that can run it, from smartphones to a significant chunk of the world's web servers, financial institutions, and even the U.S. Department of Defense. It's secure, it's constantly being improved by some of the most dedicated people all over the world, and you can use it and make it do just about anything you want and need it to do.
So if you're coming from Windows or OS X and you want to dip your feet into the Linux world and see what it has to offer, where should you start? Well, let's keep it simple and give you three nice and easy options:
Linux Mint is the easiest distribution to just set up and start using. It's unique in that it provides a full, out-of-the-box multimedia experience by providing some proprietary software and multimedia codecs and plug-ins that normally aren't included or installed by default by other distributions. This means that Adobe Flash functionality and MP3 and DVD playback are all enabled outright, with minimal to no fuss involved at all.
Visit the official Linux Mint website
Elementary OS is one of the most visually polished Linux distributions out there, and it also helps that it runs like a dream even on older and lower-specced hardware. It's smooth, it's streamlined, intuitive, understandable, and very user-friendly. Out of the three distros listed here, elementary OS is my personal favorite.
Visit the official elementary OS website
Ubuntu is perhaps one of the most well-known names in the Linux world. This distribution of Linux is available on a variety of devices, for desktop computers, servers, mobile phones, and tablets. Ubuntu also boasts a strong community of users that not only help each other out with issues and concerns regarding Ubuntu, but they also help out users of other distributions in the highly-active official Ubuntu Forums.
But wait, there's more: as an additional perk of being an Ubuntu user, you have available to you OMG! Ubuntu, an enthusiast-run online news site dedicated to all things Ubuntu, which include tips, tricks, customization guides, troubleshooting help, mods, and of course, active discussions by other Ubuntu enthusiasts.
Visit the official Ubuntu website
These three distributions are, of course, just a few of the many available flavors of Linux (check out DistroWatch if you want to learn more about other distros). But if you or anyone you know is looking to get started with Linux for whatever purpose, you can't go wrong by picking any one of the above three.