It's one of the biggest problems for the moment. It's VERY hard to find skilled people that really know computing and linux. There are just too many software console "experts" without a clue about what's really going on.
I myself need to hire two linux devs per year, and the only way to be able to do that, is by training students that ask for a linux trainee position. Universities and colleges are full of "Windows software console supremacists", and the schools adapt their curriculum to their audience, whereas they should be training towards the needs of the market and the enterprises that will need to pay the wages of the professionals.
Many university professors are lazy ignorant software console users themselves, they don't take their job seriously, they only take the backstabbing and elbow rubbing seriously that gets them a professorate, and then engage the autopilot and spend their time harvesting fringe benefits. The linux world is still very much supported by 90's university batch professionals. Since the end of the 90's, computer sciences educations have become a joke, nothing but a lynda.com tutorial of Wintel products.
The biggest problem is that 21st century people apparently don't want to understand things, they just want to get a manual or tutorial or how-to. Intelligent people don't do tutorials, they explore and find out. Intelligence training is exactly about that, about finding answers instead of finding tutorials. That's a big problem with 21st Century education, they don't do intelligence training any more, they only provide tutorials.
I think the major problem (especially when I took the education here in Denmark), is that most people taking the IT degree, doesn't have any interest in IT other than playing games. Most people doesn't even have the interest in studying how things work, and are instead searching the internet for easy tutorials.
I remember, having an linux project (I was pretty much substitute teacher because I already had experience with *nux from my work), everyone would ask questions. I started about explaining what each bash command would do (It was an beginner courses, that everyone needed to pass, so it was something simple as setting up an server, with a few services like that...), and I realized something. They didn't care one bit. It was like they just wanted to get over with it. I would then make it slightly more tricky, by not giving them the direct answer, however leading up to it. It failed 8/10 times.
If you look into who are taking the IT degrees, you will see that only 10% actually have an interest in IT, where the other simply want an education or thinks it is an easy way to money. A shame.
Yup, students these days can handle infotainment at best, everything is about spending time and fighting boredom.
We ask hardware from industry partners to go and distribute in schools and universities for students to do cool things with. It works great with small ARM devices. We show some cool tricks, and after a couple of weeks, we're happy to get a call from the Ordnungsamt whether by any chance we might be the idiots that taught students how to reprogram traffic lights with 12 EUR Cortex M devkits and remote controls (and that that overrides and outperforms the bazillion EUR system they have bought that does the same for police cars) ... That's what we want to hear! Creativity and free exploration! All in C and with Linux.
The real problem is that people these days only see limitations. They are brainwashed to pay for everything. Youth from last century is completely different, they had no money, they had to be resourceful. Nowadays students don't have to find solutions anymore, they don't have to do research, they don't have to develop any other interests than logging in to watch adds and spending money after watching some tutorial. It's pretty sad. Just the concept of buying a high end PC just to castrate the possibilities and performance with a commercial software console to be able to consume entertainment like games and netflix... wow... what a waste of resources! And it's like that with everything! People buy 200 USD keyboards for gaming, and then don't want to spend more than 200 USD on a chromebook for their study or work... ridiculous!
Hmm, very true; i find in my ICT class and graphics (we use Autodesk & the Adobe suite) the teachers just end up Googling a tutorial and showing us that. to worsen things if you can manage to do anything on the computers (almost everything is blocked including right click) the teachers throw a tantrum saying that you're 'hacking'. Futhermore the IT department is completely useless and some of there decisions shock me; they completely disabled Areo themes in windows, blocked firefox, installed 32 bit windows on 64 bit machines,enabled windows updates to update without warning you. The sad thing is if i run Manjaro of a live usb it is faster than the installed version of windows. I always hear talk about how the teachers and students want mac's because they don't take 30 minutes to boot up. The saddest thing is how my whole school hates the computers and i bet a lot will think so even after graduating. All because of some monkeys not knowing how to re-utilize older hardware (core2duo and first gen i3s). I'm actuallysurprised schools don't want to run linux, whats better for a school than; no viruses, free software, fast computers, easy to monitor networks, not having to upgrade as often, less overhead, stable applications, less prone to 'hacking', better integration with applications, students being able to write there own programs with ease, better screen utilization on laptops and so on.
US schools will never run Linux as long as Bill Gates' "Common Core" Microsoft Marketing Program is in place. It serves only one purpose: to make sure students that go to public "Common Core" schools don't get access to the education of the children of the elite that go to private schools, whilst making sure they keep spending money on the very instruments of their zombification that are sold to them by that elite.
Ask a kid that has used linux computers in school what computers do, and they tell you that computers allow for the development of all kinds of practical productive applications and for the management and analysis of data, and that it's a lot of fun to have such great tools. Ask a kid that has used MS-Windows software console computers in school what computers do, and they tell you that you can find stuff to by on Google and Amazon, watch YouTube videos about products to buy, watch Netflix, buy games and buy music and movies... and that it's a lot of fun because it saves them from boredom.
I can't speak for other parts of the world, however there are far too many unemployed linux-gurus in Australia due to a shortage of senior linux roles.
A basic linux sysadmin will easily make $150K+ base salary with only 3-4 years experience. Unfortunately the big money making jobs - specialist positions - aren't really in demand, and so are usually filled by people with 15+ years experience.
That said, general Uni enrolments in ICT are down 20 percent from the previous year and have continued to nose-dive over the last decade.
The majority of IT graduates don't work in IT in this country.
As far as the whole "There are just too many software console "experts" without a clue about what's really going on."
As a ISM (CIO) and linux guy I find these kind of comments quite smug overall and certainly poisonous to the greater linux community.
People will follow whatever markets are in demand - It's easy to make really good money using Windows and lots of non-educated "pager based jobs" become rather attractive to those who wish to pursue them.
You cannot define ability from which operating system a person may choose to use.
I think this is becoming less true. I go to one of the top-ten CS universities in the US, Linux is the primary OS in the labs and most classes you use them for development/projects. It'll just take a little time.
I'm fairly new to Linux but I'm already loving it. My background is mechanical engineering and as such, I find it fascinating to learn how anything and everything works. PCs are no different. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on the hardware side, but I feel like a lemming when it comes to software - stuck using GUIs and thus being almost entirely limited to using windows.
Recently, I've been learning quite a lot on my quest to become an experienced Linux user. For me, it's not enough just to enter commands in the terminal - I want to know why and what each part of each command represents. And if something doesn't work, I want to know why didn't it work and at least attempt to think of a solution.
I agree with Zoltan, I think that's what much of the current generation lacks - the drive and curiosity to learn how things work. They don't care and are more interested in getting to their infotainment.
That being said, there's nothing wrong with gaming and entertainment, but I don't think everything we do should revolve around that. I built a pretty fast PC for gaming because I wanted that level of performance, but I didn't go overboard and spend more than I needed or wanted to. I don't consider that a waste of powerful hardware at all because I use it on a regular basis (even if it's bogged down with windows 8). If windows was not required for gaming, I wouldn't be running it. To go further; after reading Zoltan's post "What if I want it all", I've been very seriously contemplating going through with that process on my main gaming rig.
I also have an inexpensive Acer C710 chromebook, which has proven to be very useful as a basic-use mobile device. It wouldn't have made sense to spend any more on such a device IMO. ChromeOS is based on a Linux kernel and it shows by how well it performs, even with a Sandy-bridge based 1.1GHz dual core Celeron. I bumped up the RAM to 4GB and swapped in an SSD so those things wouldn't be a bottleneck and it just flies through what I use it for effortlessly (work and entertainment).
There are a lot of people and businesses out there that could save mountains of money on hardware and software if they'd only realize just how awesome Linux is.
I have been dual booting windows and linux mint for the better part of a month or so now. I only just in windows to play a couple of games that are not fully working on wine yet, and then reboot to linux as soon as I am done. I am at an age that is sometimes considered to be a part of this newer generation (I AM NOT!!), and I still try to spend my time in linux exploring and trying to fix/break everything I find. As soon as I build my new rig, my current machine is going to exclusively be a linux fileserver box hopefully running a mostly console distro so I can be forced to get better at bash. I still have to agree with zoltan though, this younger generation is, for lack of a better word, lazy.
I myself like to figure things out on my own, but I will usually look up forum posts or wiki's for how-to's on questions or issues I have, not to get the answer, but to help guide me in the right direction on how to ensure smooth running of the machine. One of my main issues I have in linux is my lack of knowledge and understanding of how the file structure works. I have been exploring the folders trying to grasp how everything works, and not getting much headway, but I still do it to try to learn without having to look it up. Not all of the younger people fit into this area. And as a note, I am 28.
Problem is, aloooot of peoples take CSS classes and similar IT classes to try and become video game developers, or that they spend more than 4 hours on their computer per day. I think its just a phase that will last a few more years.
And about that Linux thing, allot of schools have Red Hat systems.