Originally Posted by fatman1

They do crash these days, i'm not sure you're right about that. Hardware is better, i'm not sure about more reliable, though - there are so many different server options out there that it would be impossible to say. Are cars more reliable these days?

Some people goto college, some people self teach. It don't have to be hard to run a server, i'm running Ubuntu on one of mine and its really easy - installing and updating software is just a matter of learning a few commands.

Learning programming/scripting is a whole other thing and a little harder to learn perhaps but it does go hand in hand with server admin.

Get Googling.. "linux commands" or "linux tutorials" or even "server admin tutorials" should give you some nice results and get you some idea of what is involved. same goes for scripting.. "php tutorials" or "perl turorials" .. just take a look

good luck!!