As you all may well know for the past few months I have been operating systems hoping first from vista then to XP then from Linux Distro to Linux Distro and frianly betwen FreeBSD, Desktop BSD and Solaris and open solaris ( which I have decude to stick with. The reason isd because i have been trying to get my hands on a sutible Unix distro sense I started using Linux nad Unix based operating systems five years ago, Imy most recent opensource short fall was trying to convince my mother and father to pay my way three a Linux Certification, which my dad said no to because He seems to think that every company out there is stuck on Microsoft MCSE/MCSA, thus meaning by his anti Linux stance that he thinks my getting a Linux certification will leave me short handed in the long run.
What should i do to prove to him that A Linux certification will make me just as is not more emplyable than a MCSA or MCSE?

Tell him that google uses Linux, as well as most websites

I don't have a specific link but I've heard that Linux admins make more than MS admins on average.

In most cases they do. Just surf CareerBuilder.com and Monster.com, you'll see.

You have to understand that, in a way, he is right or at least right-ish. There are more organisations with a clear majority of their systems on some closed source OS than on Open Source OSs. There are more orgs which have a M$-only stance than those which have an Open-only or Unix-like-only stance. So, if you just want to play the percentages in that way, you'd have to argue that going M$ makes sense.

But

• firstly, it doesn't take into account that every no-brain would-be sys admin goes down this route (plus, to be fair, some others). So if you chose to go down this route, you are in competition with a million people of the 'have you tried rebooting the computer' persuasion (and who think that is somehow solving the problem) who have got themselves an MCSE qualification
  
• secondly, you have to look at what an MCSE is (or what it turns out); in practice (& I'm not sure whether this is intentional) it turns out people who follow what is effectively a script to get immediate problems to go away. If I wanted to be a call centre operator with a scattering of longer words.... (As I say, I don't really know why an MCSE qual does this; Maybe its the exam itself, maybe its the course materials, maybe its the candidates (maybe I'm just being a prejudiced European, because US training seems to me to be 'lowest common denominator' in this way); and you can argue that if you go into the MCSE system as 'good' it doesn't make you any worse.
  
• thirdly, I think its probably true that all of the absolute best sys admins I have seen have been able to cope with both M$ and something more unixy. So, I'd advise that if you really want to be good, not just OK, you should have, at least, a working understanding of both worlds
  
• and fourthly, and this is the killer point to me, if you are going to understand, both worlds you would be better off understanding the fundamentals of how say networking works than a rigmarole that gets something working without necessarily understanding why and how it has worked. for me, I'd bet that its easier for someone who understands the basics to then move on to an MCSE than the other way around.
  
• and fifthly, its not just about earning, its also about getting some satisfaction from it. Only you can say which you would find more satisfying, but given where you've posted, I'm prepared to make a guess...
  
• sixthly, if you take the point that from the point of view that M$ has the larger installed market base, you might also comclude that in percentage terms foss is growing more quickly and that is ramping up demand more quickly
  
• and seventhly (I'll stop now), I get the inmpression that you are the start of a career. Bear in mind that over a career you can confidently expect technology to go through several revolutions and the established order today isn't likely to be the established order in a decade or two from now. that means many things that are unimaginable today will have happened and you should try to be well placed to cope with them. I get the impression that the current M$ under Ballmer isn't well placed for this: They want to impose on their customers licensing conditions that the customers hate, they are massively inflexible, its 'my way, or the highway' and quite a few customers are saying 'that highway is looking good, if only we had the people who knew about that, rather than the people we have got'. In that situation knowing both could be a deal maker.

It also depends on what you want to do: Linux on the desktop has been and probably will continue to be a bit of an uphill struggle. Maybe it shouldn't be, but that's the fact of the matter. (I think it will stop being such a struggle one day, but I thought it would have happened by now and it hasn't, yet. Maybe with the coming of the low cost laptops with Linux; maybe with the perfection of KDE 4.x; I don't know.)

OTOH, in the server room, forseeing a future in which both M$ and something unixy are present and interoperating seems like a very easy prediction. And just right now there are various pressures that might shift the balance away from M$ (cash-strapped big business, need to appear 'green' to customers) at least to an extent.

Note: YMMV. One of the things that makes the future the future is that we don't know it exactly and strange and unpredictable things do happen. But I'd rather be facing it as someone who knew Linux well and how it could interoperate with M$ than someone who only knew M$.

Personally, I would look into both but not do an exam in either. Certificates or not, you won't walk into the dream job on day one, get a lower level job, gain experience and look for opportunities - if an employer values certificates they will either pay for you to gain the relevant one or will give you time off to study.

Is he in IT? If so, then he should at least acknowledge the fact that Linux is prevalent in the server realm.

SlowCoder,

He is a high paid scumbag executive who could give a shit less about what his son know is a correct career path to pursue, and there for thinks it his right to Micosoft Brain wash me and make force me to Give up on alive long dream of Open source Activism. So t answer your quarry he is little more then a uneducataded technological slum dwelling brain washed windows using Executive!

So what happens when a thread's OP invokes Godwin's law?

My thought is that after you have paid for any certification yourself and have it under your belt your father will be less of a nazi.
Give it a try.

The way that you talk about your father does not provide much motivation to help you. He has an opinion about MS and OpenSource. You need to let that be HIS problem.

You don't mention where you are in school. You would want to at least get an AA degree--regardless of what certificates to get.

Sometimes it's good to just get a job and worry about certificates later. My son started in the shipping department of the local Apple dealer and now works on web design with a couple of people under him. No certificates.

Finally, when you go job-hunting (writing resumes, etc.), you are going to need to polish your writing and grammar skills.

Well, you need to do your own research to see if a Linux Certificate will actually help you get a job. Do a search of job ads which say 'linux' and also 'linux certificate preferred' or 'required'. Also see what distro people are advertising jobs for and if that distro offers its own certification courses.

The last time I looked, Australia had "linux" programmers on the "jobs in demand" list, but not "microsoft programmers".

But really, things like 'MCSE' are for sysadmins, not for programmers. Programmers can easily handle one system or the other (but *NIX is far less frustrating in my experience).

Doing the course your father is insisting you do doesn't force you to give up any of your ambitions - you can pursue whatever other preferences you have alongside this study, or do whatever you like as soon as you have the income to fund alternative courses.

If you're talking about employment, there's no scope for activism - sorry. Your employer will expect you to toe whatever line they set. Outside work, there's nothing stopping you spending as much time as you like on whatever it is you want to do.

If you want to convince your father that you should do a different course by presenting him with a rational argument why that presents better immediate employment prospects (which I gather is what he's after), large recruitment firms put out reports on the state of the employment market, where they've placed their candidates, what areas are in high demand, what the market salary rates are, etc. If you look, you might find some support in those reports.

I did a search for the keywords Linux server Administrator on monster.

dont call your dad a scumbag.

obviousely if he is an executive he sees a successful business as the best option.
_________________

also be happy, as long as your dad is a CxO then you probably will have a job no matter what.

I agree, don't call him a scumbag, that's left up to the employees under him if he really is one.

But in my experience, Executives usually are not technical and don't know what the hell their talking about when it comes to Computer Science.

Do your research and prove to him that Linux and Unix certifications are just as beneficial to add to your knowledge of the field you want to enter. And don't go by how much either gets paid, that's pointless and not the real argument behind you wanting a Linux/Unix certification.

Also argue that it's your choice and your desire to be beneficial in learning all technologies, limiting it to just one will jail you to only that technology. Basically, prove to your dad that there is more than Microsoft in the market and Unix has a large share of such market.

And if they still won't pay, get a part time job and pay for it yourself.