One day I hope to become a Linux consultant but that is a long way off as I am still young. However, thinking ahead, what does everyone think is better to be certified for - Red Hat or Novell? I am thinking Red Hat Certified Engineer, so Red hat my vote. Anyone else?

To be honest... neither.. experience looks better on a resume than certifications. But if you have to get certified to get that job to get the experience, to my knowledge, more know about the RHCE than the Novell Certs..

At the moment, I'd say RHCE, but would do as many certifications as possible so that you are not just stuck with experience on one distro.

Think if the cert is what you need. Maybe it's be better to get a part time job as junior admin? It may be for a church etc, but it's worth (IMHO) more than just a cert.

Trickykid and Mara are correct, Employers are looking for experience, stupid employers are looking for 16 yr olds with 30 yrs experience or 15 yr olds witha drivers licence etc etc.

My son is facing the same dilema, and what Mara said is spot on, so we are planning on getting some vouluntary experience while he is doing his certs. Plenty of small schools, clubs, voluntary organisations out there that have small networks.

Having said that, I would like him to do both Red Hat and Novell courses. Its not a case of either / or its a case of whatever it takes to get a job !

floppy

Well, the IT industry changes so fast that by the time you're old enough to have to worry about certs Red Hat & Novell may no longer be major players in the market. But then again, maybe they will. It's hard to say. Just learn as much as you can about the Linux kernel, file system, programming, etc. and see what time brings

I would go for Novell. You don't see too many people using RedHat as their main servers yet!

I know a dude who works at a place and they all use Slack, another place they use all Debian. Nowhere, have I even heard of people using Redhat!

What, and you've heard of more people using Novell?

I think that Red Hat has much greater name recognition in the Linux / OSS community. That's not to dis Novell, though. It looks like they both have some exciting projects going, so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the industry over the next few years.


P.S. The library system I work for is considering migrating our main servers from Solaris to Red Hat some time in next few years. We support over 40 public libraries and dozens more school and special libraries. I haven't even heard anyone mention Novell yet...

Get a college degree first.. then worry about getting certs.

Not everyone is bothered about college degrees, experience in the field of choice can count a lot more than having degrees or any other piece of paper. I am not implying that don't get one though as this may have certain advantages.