Linux Certification
 

Hi, whats the best Linux certificaiton to get?

RedHat Certified Engineer (RHCE). Why? Because RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the most common Linux used in commercial environments so is most likely the employers requiring Linux Certification would want you to know.

Of course there are shops using SUSE the other major commercial distribution and quite a few using other distributions for other reasons. It depends a lot on what you expect to be doing and why you think you need certification in the first place. Most employers prefer experience over certificates.

Thanks. WHat about the LPIC certification? Is it any good?

MensaWater said it: "Most employers prefer experience over certificates"

There are MANY threads on here about what certification is best, but the reality is, you need to focus on getting EXPERIENCE and KNOWLEDGE. A paper certificate without the real world skills to back it up is meaningless. There are LOTS of folks who fall into that category, and they are VERY easy to spot. Get the knowledge...once you have it, get a certification if you want to.

True. Will do thank you.

Get the CompTIA Linux+ because you get 3 certifications for the price of one! Completing the Linux+ gets you:

* LPI-C I
* CompTIA Linux+
* Novell Certified Linux Administrator

Of course, certifications are meaningless without valid industry experience

Unrelated suggestion.

Contact a moderator and ask to have your email address replaced with a different user name. By using it as a user name, you are putting it out there to be harvested by spammers.

There's no reason to help out the jerks.

Thunderstruck- I'm looking for the best training provider to get theLPIC 1. I've contacted Novell about their coursework and they haven't replied to my emails, and both times I called the sales department the person didn't really know anything about the course work, or even the course numbers! So I'm not feeling too confident about ordering Self Study coursewok from Novell. I see you're certified with Novell, where did you get your training?

There is, of course, a separate sub-forum on this site where certification is discussed at-length. This thread should probably be moved there.

But in the meantime ... my two cents.

To me, certifications are only about the professional self-education that leads up to the piece-of-paper, whether you actually buy the piece-of-paper or not. They are a "sip from a firehose" method of being exposed to what a group of professional educational designers considered to be a "useful and realistic" set of scenarios ... make of them what you will. (And, in other disciplines, I have actually been a contributor to such curricula.)

What they aren't ... is a Golden Ticket.

Personally, I have never bothered with a certification, and (being now at age never-you-mind...) probably never will, but I do find the study-guides (which I shamelessly tend to pick up at used book stores ...) to be quite informative.

I couldn't disagree more. It's true that certifications, much like college degrees, don't properly qualify candidates for a position but not having them sure dis-qualifies candidates. In my current organization we don't even consider candidates anymore unless they walk in the door with a Security+ certification and at least one of the MCSD developer certifications.

We have learned the hard way that anyone can write code, but not everyone can understand design patterns, industry standards, and best practices. The certification proves that you are not wasting our time trying to talk your way into a position that you are not qualified for (this happens all the time).

For me Linux is a hobby (and sometimes a side business) so I didn't take any pro training. Send me a PM and I can send you the self study material I used.

I concur with one part of your statement..."I couldn't disagree more". :)

I have interviewed LOTS of people with 'certifications'. Some could not even tell me how to change a users password, or how to troubleshoot a problem like "Say you have a web server that's suffering from poor performance...how would you troubleshoot that?". One guy (RHCE, LPIC and more), said "Reboot it, and tell the web guys". I've also had outsourcing firms say "Oh, ALL of our professionals have certifications"...and they couldn't tell me how to create a new user on a system.

As you said, certifications don't mean knowledge anymore than a college degree does. However, if you have a certification WITHOUT the knowledge, be assured that you're expected to KNOW what you're doing...so when you're asked simple questions in an interview and can't answer them, it'll be painfully obvious that you have a paper-certificate, and not much else. I think it's much more important to focus on LEARNING what you're doing in the real world first...THEN applying that to getting a certificate. Just as you said about writing code...

If you're in your 20's with five 'certifications'....is it more likely you just took test after test, or that you started working in a professional environment when you were 13, and have ten years of experience to draw on to back UP those certificates?? That's why such folks get put on the very bottom of my 'to-interview' pile. :)

I have a stack of certifications but it took me 15 years of cutting my teeth developing solutions for a huge enterprise to have the knowledge to pass the tests to earn them (I probably failed as many as I passed over the years). In fact I took an MCTS application developer test last year that was on a whole other stratosphere then my experience (and I failed that one miserably). So I have no idea how someone can have an RHCE and not know how to troubleshoot latency & throughout performance issues on a web server. Perhaps the RHCE is not a legitimate certification? I don't know much about that one but if Red Hat is turning out certified engineers/technicians that lack the working skill the certification implies then it sounds like the RHCE is either a certification mill (where you pay their training org a ton of money and they basically give you a cert) or your candidate cheated.

My point is this; the IT industry is full of wannabes and more often than not candidates embellish, if not lie outright about their level of skill or experience and because of this we don't consider candidates without certifications and verifiable experience to back up their resumes. Obviously a degree without experience, or certifications without experience automatically disqualifies you as well but we have to make our bet effort to not waste our engineers time interviewing snake handlers. This is particularly true where I work since on the job training is not an option. You have to walk in the door on day one prepared to write testable, maintainable, high quality code.

Either/or. I've known a few folks who will just read books on getting certified, or run through online practice exams until they can barely squeak by. But, they're 'certified'. I look at someones experience first, THEN look at the certifications/diplomas. I've hired folks with just high-school degrees who are absolute aces, based on their experience.

I tend to ask questions (like the web-server example), in interviews. If they can give passable answers, or at least show they're THINKING about the issue logically, then it's on to the next round: sitting in our lab (NO internet access/cell phones), and being given tasks. Things like load up a Linux server on this box, configure the following services, etc. Nothing hugely tricky/difficult, but someone who knows what they're doing can probably get at least 80% or more done within an hour. I don't hold them to TOO strict a standard, though...it IS an interview, and sometimes you can't always put your finger on things when you need to. But, if they're 'certified'...they had better be able to step up.

I agree totally...I guess my point was to say that I put little stock in a certificate by itself, and that they don't factor much into my hiring decisions, if at all.