Slackware was my first distro, and still is my favorite one. Slackware has taught me a lot about Linux, to the point where I have resolved all the system administrations problems that I've encountered, in all the parts of the OS that I use.

Problem is, I want to get some kind of "Linux" certification, and the most recommended one is from Red Hat.

So I'm asking Slackers who have gone through the same situations:

• Any particular list of "Red Hat" isms on the internet I can look up?
• Any particular gotchas that I should look out for?
• Is practice with fedora enough, or should I really mess around with CentOS?
• Is there a comprehensive list of commands/scripts that are specific to Red Hat?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Just a thought but what about th LPI certification http://www.lpi.org/certification that is verdor independent ?

From the training you should know what you need to cater for. Then you might need some tutorials and past papers.

up2date, the infamous redhat system update command!
(maybe look at redhat.com for the command list)

actually, LPI isn't entirely Vendor independent. The LPI Certification training does go over managing systems with RPM and dpkg, aswell as from source. So it covers the most popular package management tools.


NetrixTardis
RHCE (RHEL4), LPIC-I

Novell training is another option as well. Not as popular as Red Hat in the US, but, perhaps, more popular in other countries. Plus it's a heck of a lot cheaper.

I looked at Red Hat training, and saw the price tag, and left the page. For that amount of money, you can finish/start a college degree, or achieve a handful of certs, and wind up with a better resume, and more prospective employment opportunities. Of course, if you already have a degree, and a handful of certs, AND your prospective employer demands an RHCT, that's another situation.

It really depends on where you're looking to get employed. And what your background is.

IMO I wouldn't go straight for Red Hat training without other certs.

If you do want Red Hat experience, CentOS would be the way to go. You can also sign up for a 30day demo of RHEL. I wouldn't get RHEL demo first, spend the time with CentOS to get a feel for the new system, then try the RHEL demo. This way you won't spend 20 of the 30 days trying to figure out how the system works.

Fedora != Red Hat. There are just too many things that are in Red Hat that aren't in Fedora, and vice versa. Red Hat uses cdrtools, Fedora uses cdrkit. Red Hat comes with Real Player, Fedora doesn't. Red Hat is still using Gnome 2.16!!! 2.24 is just on the horizon. If you learn Fedora, you'll be accustomed to newer tools and methods that may not be in Red Hat.

That's actually been deprecated in version 5.0 and above now. And up2date is easy to learn, it's very basic and very crappy. Most that like yum hate up2date, it took them long enough to get rid of it.

Yea, the price of the training is steep, but I'm only going for the certification test, which is not that bad.

I've already completed a 4 year university degree in Telecommunications, and have a CCNA, but I want something in my Resume that tells employers that I'm capable of working with Linux.

To those who mentioned LPI, thank you! I've never heard of it before, and it looks mighty interesting.