So here I am, 21 years old and a freshman at Indiana State, majoring in IT. I've come to find out many of these classes are useless, and overrated. I really, really would love to become a linux admin, as it seems to be in high demand. I started out on Slack 3.4, and am currently running Slackware 10.2. Either way, I have the knowledge, and I thrive on being a security freak. I don't have programming skills besides bash scripting, and my network knowledge lacks.

I plan to keep pursuing my IT degree and learning more about linux and networking in genereal. I'm trying to get some C++ under my belt, in hopes I can land a linux administrator job eventually. Can you guys suggest anything? Will I gain anything by taking Linux+ Cert, or Redhat Certifications?

well what you'll gain depends largely on what you know already... But you'll certainly get a much larger degree of employability. People like seeing random abbreviations after your name, saves them understanding what you actually know. I'm doing my RHCE next month, in order to fill in small gaps of knowledge nad join things up better. Whether i'm technically already at RHCE level is a different queston.I'll learn things, but not necessarily hard stuff IMHO. Depending on cash flow, you may well want to look at a cheaper cert, like LPI and get your first job to pay for the RHCE etc...

Okay, so the LPI looks like it might be right up my alley, and better than the Linux+ certification. Would you suggest, as much as I hate saying this, that I should switch from Slackware to Redhat Enterprise? Being a slackware user, I have no experience with package managers or rpm's.

well it's what get's you the job. I've used gentoo exclusively for the last 3 years, but i'm running a couple of Centos VM's and also on my server whilst i study for an RHCE.

I've not done an LPI but it's supposedly a lot more.. arbitrary... than RHCT / RHCE. e.g you don't need to prove you understand scenarios and can resolve issues, you need to know what command line option will sort ls output in reverse size order... quite why you need to know that is anyones guess, just as long as you know how to find the ls manpage!

I'd go along with acid_kewpie's comments about the LPI exams - whilst they are good to have and will impress an HR bod that understands what it means, the actual exams and course content is basically all down to memorising command parameters and menial tasks - along the lines of "What key is pressed to accept the licence agreement during a Windows 2000 install" on the MCP exams. They are fairly cheap though, at around £55 per exam, with a decent study guide around £20. If you've been using Slack for a little while, you shouldn't have too many problems