The company I worked for recently closed and I have an opportunity for free training. I had worked with Linux at my previous employer on and off for 4-5 years. I really would like to work as an Linux/UNIX admin. Does anyone have any suggestions for training (I an stuck in northeast Ohio for the next 4 years). I have not found a degree at any college for Linux/UNIX. So my thoughts where towards classes offered by companies like New Horizons or Learning Tree.

If anyone has any ideas feel free to comment.

New horizons isn't bad for certifications and such. I will tell you as someone who has worked in the unix/linux admin field for ~15 years in Ohio that NE Ohio is NOT a good place to be.... you need to either head all the way to cleveland or head to columbus/cinci. Many people in the Steel Industry, Timken, Hoover, etc. in NEO (ak/can/mass) re-educated into various computer fields and we have a glut of highly certified / degree'd people with no experience, it makes it hard to stand out and it's driving wages down.

That being said, getting experience and certifications is about as close to a degree for system administration as you're going to get around here-- most of us have a bachelors in networking of some variety, business, or engineering of some variety.

Make sure you can handle basic networking (CCNA, Network+ type) and make sure you've got a handle on a broad range of distributions of linux and unix not just redhat (linux+, lpic, various other unix certs) although there is nothing wrong with having some windows and redhat certs/experience either.

i'm a big fan of rhce to dive in.

http://www.redhat.com/certification/rhce/

http://www.bsdcertification.org/

http://www.lpi.org/

This is just three you can look at for certification.
Or, just do a google search for "linux certification courses"

Thanks for the input.

I should have stated I have an associates from the University of Akron and worked in the it field about 10 years. My wife was rushing me as I was typing, lol.

Well at least you know what you're getting into then Good luck and let us know what route you head down!