[Gloucs] Linux (et al) Certifications

[Gareth Bromley]

On Fri, 9 May 2003, Dave Elliott wrote:
>RedHat - Expensive (unless someone else is paying) and to an
>extent proprietary. Quite well known.

Yeah high cost if you do the 4 days pre-training before hand. Its a real
hard exam (whole day practical affair) on par with the CCIE Lab but
obviously using Linux not Cisco routers :)

Very 'real world' due to high practical element and also RedHat
marketshare (60% last seen), and also with lots of commercials going to RH
route something very good for the CV.

I found it worthwhile doing the 4 day pre-training just to cover some
stuff I hadn't played with i.e. LVS. There wasnt much training material
when I did the exam and most of the stuff now isnt detailed enough to help
debug the practical elements of the exam which are really experience and
depth of understanding based.

I kind of argue that RH isnt proprietary as its Linux Standards Based,
whereas other distros (which may/may not include better features) aren't
and thus are non-standard and could be argued to be proprietary. This
argument becomes even more credible for SuSE, UnitedLinux and others also
being LSB compliant, thus making the move between any of these very easy
for admins.

>LPI - Lower cost than RedHat - perhaps the front 'non proprietary'
>runner - seems to have at least moral support from some industry
>players without being openly proprietary. 'Lower' levels seem to be
>in active revision - not sure about higher end. Has some support of
>'self-teach' documentation.

I was a tad disappointed with the LPI exams I did, not very meaningful and
more focused on parrot based learning than experience/knowledge that a
practical exam of some sort would have highlighted.

I like the idea behind it, but its time to market/update etc. is too long
which I feel make it lag behind real world Linux :(

>SAIR - At first glance somewhat similar to LPI but each exam more
>focussed on specific programs including Apache. Has a set of 'books'
>written to accompany it, but half of them seem to be out-of-print,
>which is somewhat concerning as the authors also claim to be connected
>to the specifying body.

Although covering some of the concerns of the LPI, i think this one has
dying a slow death like the LPI.

>COMPTIA - Linux+  More of train for everything (and I assume commercial)
>organisation compared to the other more focussed bodies. Seemed to be
>limited to first level?

Never been much impressed with + exams, which all seem very basic. Hard to
aascertain there real worth, except maybe a junior staff differentiator?


I think generally these great exam ideas have all suffered from the
flaws/virtues of the Linux community itself, things such as:
- 'elitism' that 'dictates' that certification isnt required, since we
know it all already.
- Lack of upto date/accurate documentation or varying quality of content
- Until about 9-15months ago the lack of MAJOR commercial backing/movement
to Linux. I noticed this is changing VERY rapidly now with a number of UK
finance houses, pertrol companies and major names moving very rapidly to
Linux based platforms (mainly RedHat which may be of interest to know)

And thus have not been accepted as readily as the MCSE's etc which can be
bootcamped and had market worth to meet skills demands. Hopefully the
market swing towards Linux will relight some of the training/certification
interest and develop these exams further. Hopefully with some hard
practical elements to prove attendees real skill levels.

Just my 2p worth for the day

Gareth