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#1 January 22 2018

rolf
Member

Affordable Linux and other certifications

I'm looking into getting my knowledge of Linux "certified".
Looking at the options, so far I found a few "affordable" options in the $400 range.
However, what I had in mind and was hoping for is something cheaper, maybe subscription based - similar to what you can find for learning language.
So, are there other options that I missed, and how would someone go about earning a certifications when they are broke and need that to improve their earning power?
I am also interested in other skills (programming, MySQL, Windows, etc.), so if anyone have any information on other certifications, please share!

Last edited by rolf (January 22 2018)

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#2 September 18 2018

nxnjz
Member

Re: Affordable Linux and other certifications

Old post but if you're still interested, CompTIA recently launched a beta version of the Linux+ exam for just 50$, and it's only one exam instead of two. The final version should be out in a few months, so if you want to take advantage of the beta exam price, do it ASAP.

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#3 September 18 2018

rolf
Member

Re: Affordable Linux and other certifications

Thank you, good tip

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#4 September 18 2018

rolf
Member

Re: Affordable Linux and other certifications

I'm looking at it, my main issue is finding study material!

$50 may not be much, but I still don't want to throw it away by being unprepared.

I read that it is similar to LPIC-1 (which are cheap-ish, by the way).
I could also study for the current comptia linux certifications which I guess this one is bound to replace.

In the course of my research, I came across two free online Linux courses (with "certification" at the end):

https://www.netacad.com/courses/os-it/n … essentials
https://www.netacad.com/courses/os-it/n … -unhatched

Last edited by rolf (September 18 2018)

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#5 September 19 2018

Joe
Member

Re: Affordable Linux and other certifications

Some of the best generic Linux certifications you can get are Red Hat's RHCSA and later the RHCE.

  • Red Hat needs no introduction, they're arguably the best Linux company out there.

  • Most of the material can be found online for free (for instance, first result off Youtube)

  • You can use CentOS as a cheap (free) alternative to Red Hat to save a few bucks

I found a website which offers the training and certification. They don't show prices on their website so I don't know how cheap it is. Maybe it's super expensive and not affordable at all, and then it's just a waste of money, ignore them.

They offer 3 certifications: RHCSA, RHCE, RHCVA.

  • RHCSA is the one you want. It covers a wide variety of topics. I personally think that you don't need paid training for it, because study material is widely available and most of it you're probably already familiar with.

  • RHCE is more advanced, and seriously more difficult. I would only consider it after achieving RHCSA. I would recommend paying for training for it, because getting a good instructor can help immensely. I don't recommend it unless you want to specialize in Linux sysadmin.

  • RHCVA is one path you can take after RHCE. I'm not a fan, since the class is a little old school and leaves out some of the most recent virtualization technologies we're working on. In any case this is a highly targeted, specific certification, and I don't think that's at all what you're looking for.

For full disclosure, I should mention that I work for Red Hat, so obviously I'm a little biased, but I can vouch that certifications are very sought after. I'm preparing my RHCSA too, so if you have questions about it, don't hesitate.

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#6 September 19 2018

rolf
Member

Re: Affordable Linux and other certifications

Joe wrote:

For full disclosure, I should mention that I work for Red Hat, so obviously I'm a little biased, but I can vouch that certifications are very sought after. I'm preparing my RHCSA too, so if you have questions about it, don't hesitate.

Thank you!

My questions and comments:
- Can you hire me and how can I get hired by Red Hat? Just kidding. Actually no I'm serious.
- Thanks I heard about RH qualifications, I heard a lot of good things, and I'm sure they are very valid qualifications, however they are not super high in my list of priorities because:
      - Slightly above my budget
      - I have no qualifications, I would rather start progressively with a cheap and less intimidating one
      - It is specific to Red Hat / Centos distribution (I'm a de-facto Debianista)

And finally, I went to their website (following your link). There is a mandatory country popup, and Lebanon is not in the list. OK, I eventually spotted "Middle East". It threw me off for a while.

Thanks for your recommendations and links, I will look into it again.

Last edited by rolf (September 19 2018)

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#7 September 19 2018

nxnjz
Member

Re: Affordable Linux and other certifications

rolf wrote:

I'm looking at it, my main issue is finding study material!

There is no  specific study material for this particular exam, though you can look at the objectives and study each topic, or use study material for the regular Linux+ exams / LPIC-1 exams

I am currently studying for that cert, should take the exam within two weeks.

If you end up going for it, I strongly recommend you actually do everything you learned. Setup any laptop/desktop/raspberry pi/virtual machine/etc or get a cheap VPS (I use vultr.com, prices start at 2.50$ a month.) And work on different distros, or at least Debian and CentOS, and do as much as you can.

Play with basic tools like grep, kill, ps, chmod, chown, vim, tail, head, sudo, su, ifconfig, ip, systemd tools (systemctl and journalctl), modprobe, lsusb, fdisk, lsblk, dmesg, awk, sed, etc

Setup basic services: apache, nginx, vsftpd, samba, mariadb, openssh, etc

Setup backups with cron, use rsync, write bash scripts, add/remove users, give them sudo rights, play with grub, etc


This list is very far from complete but you get the idea.

Last edited by nxnjz (September 19 2018)

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#8 October 11 2018

Joe
Member

Re: Affordable Linux and other certifications

Oops, Rolf, sorry I took so long to write an answer

- Can you hire me and how can I get hired by Red Hat? Just kidding. Actually no I'm serious.

I have zero power on hiring decisions, unless a hiring manager asks me to sit in on an interview, so there's not much I can do directly. However I can still help.

The best way to get Red Hat's attention is to become an active contributor to one of the project they're working on. It's all 100% open source so you can get started whenever, no need to ask for permission.
The project I've been working on is called OpenStack, it's a cloud computing framework that is incredibly complex, vast and rich. It's also a fairly successful project and we're constantly hiring and expanding our teams. However we're still struggling to find candidates with prior experience with the framework.

So here's the deal: Start landing commits in OpenStack, and I can guarantee you a job interview with Red Hat. That's the best I can do, but it's already getting your foot through the door.

About OpenStack

If you're interested and take a look at OpenStack, it's perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed. The project is huge! Actually, the project is an umbrella for many (50+) mini-projects that work together. It makes things complex, but you can pick and choose which projects interest you the most:

* If you're interested in web development
* CLI clients
* If you want to play with virtualization and hypervisors
* Networking
* and others like different sorts of storage projects, security and identity, the orchestration tools, the installer part, ...

Pick and choose which project seems the most interesting to you, and start contributing.

Getting started can be daunting. Openstack itself is meant to be run on several servers in order to run a data center. Installing it is incredibly difficult. Thankfully, some developers have developed a bunch of shell script that install a minimal deployment on a single machine. Useful for testing and previews. The project is called devstack and this is where you should probably start.

If you're seriously interested hit me back, we can turn this into a reality.

Other projects

I'm mostly concentrated on openstack all day, so I don't know the people in other departments. I cannot guarantee to get you the interview (maybe they aren't hiring?), but I can always try. If OpenStack doesn't interest you, here's a list off the top of my head of projects that Red Hat is super interested in, and landing commits in there will definitely attract their attention:

I know this list is very oriented towards Cloud Computing, but that's what I work on, so that's what I know. Hopefully that will help you get started.

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#9 November 11 2018

rolf
Member

Re: Affordable Linux and other certifications

Hello,

This is long overdue: thanks Joe for your tips, it is appreciated.
Thanks, nxnjz as well!

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