Is Linux Course worth doing

Soldato
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hi folks
trying to get a few certifications under my belt to spruce up the CV
I did an MTA server admin course last year

I was looking at the Linux essentials LPI for this year, would it be a good one to have?

others I was looking at were comptia network+ or MTA software development fundamentals

I just want to get a broad range of certifications, the ones that are most sought really

thanks
 
Soldato
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You may be better off getting a decent book rather than shelling out for a course.

Depending on your disposition you may well learn more (and quicker) getting hands on by yourself, instead of plodding along a syllabus.

That's just my 2p, though!
 
Soldato
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Linux is quite simple to self teach, depending on what exactly you want to do.

Looking at the LPI Linux Essentials page, it's fairly simple stuff, navigation, text editiors, using the command line, which you learn yourself without too much trouble.

Unless you want to delve deeper into different shells & scripting on a linux/unix platform, it's not that hard!
 
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Get your red hat linux web administration courses. If you can find any. there seems to be a lot of demand for capable web administrators. Its quite a difficult job to get in to though because they require experience and its difficult to get experience as a web admin outside of being a web admin. If i search for system admin jobs, usually comes up with a quite a few linux administration jobs.

Sure I can set up lamp on linux and freebsd but can i be a sys admin for a large web commerce website? i am not sure.

Check out this post. http://www.jobsite.co.uk/job/senior...&tmpl=lin&sctr=IT&position=7&page=1&engine=db

You see all the technolgies they use these days with linux in enterprise? Its not just running apache and php and sql any more, its application delivery and clustering and all other types of technologies. Often these technologies are not available for home use, so it can be difficult to learn about them outside of the job.
 
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Soldato
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yeah I've to pay for these myself, the course is £212 for Linux essentials
I might phone them, because I don't really need to go into 'what is a computer' and 'hardware, harddrives' etc
just looked at the red hat courses, £1600 for the Linux admin, yikes!
 
Soldato
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I'm still new to linux if I'm honest but so far the hardest part seems to be learning all the names of different resources. Grab yourself a cheap server and crack on. Centos is supposed to be equivalent to redhat minus the premium functions it hopefully is a good starting base for learning administration.

Not sure who's happier about my new server me or the cat who's found a warm place to sleep :D.
 
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Soldato
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Crusier, defo red hat/aix/oracle os certified courses rather than generic ones if your adding it to your cv :)

You can download images of most of these to practice in virtual box, you'll learn more this way than a course
 
Soldato
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Get your red hat linux web administration courses. If you can find any. there seems to be a lot of demand for capable web administrators. Its quite a difficult job to get in to though because they require experience and its difficult to get experience as a web admin outside of being a web admin.

[snip]

Sometimes you have to come in sideways! If you have generally good Linux/sysadmin skills then you should be able to pick up new skills. Having a good knowledge of even stuff like LAMP is a start. Granted not everyone uses Apache, but they all work in essentially the same way. Same for MySQL or any other DB.

You see all the technolgies they use these days with linux in enterprise? Its not just running apache and php and sql any more, its application delivery and clustering and all other types of technologies. Often these technologies are not available for home use, so it can be difficult to learn about them outside of the job.

Again, there will likely be open source alternatives for things like clustering, virtualisation and the like. They all work in the same way you just need to get to grips. I have found a lot of enterprise stuff tends to be expensive support-based software rather than anything that is radically different to what is available for free.

yeah I've to pay for these myself, the course is £212 for Linux essentials
I might phone them, because I don't really need to go into 'what is a computer' and 'hardware, harddrives' etc
just looked at the red hat courses, £1600 for the Linux admin, yikes!

There are a plethora of linux sysadmin books out there. Plenty for RedHat, too. It may be an idea to go the self-taught route first before splashing out money on "My First Computer" courses or super-expensive qualifications - especially if it is just for CV padding.

I'm still new to linux if I'm honest but so far the hardest part seems to be learning all the names of different resources. Grab yourself a cheap server and crack on. Centos is supposed to be equivalent to redhat minus the premium functions it hopefully is a good starting base for learning administration.

Not sure who's happier about my new server me or the cat who's found a warm place to sleep :D.

Yep, CentOS is the "community" version of Red Hat. You can always give Fedora a go too, this is again Red Hat but for the desktop. Obviously there are differences from actual Red Hat, but generally anything you learn on CentOS/Fedora can be applied to RH. The same can be said for any flavour of Linux really. A lot of people start out with Ubuntu.

Crusier, defo red hat/aix/oracle os certified courses rather than generic ones if your adding it to your cv :)

You can download images of most of these to practice in virtual box, you'll learn more this way than a course

Agree. If you must do a course, then go for one of the big names as they will be well known in the industry. But again, if you don't know you will be using these skills any time soon, you may want to consider saving the money and going self-taught. Get your new employer to pay! :p
 
Soldato
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No course can ever be better than having the experience, but having both the certifications and the experience is a major advantage. What I normally do, is learn and experince the subject first then do the course later, as a confirmation to employers or future employers that I know what I'm doing.

Courses are also intreasting as it shows how the manufactures/companies what you do certain tasks.
 
Soldato
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The LPI course isn't bad (and if I remember correctly it can count towards some form of SUSE qualification). The Red Hat RHCSA and RHCE certifications are good to have (you need to have the former before you can get the latter anyway) but they are not things you can do without knowledge and, most importantly, experience.

If you don't know anything then it's best to experiment with it on a physical, or virtual, machine and try things, break them, fix them, reinstall etc. Lots of info online. Just remember before you get bogged down using some esoteric flavour that if you are looking to work in the area then you probably should be looking at a version which is being used in business, (e.g. use CentOS as it's equivalent to RHEL).
 
Caporegime
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FYI, there is a free course on EDX and there are other free resources available on the net - MIT open courseware etcetc...
 
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Download linux distro or freebsd and give it a go. There is loads of videos on youtube explaining how to do just about anything on linux.

I wouldn't go in to a linux course unless you have used it at home to some extent. You could but you might as well get to grips with some of it before you go.

The linux certs and using it at home help, but in terms of working as a linux sys admin, there are a lot more things you need to know outside of the certs. It helps if you have web development experience and you know clustering and application delivery technologies, but as siriusb says you can pick those up from open source but i've yet to find out more info on that.

While some IT sectors i think the certs help more than others. For example if you learn about exchange from certs, you could probably get a job off just that. Off linux certs a lone id be surprised if you could get a job, maybe as a junior linux admin. Knowing linux is one thing but knowing how to linux sys admin is completely different in my opinion. Ive been on linux since 1998 but wouldnt be able to get a job in linux sys admin.
 
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