Which Linux Certification?

March 19, 2005 12:45 AM

I am trying to break into the Linux Server Administration field so I have been doing quite a bit of studying lately. I figured while I am studying the subject I might as well work towards a related certification. I am leaning towards the Linux Professional Institute Certification. Other certifications I am considering are CompTIA’s Linux+ and Red Hat’s RHCE. So which Linux certification is the best? I would say Red Hat is the most reputable of these three but I am concerned that their certification might be too Red-Hat-centric, and I don't want to be locked into one distro. Which one is the easiest/cheapest to obtain? Which is the mostly highly regarded in the industry? Are there others that I missed?
posted by dirvish to technology (11 comments total)

This is only a single data point but: As a hiring manager -- which I am on occasion -- considering an entry- or junior-level UNIX SA applicant, I would look at a RHCE in a very very slightly positive light, and ignore any of the other certs you mention. My reaction to the RHCE applicant would be "oh, how cute, a vendor specific certification" whereas my reaction to someone presenting any of these other certs as qualifications would be "oh, a certification junkie, how sad." And this coming from someone who has a distaste for Red Hat.

You'll find that there is likely very little consensus on the value of certification in general, Linux certification in particular, or any given certificate. It's a huge world out there, and there is tremendous variation among hiring managers.
posted by majick at 1:23 AM on March 19, 2005

If all goes well, I'll be looking for a server admin generalist in the next few months.

I will not hire someone that has any one of those certifications unless they can take an ailing linux box and nurse it back to health during the interview. It's just like my general policy of not hiring computer science grads unless they blow my socks off -- most of the contractors and my full-time employees have every degree BUT a computer-science related one. (In my office at the moment, you will find one guy that has no degree and is dabbling in community college classes, I'm a business major with a focus in supply, logistics, and food industry retail operations, the programmer I just hired was an anthropology major, the other guy never bothered with school, and my contractors have everything from anthropology to zoology degrees.)

If you need a goal to study for, get a cert.
If you want to learn linux, just start goofing around with it and try to figure out how to make it do crazy shit, like 2-layer non-password authentication. Or automated backups. Or set up nagios to monitor your favorite websites, like MetaFilter, for errors and downtime. Or replace your cable modem/router with a 486 that you bought at a garage sale that does the same thing. LEARN linux, don't learn what a certification program thinks you need to learn. Generally, this means learning enough about the OS that you can trace a problem down to the right terminology and google for it ... not a series of "this is what you do in this case". Shoot, I can and -have- written scripts that replicate the jobs that many 'certified' sysadmins do.

So what I'm saying is: it doesn't matter. What you want to do is learn linux well enough to take on small, geeky chores for friends businesses that will get you known in the field. As soon as you have any sort of reputation and people saying, "Dude, that' guy's a wizard.." get an entry-level or junior sysadmin job with a medium-sized company. Work your way up from there because you love it. And unless you want to work for a fortune 500 company under a PHB right away, fook the certifications.
posted by SpecialK at 1:32 AM on March 19, 2005

Great responses so far... I look forward to hearing from more opinions on this topic.
posted by Witty at 4:26 AM on March 19, 2005

I've taught on an LPI-related linux course (only going up LPI101 and LPI102), and the syllabus I delivered was engineered in such a way that it covered as much of the LPI materials as possible, whilst ignoring the more esoteric corners. There was a stated objective that whilst you'd be in a good position to take LPI after the course, we were going to concentrate on useful everyday usable stuff and so extra personal study would be necessary before sitting the acttual test. I'd say that the advantage of going for something like LPI (and I'm sure the other cert things are similar) is that it shows you've covered a broad range of things, whereas the self-taught tend to have in-depth knowledge about specific problems they've encountered before, but might not have a grasp of the bigger picture.

On the other hand, there's a way in which the exam rewards specifics rather than a knowledge of the overall. As an example, a friend reports in the LPI exam having to state which command you'd use to number the lines in a file. LPI multi choice gives the option of nl, but the job can just as easily be done with cat -n . It's on these sorts of questions that people pass or fail.

That said, here in the UK, my perception is that LPI is the most popular of the certs. This might or might not be of use to you!
posted by handee at 6:23 AM on March 19, 2005

The Comptia one isn't worth much based on my experience, besides demonstrating a general understanding of Linux. In other words, it's okay if you don't have any experience, but if you have any experience, I'd drop it or put the least amount of emphasis possible on it.
posted by furtive at 7:35 AM on March 19, 2005

I was in the first RHCE class ever conducted, and (sadly) it has done absolutely nothing for me.

I would say your best bet is to just install Linux on every machine you can find, and make everything work. Then do it again.

As someone that has been dealing with Linux since the early days, I wish I had the answer to your question.
posted by bh at 8:11 AM on March 19, 2005

All the unix/linux admins I've known have exactly zero degrees and zero unix/linux certs, but often a lot of Cisco certs. :)

One thing I get from it all is that you need to learn how to do things the so-called "hard way". Just because there's a new hot tool out that's going to make configing a box point and click web based doesn't mean it isn't just going to explode next time the software is upgraded.

Get used to editing all the config by hand in your choice of text editor (ok, just use vi). And when the hot new stuff is out get used to letting it sit for a long time while it matures. Example: Use LPD today instead of CUPS because LPD has worked for a few decades. You can depend on that sort of track record.

Do as bh says, and make sure you run as many servers / services as you can on the internet. Get your ass hacked this way and that way so you can get a feel for what you need to do to protect your servers before they have important data on them.

Just my 2 cents.
posted by shepd at 9:22 AM on March 19, 2005

Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Learn vi/vim like the back of yo hand. And make mistakes and recover from them. When I was in my 'learning linux' phase, I had about six really old boxes running various things in my apartment, from a 486 to a P-2 500. They each had a different distro, and I had fun breaking (and letting others break -into- and seeing how fast I picked up on it) them

I'm going to half-disagree with the poster that says the self-taught only have specialized knowledge about one or two problems... Yeah, we do. Off the top of our heads, we can usually only solve problems that we've had before or have seen someone else talking about. OTOH, people who are self-taught on linux pick up two things that no cert can teach: How to google for something using broad terms and then narrowing down, and how to use the whole linux community to help solve a problem -- from knowing who the real 'experts' are on mailing lists to knowing which mailing lists and IRC chats to lurk on. No cert will give you this knowledge, or if they do, it's usually vendor specific... like the redhat mailing lists.
posted by SpecialK at 9:37 AM on March 19, 2005

And this coming from someone who has a distaste for Red Hat.

I'm a Unix programmer and often do my own admin stuff on our dev servers, and this statement resonates far and wide in the linux community. A lot of people are very much anti corporate/Red Hat. A certification from red Hat will not get you too many places, unless the shop you are applying for is red hat friendly.

It's just like my general policy of not hiring computer science grads unless they blow my socks off

This is from your own prejudices, it seems like, from you yourself having a business degree and not a comp sci degree. Computer science from a good school is extremely rigorous, and anyone with that degree will be able to run circles around your typical linux admin, in my experience.

It's really who you know and how well you work with other people. Linux people are a prickly bunch, and if you can navigate the political terrain fair enough you should be ok. Linux people are also very generous people and will bend over backwards to show you a neat vi or bash feature, if you are willing to learn.

In terms of skills, get yourself a linux server. Install different distributions, install a bunch of junk, take it all away, write backup scripts, write a slew of bash scripts, perl scripts, etc. Become one with Linux :) In your interview, feel free to bad mouth Windows. Talk about Rieser. Talk about LVM. Talk about load balancing. Know what this stuff means!

Best of luck.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 1:58 PM on March 19, 2005

I'm currently hiring a number of new-college-grad/junior-admin people (and some senior-admin folks as well) for some Linux consulting positions. (They're national, live wherever, sell your soul for a nice price ;-)

Of the certs you mention, the only one I even consider worth the paper it's printed on is the RHCE... and that just gets a perfunctory nod of approval before I move on to the candidate's actual qualifications (if any). CCNA's or other Cisco certs catch my eye, because if a CCNA is looking for work in other systems areas, they're probably not just one-skill ponies. Too many certs, and I get the idea that a person only cares about the things that can be answered with a multiple choice form. Script-following keyboard punchers are occasionally useful, but they rarely get interesting or well paying jobs.

The rest of my advice would just echo what Mean Mr. Bucket and SpecialK said immediately preceeding. Curiosity and problem solving skills are 10x more valuable than any rote learning. Oh, and know vi/vim. Can use Emacs if you like, but all real UNIX admins know vi.

SpecialK: Have to disagree on the degrees... A solid CS background is almost always a huge plus for a systems person. I certianly don't discount the non-traditional folks, but they have to cross a higher threshold in their native problem solving abilities before I'm sure they can perform. Opposite bias? Maybe... but then again, I don't have a degree at all.
posted by zeypher at 2:35 PM on March 19, 2005

This is from your own prejudices, it seems like, from you yourself having a business degree and not a comp sci degree. Computer science from a good school is extremely rigorous, and anyone with that degree will be able to run circles around your typical linux admin, in my experience.

I guess it depends. We have three (relatively) decent comp sci related programs in the state. If I were to hire someone to do hardware/assembly/OS programming ... you know, hard-core ENGINEERING ... I'd hire someone from Oregon State. Bachelors' degrees from Portland State's ECE/CS or especially their SBA/MIS programs are not a signifier of skill or suitability for purpose at all for server admins or the kind of creative codemonkies that I need, because both programs are focused on teaching students a skill set targeted towards specific problems, and how to beat a small computer or data problem into submission using a Cisco (tm) Router and an Oracle (tm) Database and a Intel (tm) Server by HP/Compaq (tm) running whatever the current commercial flavor of big-iron Unix is (tm) to get things to halfway work... the 2nd half of the way is what $150/hr consultants earn their bread on, of course. Think of the consultants!

My company, on the other hand, runs a $500 database on a $750 used server bought from eBay using a free operating system and a p2-300 running a BSD and iptables as a firewall/router... and things work perfectly. If I have to break out the smelling salts one more time when I tell this to a CS grad, I'm gonna stop giving them interviews... The real world for 90% of businesses, esp. smaller ones, is nothing like what they teach in CS school.

What I end up hiring are the people that prove they can think their way out from under a wet paper towel. People who can develop software to spec without a lot of frills and using a bare minimum of resources, and can leave 'hooks' (internal term) in the program that future expansions can get hung from. This usually includes people who have no fantasies of managing a bazillion dollar IT group and instead are looking for cool puzzles to solve and ways to McGuyver things together that are more stable than the commercial alternatives. I've built a business that way, and CS schools need a serious reality check if their grads are going to keep up with businesses like mine in the next 5 years.
posted by SpecialK at 2:49 PM on March 19, 2005