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First LPI Certification Exam 224

Posted by Hemos from the towards-certification dept.
Linegod writes " The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) today announced the immediate availability of the first exam in its Linux Certification Program. The exam, which covers Linux basics as part of the program's first level, is now available worldwide at testing centers affiliated with Virtual University Enterprises " There's a lot of people currently competing to be "the standard", ranging from the different distros to people like this - what do you folks think?
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First LPI Certification Exam More

First LPI Certification Exam

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  • Better link for newbies... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Brainbench [brainbench.com], formerly tekmetrics is a free site that hands out certifications on a number of computer related subjects (they were free the last time I checked, but then again they were also known as tekmetrics...). I would definately reccomend the Linux one for someone just starting out. OTOH some personal experiences from my roomate would make me reccomend *not* getting involved in proofreading their tests if they ask you to...

  • Re:Linux certification (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, Posix is standard, X/Open is standard, The single UNIX specification II is standard and so on.

    Now what are those people going to do who stopped using distributions with 0.99.10 ? Exactly, they are going to lose -- no nice piece of paper.

    Anyway -- a certification programme should be as neutral as possible. Now $100 for an 1a, one and a half hour -- not even enough to explain the differences between tar and cpio, not to mention to tell people how to set up a failsafe init installation -- if there still is an init at all.

    Yes, tounge in the cheek and such as I am afraid it is going to be like with so many courses. A lot of crap -- but the really good ones are worth it.

    I do not think any certification programme is worth three cheers, at least not before having had more than one very close look. You will have to pay real money for it so you deserve a real value too.

    Happy hacking

  • > Looking through Brainbench's list of
    > certifications that they offer, I noticed that
    > they offered a Linux Administrator offering.

    As an aside, Brainbench certs are free. I believe they make their money by charging headhunters to scan their database.

    I've taken a number of their tests, and while they are most definitely *not* comprehensive (like, 30 or 40 questions), they are fairly hard, and seem to cover a decent amount of subject matter. Our department is actually going to be using the Perl test there as part of our hiring process. Note, I say *part*. The important part isn't necessarily how they scored, but how willing they are to learn, and how they come off in an interview.

    Our area is a bunch (or cluster, as another /.'er called them :) of geeks in the middle of a very conservative suit-laden place. HR doesn't know how to find people that fit what we do, and these tests can give us an idea if we have someone that has the right mindset.
  • You CANNOT install RedHat without installing X-windows

    So I'm a freaking mage. I've installed a lot of RH's without even launching X once. What the heck do you need X on server, is it an NT or what?

    Jou just get and RTFM a bit, and then RTFM a bit more, and the know that rpm works without X and vi works without X too.

    And you *can* upgrade from 5.2 to 6.x. I did it. Not that you really need it if you have working server. Not that you need sendmail either - name me one security hole in qmail? qmail is 1.03 and working and sendmail is 8.9.x and still broken. See it?
  • Actually, I believe there are quite a few certification-style licensing tests where the questions are available. IIRC (I might not) the tests for your pilot's license, ham radio license, and probably others have a large pool of public questions from which a sample is drawn.

    Here [lpi.org] is a detailed list of subject matter for the 1A test. They might as well give you the answers.
  • what do source RPM's expand to? usually a gzipped tarball.

    No, they expand to 1 or more gzipped tarballs, patches, and a "spec" file with build options for various platforms plus other descriptive information. There's a difference.

    As for binary stuff, a gzipped tarball is not a package. It is a compressed archive of files, but it lacks the metadata contained in an RPM package (install scripts, dependencies, author info, installation-directory relocation, etc). Yes, it is possible to put this metadata into a tarball by adding "magic" files that don't actually get installed, but I personally feel the RPM approach is cleaner.

    It's convenient. It's reasonably well designed. It's free, open, and documented (www.rpm.org). I happen to like RPM.
  • o Kernel Hacker^H^H^H^H^H^HDeveloper

    There is no need for an exam to certify that you are a Kernel hacker. To qualify you should have code with your name on it in the kernel. :-)

    ...richie

  • advanced programming indeed ;-), I resemble that remark ...
  • Sounds like your views are very valid. But there is another aspect to this process. To provide a meaningful certification, they need to focus on what standards exist. In this area, they can server as a common thread to unite the various distros being created.

    I personally support them for this reason. I believe it is good to have a professional orientation when programming for a living. If LPI can provide some validation, the community will benefit in the long term.

  • Obvious items are usually spelled out in a FAQ [lpi.org]. Section 4 points out that LPI does not offer training courses. I could not care less how you learned your skills. I do care whether you are professional and follow industry standards.

    Again, I hope the standardization process grows with their presence.

  • As a person who actually tried RPG, I agree with you. I also would like to see how an Open Source community would tackle the challenge. It would be nice if this certification becomes a badge of honor that is sought out ;-)
  • I suppose this is good, for people looking to clinch linux-related jobs and employers who want little pieces of paper that can give them warm fuzzies about hiring you. I hope that the certification actually indicates proficiency, but given the exams i've taken in life I somehow doubt it.

    The greater issue though is how this affects the linux job market. If somehow this certification becomes a requirement for employment, and only one company gives out the certification that employers want, then that company can charge arbitrary amounts for the certification and basically turn it into a MSCE situation - a way to get lots of money for little work and distribute warm fuzzies among hiring managers without actually proving much of anything about the person who shelled out the bucks for the exam other than that they shelled out the bucks.

    This, of course, would be bad.

  • I'm afraid you've missed the point. And by a lot, at that.

    How you can compare Open Source apps/programming with certification testing is beyond me. There is a sound, logical reason behind sharing source code-- in the end, you have a more solid application. Open Source programming has become so popular because it works.

    So, going with this notion, we should open-source tests! Give everyone the answers! Come on, man, use your head! The purpose of a test is to test and show what you do and do not know (more or less). But once we give away the answers, we've defeated that purpose.

    See the problems with your asinine comments? Open-sourcing is a great solution-- to programming. But, obviously not to certification.
    I think you missed the point by a longshot not only on this issue, but it seems like many, many more.
  • Does anyone have any thoughts on what a Linux admin would gain by having his/her RHCE (RedHat Certified Engineer)?

    Certificates give PHB types warm, fuzzy feelings inside. Back in my Netware days, I worked with many a CNE who the boss touted as our new "NetWare expert" but had never actually touched a NetWare console until I walked them through it. So there I sat with 6 years experience, but the guy who had done nothing but read a book and take a test was the one the boss saw as the expert.

    So, in a nutshell, certification won't do a thing about making you a better technician, but it will, in many situations, help get you better jobs.

    I used to be opposed to certifications, but the way I look at it now is: I know I'm a good technician, my peers know I'm a good technician, if some little certificate will make my boss acknowledge it as well (and reflect it in my paycheck), so be it.
  • Our LUG is now officially supporting the vendor independent LPI certifications. We had a record number of listeners to the IceCast of last nights meeting which covered the test.

    I have also started a project site at our LUG website to support members who want to get certified. Hereis the URL: http://www.mlinux.org/projects/cer tified/lpi117/ [mlinux.org]. It includes a FAQ about the test from my perspective and a list of resources to study. As other members take the test I will add their points of view to the FAQ as well.

    Thanks!
    Tony Awtrey
  • even better: what do source RPM's expand to? usually a gzipped tarball. oiy:)

  • daunting (Score:1)

    by TomG ( 9985 )
    I consider myself proficient at GNU/Linux.
    Looking at what you need for level one certification daunts me. :-/ I have a lot to learn.
  • > In short, yeah, it's perfectly valid to learn
    > by book... but there is really no substitute
    > for experience and trial by fire.

    Hehe - wish I had a dime for every time I've wanted to set The Book on fire & lob it at one of the MCSE/CNA/whatever at work who couldn't ping localhost if their lives depended on it...

  • ON the subject matter - most of it is actually basic UNIX certification which is good (tm). It goes almost word for word with entry AIX system administration. Considering the sponsors that somehow does not amase me, but once again it is good (tm).
  • Ten years ago or so, someone was pushing for certification standards for programmers in Computer Language magazine. An engineer wrote in to protest. In his experience in the engineering field, a standards board merely gave the lawyers control over the industry.

    These make for interesting ramifications for an open operating system.

  • What distro keeps the init.d directory in /sbin? Not RedHat at least. And an rc.d directory just helps clean up that messy /etc. Altough, you are right in that upgrading from one dist to the next is a bit harder (But not impossible. Just insert a (Net-)boot disk and reboot. Select "upgrade" on the menu, if I recall correct) on RedHat. Anyway, over to the init-thingies: At least you are not using Slaskware, with its broken BSD init (It is not a real BSD init for several reasons, resulting in much dirtier init scripts). And as a last notice - Debian's SysV-init does not have any standardizd means for services to return their status (OK, Failed, Passed). This is a crusial fact that is the single reason besides from that I don't own one more computer to run Debian on, that I haven't ported Aurora [dhs.org] to Debian yet...
  • ..met someone with an MCSE who knew what they were doing, nor have I met any CNE or CNA who had a clue either.

    Then I have to ask exactly how many CNE/CNA's you've ever met.

    Normally I don't respond to these comments either, as they fall under the category "flamebait", but yours, trance9, hit a nerve. Although I no longer train, I have a CNI certification and worked in an NAEC for almost two years. During that time, I trained dozens of people from their beginning as a CNA through to their CNE, and I can tell you that not one who made it through my classes was clueless. And neither am I.

    As for the LPI cert, yes, I think it's a great idea. And yes, I plan to get it. I'm a Linux-newbie, working to gain more than a base-level understanding of the OS and trying to teach myself programming. Difficult to do while you're holding down a day job and supporting a family, but I work on it in my spare moments. And I'm sure that someone out there would look at the small Linux deployment in my office and pronounce me "clueless" for some fault or another.

    The LPI cert will provide for me a framework to do my studies, a floorplan to build on. In the absence of any formalized training program, and lacking any mentor I can call on at need, it's the best option for me. And yes, once I get enough knowledge and skill under my belt, I plan to approach the training center I formerly worked for, and see if they want to offer classes based on the LPI program.

    Like it or not, certifications are a fact of business life. Non-IT people, who typically hold the purse-strings for personnel, look for these metrics. And as Linux gains in acceptance, qualified people are going to be in demand. We all know that "certification qualification", but without test-driving every candidate for an admin job, a cert at least means that the person knew enough to pass the test, which is more than you can say for someone off the street.

  • Seriously, I wish Linus would ask everyone using the name "Linux" to ask his permission--I'm worried that the trademark will lose any legal value.

  • I think most of the posts are really missing the point.

    Discrediting the general genre of certifications is one thing. I can accept that this type of debate will never be over. This is not unique to Linux, computers or IT. It applies to any professional industry. CPA;accounting etc...

    The real significance is the recognition that this is a useful thing. I think this is a good thing for the Linux community. It may or may not fully creditentialize an individual, but its another step towards creditentializing Linux in the professional IT world. Realize that this is mostly a step for HR and upper management.
  • Are you slamming Open Source, or just quoting Hank Reardon?
  • I'll agree. I was an Art Major, got into programming as a natural progression from Sculpture. You know, Lego's in Space, and all that. Most (all, actually) on the trail of M(can't)CSE's through our biz, were what we referred to as 'Skippy's. Well meaning drones retrained from a non-creative existence into Part Replacers.

  • 1500 is not that expensive compared to the average Microsoft certification, at least here in Canada. A friend of mine is doing MSCE. And, I'm sure you don't have to do all the distribution-specific exams. Surely one or two would suffice.

    I would be interested in doing tests like this, not because I think I couldn't learn it on my own, but because the tests would make sure I didn't miss anything.

    A lot of people here are talking about "learning it on your own", and I fully support that - it's how I learned almost everything I use on a day to day basis (a Msc in computer science doesn't actually get you too far actually _programming_) But... when you learn on your own you sometimes miss things. You can get wrong ideas about how things work that perhaps wouldn't be corrected by small at-home network experiments, or the FAQs.

    It's hard to cover every little area with self-directed study. I think a combination is best: some courses, or at least some really good books to provide an overview of all the areas and subjects worth knowing and some basic facts. Then lots of experimentation and digging through the documents and code to really, really understand it deeply.
  • Mirror of the Exam 1a objectives. http://www.zerosanity.com/obj-t1a.html [zerosanity.com]
  • brought to you by the greatest troller on slash

    You know, he may just be...
  • And if that last one doesn't satisfy you, you can pretend that the online censor-boards in Australia would confiscate his certificate if it were kept online, and therefore the dead-tree copy is just a prudent precaution.

    The Melbourne that he refers to is, in fact, Melbourne Florida, not Melbourne Australia (my home town). :-)

  • Being certified does not mean that you have to be clueless. I know several MCSEs and (M)CNEs that are very clued. All of them, however, have been working in the business for many years and all of them have in-depth experience in 2+ operating systems.

    On the other hand, it is true that you can read yourself to an MCSE and still be unable to handle, or even start to debug, a real-world problem.
  • Concepts, general Unix/GNU stuff, general Linux stuff (LSB++), and pick-atleast-one-distro details stuff.
  • I was thinking more along the lines of a certified kernel hacker as someone who a company would hire if they wanted to port Linux or FreeBSD to the Rolex or something.

    While being among the top 10 contributors to the linux kernel is definitely certification enough to many of us, there's only 10 people in the top 10 whereas there may be many more with such talent out there if they could get a piece of paper to say so and make money off of it.
  • Well, maybe not good. But it's better than Redhat's Certification program. Why? Well, all you have do is it take the test ($100) at any Vue testing center (across the nation). This is in stark contrast to RedHat's method (at least when it was first introduced -- I'm sure it's been made friendlier since then. But basically it said: "give redhat a lot of money, and come to North Carolina"). Nothing against RedHat, but, well, this is a more "attainable" certification. And a lot of people see certifications as a good way to better their chances of getting a job. If nothing else, it can make up for your years of using linux at home, but not on the job. How can you have linux experience at work when there weren't many jobs until recently? Well, at least you can use your existing linux experience to make taking the test easy, and say "I'm certified" which is better than nothing.

  • Well, it's true that the MCSE's suffer from the many exam cram books, boot camps, websites etc. etc. where you just get the answers, much like the earlier Troll post.

    However, you'll always see this happening because of the quick bucks thats awailable for thoose companies willingly to prostitute themselves to do so. Hell, even the exam prep's for MC* costs money now, and currently two companies are compeeting with this.

    So, what I'm saying is, that certifications really doesn't matter, they are just a tool for managers who dossen't have the ability or even care to evaluate their employees skills.

    And by the way, I'm an MCSE, having taken the tests required in 1 month because of a raise if I did, two at a time, never read a single line for one of them. Real life experience is really what counts, your OWN experience, not others.

    How do you messure experience? Simple, take a good technical guy/gal with decent social skills with you to the interview, and let him/her question the person you are about to hire. Then ask the technical guy/gal what his/her feelings are about the person being interviewed. Very very simple.

    I've been running linux since 1993, started with computers back in 1985 with the good old C=64, so I'm not exactly a Microsoft drone, but when you grow older, get a wife and all, you just have bet on the horse that runs in the money. And that horse is currently Microsoft. At least in Denmark it is...

    H-man
  • I agree that short term memory != problem solving skills (especially in the MCSE arena), and that most certs are worth the paper they're printed on. (of course, BS!=problem solving skills as well, until you throw some experience at it). As a sample of just one of the problems, consider the test that asks where to find a config file for whatever. As not all distros follow the LSB/FSSTND, aren't we better off just having a clue as to the filename and how to use find(1)? A good cert should reflect knowledge of what tools are available and their use in unpredictable situations rather than rote memorization of a default box setup. The only cert I've seen out there that grabs any respect from me is the CCIE, and unless they've changed it recently you won't get there by memorizing a study guide.
  • You know, you are part right, but dead wrong too.
    People who pass tests are like people who frag level 7 in "bring em on" mode. Sure there not the king of the clan, but they do know the game.

    Most tests have too little variation, or are just too damn easy. Brain fact pumping then works.
    We thus should make, independent, open sourced, tests. With LOTS of questions, and variation.

    Passing tests also is a rightfull yardstick; you probably do understand the concepts. And in any real world job, you can throw away 60% of what you learned in ANY test anyway, and learn about 500% more stuff you DO need.

    Even your own self esteem will get a boost from passing a test, and at least, it will show some less known facts to you, if the results are public, that you didnt know before. Who knows, you might learn a new trick, pony.

    Hugs SlashDread
  • Actually, I feel that certifications are usually like up front money before you can go and invest in a career. What I mean is, it atleast shows that you are serious about something. If you have two equal candidates for a position, but one is certified, then you can probably say that that certified person is a little more serious than the other. This too may not be totally true, but someone that is certified, has shown that they have taken the time/money/effort to atleast get certified.

    Steven Rostedt
  • It's only a way among many to help we reach the goal: Linux domination. What we should pay attention to is keep it always on right track.

    One friend of mine is considering provide Linux related training course in his training center. You know, he had no idea what Linux is before. But after many people ask for Linux training course, he realized this is a big business opportunity.
  • I've been a (boot-camp) CNE for ten years or so, and more recently am a self-taught MCSE : the company I work for also has its own relatively minor certification system. This has given me a lot of opportunity to observe vendor certification programs from both sides of the fence and overall I have to agree they are not all they're supposed to be.

    Really I think vendors see them as marketing opportunities, especially if you can convince your dealer channel that they have to have some number of certified folk on staff before they can resell your product. Plus IMO the markup on education materials can be very attractive. Then again, the qualifications are portable so if it helps someone get a better job who am I to complain.

    I guess we've all seen the fully-certified people who don't know anything, but there are also plenty that are pretty smart. My personal opinion is that it's down to individuals in the end, just like any other way of measuring knowledge and experience.

    I have to say that one good thing about studying for certification is that it forces you to explore the boring parts of an OS as well as whatever you personally find more interesting... this has saved my bacon on numerous occasions. And self-teach is definitely the best method, running thin ethernet around my house for hands-on practice taught me a lot about enterprise stuff in miniature; I'm fairly sure I would have missed this in a classroom situation.

  • Syngress [syngress.com] is selling a RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) study guide.

    I wonder if it'll be on the LPI recommended reading list?

  • I guess not...


    Red Hat isn't on their Sponsor list [lpi.org] (see bottom of page)

  • Level 1: Test 1, Test 2, and one othe 2x tests.
    Level 2: Test 3, Test 4
    Level 3: Two of the 5x tests.

    And that'll cost you $700. (if you pass all of them the first time). To really convince people that you are a true linux guru (not just another LCP), you should ofcourse pass all of them.

    The good news is, you can still plunk down the remaining $2500 to visit all the linux conventions to show of your bundle of certificates.

    Johan Veenstra (Not Certified, you have to take my word for it)
  • sed, sort, cut, expand, fmt, head, join, nl, od, paste, pr, split, tac, tail, tr, wc, xargs, tee, ps, top, kill, bg, fg, jobs, fdisk, mkfs, quota, edquota, repquota, quotaon, chmod, umask, chown, chgrp, find, locate, which, updatedb, shutdown, init, useradd, userdel, groupadd, gpasswd, passwd, group, shadow, gshadow.

    Gee, why are all these commands so long?

    They could have been a lot shorter:

    s, so, c, e, f, h, j, n, o, p, pr, sp, t, ta, tr, w, x, te, ps, to, k, b, fg, jo, fd, m, q, ed, r, qu, ch, u, cho, chg, fi, l, wh, up, sh, i, us, usd, g, gp, pa, gr, sha, gs.

    Oh boy what have I done, aaaaaaaarrrrgh

    Johan Veenstra.
  • Yep i'm running in compilation mode:

    sed, sort, cut, expand, fmt, head, join, nl, od, paste, pr, split, tac, tail, tr, wc, xargs, tee, ps, top, kill, bg, fg, jobs, fdisk, mkfs, quota, edquota, repquota, quotaon, chmod, umask, chown, chgrp, find, locate, which, updatedb, shutdown, init, useradd, userdel, groupadd, gpasswd, passwd, group, shadow, gshadow.

    To linux/unix users this seems pretty easy (which ofcourse it is), but it's gonna take somebody who's never worked with unix some time to learn all these commands, I can tell you that.

    Johan Veenstra
  • I am a MCSE (self taught)who took the 95 test instead of the NT WKSTN test. The bottomline is that without the certification process I would never have learned as much about 95 as I did. Most of my jobs have been in all NT shops, so the material on using 95 with a NT network was somewhat new to me. I never was in a situation where I had to deal with DOS apps running under 95, so the tuning section was of interest.

    There is a limit to what you learn by playing around with things, namely, the environments within which you play with em.

    Matt
  • Having sold my soul for the MCSE, it maybe cost me 1500 total to get. You make it sounds as if your company would give you 6k for it, so it aint a bad way to increase your marketability and net 4.5k, or 6k if they pay for everything.

    Matt
  • I wonder if we can start a SDTC (SlashDot Troll Certification program going. Then we could have something like this:

    School House Trolling (Score:5, Troll)
    by Anonymous Coward on 07:50 PM January 11th, 2000 EST (#92)

    [...]
    ---
    SDTC --- Certified Troll #00001002


    After all, if certification is practically meaningless, I'm sure we could start some practical uses for meaningless certification!
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

  • How can you offer standard testing for a non-standard OS?

    Although each distro is a bit different, I have yet to see one that is so different that you can't apply what you already know (Except that Caldera seems determined to do that with it's remarkably registry like configuration system). For the most part, that's true of Unix in general.

  • That's right it is MCSE. The best way to remember is to know that MCSE stands for:

    Must
    Consult
    Someone
    Experienced

    or

    Most
    Concerned with
    Salary
    Enhancement
    -
    :)

  • Cost. (Score:2)

    by Forge ( 2456 )
    Why dose it cost more per test than MCP ?

    Dose MS use software sales to susidise exams ?
  • I believe the biggest things that linux is lacking is the amount of skilled people. One of the main reasons why MS is popular is that you can find someone to fix your network / computer anywhere. Now I know everyone is thinking that an MCSE could't fix anything, but they are around, and in most cases can get things going.

    In general I think companies are leery about installing Linux, because of the lack of capable people.

    We need the certifications there so people can obtain them. A certification says that I know so much. It gives a company some sense of security--even though it may be a false sense of security, in some cases.

    There is no paper based exam in the world that will weed out the unwarranted people. The only successul way to do this are like CCIE, and RHCE, where they have lab based exams. That is fact, why dispute it.

    I wish the best of luck to all those pursuing the LPI certs. I will be one of them. We should encourage as many people as possible to get them. It will help the Linux community.

    Geoff Nordli MCT, MCSE, Master CNE, CCA, A+
  • The above coward is drawing a completely bogus comparison between Open Source and cheating. Open Source is not about copying other people's work. It is about building on what has been done and made publically availablle so you can do more. It coincidentally has significant advantages as a software development mechanism.

    It is no more cheating for me to work in Perl than it is cheating for me to write a math paper and quote results that someone else proved.

    Real systems are complex. You are not going to figure them out from scratch on your own. And, no matter how good OSS is, they are going to fail from time to time. If you don't actually understand what is going on, you won't be able to trouble-shoot your problems. Here is what happened to me over the weekend. My boss was headed off to a conference, and on his copy of a Linux machine root could login, ordinary users could not, and some of the CGI programs were broken. What was wrong? Turned out the disk was full.

    This certification exam is meant to separate out the people who actually understand what is going on from those who are just guessing and copying what they don't understand. I am not an administrator, but I was better than someone with that bozo's pathetic attitude.

    Ah, why am I bothering to respond to this imbicile?

    Ben
  • Looking through Brainbench's [brainbench.com] list of certifications [brainbench.com] that they offer, I noticed that they offered a Linux Administrator [brainbench.com] offering.

    Are we heading for a world where certifications become like standards, there are just so many to choose from?

    How worthwhile are any of these anyways?

    Cheers,
    Ben
  • ...met someone with an MCSE who knew what they were doing, nor have I met any CNE or CNA who had a clue either. I wouldn't expect an LNE or LNA or LCSE or whatever it winds up being called to be any smarter.
  • With all due respect, an MCSE course isn't going to teach you what you need to know about designing an "enterprise network". You need real hard won experience to do that.

    I would guess the guy who sets up a complex network at home is going to be further ahead than the guy who only read books about it, and wrote an MCSE exam.

    When I was in school I lived in a residence with 15 other people, and another 12 next door. We wired the whole place up with ethernet, running it through the eves troughs, up the side of the house, etc., with lots of hubs and so forth. The network had two dial out SLIP lines (that dates me, huh?) which we shared between all of us. That means you've got a network with many hubs, a couple of servers, and two connections to the outside world. Most mid-size corporate networks look something like that. If you're talking about anything more complex, your MCSE isn't going to be nearly enough.

    There is no limit to what you can learn playing around. The only thing you don't get out of playing with computers is a sense of how to work in a team--you're a hacker, until you've worked in a real world team.

    But an MCSE won't give you team experience either, and since team experience is the only thing separating hackers from computing professionals, I'd say you lose on your MCSE.

    Book learning is good--you don't need an MCSE to get that either. I read an average of one good technical book a month, and have been doing that since I was about 15. Since I'm 30 now, that's a lot of hard study. Except the few years I was in school (studying math), none of those were course work.
  • You CANNOT install RedHat without installing X-windows and at least the VGA-16 server; this is, IMO, VERY BROKEN!!

    Bullshit. I did exactly that with RH 6.0 for my firewall machine.

    And whoever stuck that extra /rc.d/ in between /etc and all the SysV stuff should be shot.

    That would be Sun who did it first. Frankly I prefer it that way.
  • Good ghod, man, isn't there an entire industry centered around helping newbies cram to do just that?
  • MCSE (back when I got it at any rate) costs $100 per test for 6 tests. I picked a 4pack of Sybex books covering the core for ~$138. Got the microsoft SQL 6.5 training books for ~170. Total cost ~$908. Not anywhere close to $6k.
    --Shoeboy
  • From a professional point of view, no certificate replaces experience on the resume.
    If you are doing Linux sysadmin, and can put some good stuff on your resume, the lack of a certificate will make little difference, compared to someone with their certificate but no experience.
    Now.. it could be the tie-breaker though....

    I'd say that if many current linux professionals start getting certified, that will dictate the real success of the certification. If they don't... what difference will it make?
  • I'd disagree. Our shop has 140 employees, well over 100 are MCSE/MCSD/MCPs, Oracle DBAs, etc etc, three CCIEs.

    Several of our staff are internationally recognised as leaders in their field (C++).

    Many of the projects we do are ones where other companies have originally gotten the contract and fscked up. We have to undo their mess and then continue on.

    Me? Training for CCIE and MCSE. Run Windows, Linux, and OpenBSD at home.

  • Our company is great: $1,000 for each MCSE exam you pass, and *on top* $5,000 for keeping it current. No contract of fealty either, a healthy $11,000 :)
  • Thankfully, mine doesn't. They *like* us to be certified. They like the fact they can say they have 80% certified employees (especially when the number of employees is in the triple digits). What's more they pay $1,000 per exam passed. And then, a $5,000 bonus on top of that for keeping it current.
  • For what it's worth.... the internet censorship legislation that was supposed to be active as of 1/1 (and had /. braying for blood) seems rather quiet.

    Telstra, AU's largest ISP and supplier of the vast majority of upstream bandwidth still carries full usenet feeds, including alt.binaries.erotica.* etc et al.

  • I took a good look over the Objectives By Exam [lpi.org] and it looks rather comprehensive. I can see MANY things in there that are reasonbly difficult, diverse in their nature, not necessarily intuitive, and require some serious study.

    And by giving out this list, it gives you a decent idea of what to expect. And knowing what to expect means you know what to learn if you want to succeed in getting this certification. It also gives people a set of objectives to learn even if they don't bother going through with the certification, which IMHO is a "good thing".

    There are always going to be wanna-be's without motivation, frauds and people that will help them, because it is profitable to do so. It's just a matter of recognising them, and providing a detailed enough course to discourage the wanna-be's without the motivation, and the frauds from even trying. Much beyond that is futile at best, and at worst, damages the community as much, if not more, than the wanna-be's and frauds do in the first place.

    As for the cost, well, if you want to succeed, you should expect to pay something, and $100 US is nothing compared to the courses I've seen on some products. Just because the software is free, doesn't mean the hard earned hours of the testers and the like should also be free.

    As an aside, the only question I haven't seen yet in a Linux Certification is "When not to use Linux". Sure the list would be small, but hey, if you are true professional, you realise that no single product can be suited to everything. *grin*

  • But what does the exam cost?

    And do I get a lapel pin if I get certified?

    I've decided to get as many different certs as possible this year, but only if I get a lapel pin. Hey, you gotta have standards!
  • But they give HR a nice little metric. Especially for people like me who do not have a college degree but lots of practical experience.

    I feel sorry for the HR people, who are in the same boat I would be if I had to find people for staff positions teaching talmudic studies. I think its a bad thing to use certifications to screen out candidates.

    The big issue I have with most certification programs is that they're to some degree a marketing gimmick; a way of creating a 3rd column within the customer's hierarchy that is wedded to your product. In reality, given the rapid change of technology, what most company needs are people who are more flexible. You also can't allow your experience with a system to wed you too deeply to it. You have to be willing to burn your intellectual capital the way millionaires in old movies lit their cigars with $20 bills.

    If I were to be totally honest with an HR guy about why his company should hire me is that they can drop me into an entirely novel environment and in a couple of days I can do useful things with it, in a couple of weeks I can do interesting things with it, and sometimes in a month or so I can do amazing things. However, if I said that he would conclude that I'm arrogant -- and on that score he'd be more than a little right. What he'd be wrong about is thinking that's a bad thing. You need a little hubris; you can't be timid about jumping into something you're not an expert at.

  • He had to show up physically, because how else can there be any verification of who he says he is.

    They didn't give him immediate results because it's a beta exam and they're still ironing out the details of how to score the answers (partial credit, etc.).

    He got a dead-tree certificate because it's much easier to photocopy and give to employers.

    And if that last one doesn't satisfy you, you can pretend that the online censor-boards in Australia would confiscate his certificate if it were kept online, and therefore the dead-tree copy is just a prudent precaution.

  • Well... (Score:2)

    by / ( 33804 )
    We all know you wacky Australians wouldn't let a little problem like that get in your way.... ;)
  • Like the poor guy needs that -- a thousand emails/phone-calls every day from Joe-Schmoe in Arkansas who wants to create his "Good Ol' Boys Linux" distro. Why bother? The trademark doesn't hold a lot of use for him right now, since just about everyone uses it and *no-one* pays him for it. It's a free operating system though, why should he close the usage of it's name?


    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • With your first post, I though you were funny, with the second, I thought OK enough, with the third, you deserve troll, but now I have to say, anyone that puts in this much effort should be a feature ;p

    If I have to read (Score -1: Troll) remarks, I wish they all could be like this.

    Steven Rostedt
  • I, for one, am not a big fan of certification. I think the old, trusty interview process should suffice. Any knucklehead can get a certification. Interviewing tells you so much more about a potential candidate.

    I work for a guy who wants to get certified in COBOL ?!? I asked him if there were a market for certified COBOL programmes and he replied "I don't know but it's gotta look good on the resume". This is the exact attitude that I despise. People looking for certification are looking for an end to achieve their means. I'm more interested in the person who realizes that life is an ongoing learning process that never ends.



  • Take a look at the list of exams they are developing:

    1: General Linux, part I,
    2: General Linux, part II,
    2a: Caldera-specific,
    2b: Debian-specific,
    2c: TurboLinux-specific,
    2d: Red Hat-specific,
    2e: Slackware-specific,
    2f: SuSE-specific

    That's $800 already.

    They are planning another 7 test in the future:

    3: Advanced,
    4: Linux Internals,
    5a: Windows Integration,
    5b: Internet Server,
    5c: Datebase Server,
    5d: Security, Firewalls, and Encryption,
    5e: Kernel Drivers and Packages

    That makes a total of 15 tests! So the guru's out there (who probably ace all of them without any further study) have to pay $1500 to 'prove' they are at least modestly proficient at linux. Seems like a lot of money to me, but hey if the boss is paying, who cares? Getting a few days off to study won't hurt either :)

    Johan Veenstra

  • "intelligent" enought to "remember large amounts of information".

    that sounds like a robot, not an intelligent person. intelligent people can figure things out and remember critical information. rote memorization doesn't have much to do with intelligence.
  • The best certificate is your reputation. This form of certification for Linux work has been wildly successful so far. Do we really want to water this down with a bureaucratic, rules laden, corrupt paper certification system modeled on Microsoft's laughably ineffective MSCE?

    And, I can't help but remember that hoary old rule, the good drives out the excellent, the barely adequate drives out the good. If the PHBs get their way with this paper certification stuff, we can expect to see corporate contributions to Linux eventually drop to the same low standards they are at in the Wintel world.

  • It will give some newbies a place to start, and a goal to shoot for. I know that as a not-so-newbie-but-still-struggling, I have a hard time figuring out what to tackle next.

    Here is an link [lpi.org] to the description of the "1a" exam (I think it's already been /.'d)

    happy reading.
  • Do you get extra credit in the RHCE "test" if one of the things you do to fix the "broken box" is delete Linuxconf, recompile the kernel to use NO frickin kernel modules (you recompile the kernel to build in support for all the hardware in the box), and delete all the pretty Python scripts and "admin" crap?

    (I'm assuming you can't bring along your own Slackware or Debian CD-ROM.)

    I suppose somebody has to be trained in how to clear up the mess that Red Hat has made, and I guess they should take responsiblity for training the poor fools.
  • If you learned a lot by playing around with NT while getting your MCSE, let me suggest to you that you would have learned just as much by playing around with NT without the MCSE.

    This is not always the case. For example, playing around with a few NT boxes would not help me understand the theory behind designing an enterprise network. There are some things that you can't always experience on your home network.

    Even if my MCSE proves to be worthless in my career, i am still glad i did it because it forced me to learn things that i would have never learned through experience alone.

  • This is a good thing. While the applicability of certifications to the real world can be debated, it is true that many of the testing requirements are things you need to know. The certification will give a reason for the personel departments of various companies to hire you, and something to cover their ass better than "Well he said he knew linux". Companies will be more likely to move to linux if there is a certification process. This will aid Linux in general.

    As for the people asking about which distribution, the certification is not distribution specific, however one of the requirements is that you pass a distribution specific exam of your choice. Available choices are RedHat(obviously), Debian, TurboLinux, and others. Not all, but most of the common ones.
  • If someone has certification in RedHat they will know a fair bit about Linux granted. However, they will know the RedHat vision of Linux not the true OpenSource platform it is. For example take the RedHat package system. If people learn this they may never know how to compile and run source code (I believe this would be a very bad thing.

    If RedHat became the standard that would miss the point completely. Linux is OpenSource non vendor specific and free to be adapted. If the only recognised certification available was RedHat then they suddenly become MS with a monopoly on the Linux market. Certification for Linux must be independant of vendors.

    BTW I have nothing against RedHat. I use it myself I just don't believe they are the right people to be in charge of Linux certification.

  • There's something to this, but I think it's like this: There are the self-taught pioneers and then there are the people who learn by the book. The latter may be fully capable of doing the job but I bet wouldn't be able to hold a candle to those that were there from the beginning figuring it out on their own, solving problems, etc.

    In short, yeah, it's perfectly valid to learn by book... but there is really no substitute for experience and trial by fire. It's my experience that just studying for and passing the test will NEVER be enough to give you a working knowledge of how to administrate and troubleshoot a linux machine.

    Let me say it again: THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR EXPERIENCE.


    If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
  • As an employer I agree that un-accredited certds mean nothing and are a waste of my money. I am for certification if I get what I pay for. More often than not, I'll get a cert program reimbursement request and it will be for "Only" the employees good, resume building, and not nessasarily good for my company.

    In our company HR knows nothing of certification, much less technology and they are not in the decicion making tree. However, to open doors, having a list of acronyms for certifications and associations really does have some impact.

  • There's a lot to what you say. I think the real use of these certifications is so that a manager who does not know the field he or she is hiring for may have some assurance that you know at least something about the field. That's not necessarily a good thing! (makes me think of Dilbert)

    I think the question people should ask themselves is this: Do I know that at least my co-workers are knowledgeable? If you're being hired by someone who only asks for a certification, and doesn't seem to require anything else, I'd be suspicious. I would not want to work for some place that used the certification as the main requirement for checkinging off the "knows X, Y and Z" box.


    Jim

  • Mirror of Exam Objectives (Score:3)

    by Kozz ( 7764 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @03:11PM (#1381817)
    Mirror here: http://www.angelfire.com/sd/sdmirror/exam.html


    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

  • Re:Well I did....(Re:Well I Never) (Score:3)

    by trance9 ( 10504 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @04:21PM (#1381818) Homepage Journal
    Note that I did not assert any anti-Microsoft sentiment in my message. I just don't believe in these stupid certification courses like MCSE, and CNE before that. They're all stuff and nonsense, and a Linux version wouldn't be any better.

    If you learned a lot by playing around with NT while getting your MCSE, let me suggest to you that you would have learned just as much by playing around with NT without the MCSE. Similarly you would likely get more out of installing Linux and intelligently playing around with it, than you would by studying some ridiculously fat book and writing some dumb certification exam.

    The MCSE/CNE/etc. is a bunch of drivel. An intelligent person might learn something quite by accident--most likely because intelligent people learn something from most anything they do.

    It's my job to interview and hire programmers, at least part of the time. I will continue to view MCSE (or its Linux equivalent) as evidence that someone felt they were incompetent and didn't know how to educate themselves, so they turned to scam artists who promptly took their money. My experience interviewing people is that the MCSE (or other style certification) candidates went through that cert process because they were alien to the field and didn't know where to start. The MCSE, in general, doesn't solve that problem.

    The reason these MCSE/etc. things exists is mythical: there are supposedly companies out there who receive so many resumes that they need to look for the "certified" candidates just to reduce the stack somewhat. This isn't true. Any competent technical person can quickly work through a stack of resumes and pick out the ones that look promising.

    The real problem is HR departments--when someone who is not qualified reviews the resumes and pretends to select the ones that are "interesting". These incompetent HR drones are likely the best justification that the certification programs have. But rather than create a certificaion process, the right thing to do is fire the HR drone and give the stack of resumes to someone qualified to read them.

    If you want to find good people you have to do hard work to find them. And anyway, contrary to the myth above, there simply aren't that many qualified people out there. I do NOT get a huge stack of resumes when I go looking for good people--it's a sellers market right now.

  • One Size Does NOT Fit All (Score:3)

    by Pont ( 33956 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @02:38PM (#1381819)
    Whatever certifications there are, there must be different levels.

    Something like
    o Fundamentals
    o System Administrator
    o Kernel Hacker^H^H^H^H^H^HDeveloper
    o Guru
    o Kung-Fu Master

    Having an MCSE does not guarantee that someone is stupid, but there's plenty of really stupid people I've seen with their MCSEs.

  • Re:Well I Never (Score:3)

    by fiori ( 45848 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @04:27PM (#1381820) Homepage
    The problem with all certification processes is that the goal becomes the certificate and not continuing knowledge. The people I've been associated with who knew their sh*t, kept learning and exploring the technology. The ones that gave certificates a bad name were the people who stopped attempting to learn after they received the certificate.

  • Well I did. (Score:3)

    by keefer ( 60778 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @03:47PM (#1381821) Homepage
    Well I guess you haven't been exposed to very many of these kinds of people then. I know plenty without a clue, too, but I also know some pretty damn amazingly smart people who went for thsoe kinds of exams because their bosses wanted them to, it meant a raise, etc.

    These tests are a real double-edged sword. On the one hand, they provide a basis of what people should know, and employers (PHBs in particular) enjoy that. On the other hand, once they become popular and people realize that just by having this little piece of certification they can make X dollars a year or Y dollars more, it all starts falling to shit.

    Back when I was more of a Microsoft Whore, I passed like 5 exams I think. They were:

    - Access 2.0
    - VB 3.0
    - Win95
    - WOSA I
    - WOSA II

    Some of those are outdated now, and I've not bothered to keep up with them because the last couple jobs I've had it doesn't really matter. I wouldn't have gotten those, but when I was at a consulting company, my boss liked to show off that he had MCSD(s) working for him. Looked good no the sell sheets, company info, etc.

    When I took those exams, I never failed a single one. All of the preparation I did involved buying one single book that talked about the kind of stuff that was on the WOSA tests. I expect that many /.'ers would fall into a similar category when it comes to various Linux tests.

    Why am I, or others, able to do such a thing? Because I did MS stuff every day, my experience was in playing with stuff all the time.

    My theory on what happens with all of these tests in general follows: When tests or new certifications are announced, people that actually know the stuff take them right away and have no problems. Eventually curricula are produced, and people start having classes for the exams. Then people see it as a career advancement, pay their $1000s for a course in some certification, be it CNE, MCSE, MCSD, etc. etc., learn EXACTLY the questions that are on the test (the randomness isn't all THAT random, I'd imagine), pass, get their certification, and their extra bucks.

    So basically, the tests are useful at the start, because the people that already know everything pass easily and quickly. Then eventually you fall into the CNE syndrome where everyone can become one, and the tests essentially become meaningless for everyone involved, except as CYA material (that's Cover-Your-Ass for those unfamiliar).

    A far far better metric would be to see things like "GPAs" for the classes, test pass/fail rate, etc., but I don't think anyone involved would let that happen.

  • This is a rehash of the CDP. (Score:3)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @04:20PM (#1381822) Journal
    I recall a few decades back when an organization was putting together the CDP (Certified Data-processing Professional) exam. This was supposed to test programmers and let the suits know which were good enough to handle their jobs.

    It was also a rather Co$tly little test. And the organization developing it planned to run itself on the money it charged for the tests and to joion their association.

    Most programmers (myself included) considered it to be a crock, and thought the organization promoting it was trying to set up a protection racket, where their association members would be the only ones who would be employable. (And that even if it were in good faith, the field was so broad that any test would be ghettoized and would mainly measure which part of the field you were in, not how good you were.) So we boycotted it in droves, and it never took off.

    Nowdays CDP is a dead issue.

    Which is probably just as well, given that that these days Data Professionals don't do much with COBOL or RPG. B-)

  • Certification by ??? (Score:3)

    by drfireman ( 101623 ) <dan&kimberg,com> on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @04:20PM (#1381823) Homepage
    Viscerally, I don't like the idea of certification exams -- I wouldn't want to have to take one, and I certainly wouldn't want to lose a job to someone vastly less capable, just because they happened to have the approval of some dubious skill certification authority.

    But I wonder what the alternative is. I'm no expert on hiring, but I've been asked to do some certification on similarly limited information -- that is, someone handed me a few resumes and asked me to express some opinions. You can't always tell much from a resume. At some point I'll have to interview people. Interviews are notoriously unreliable. If I hadn't been around, the interview and resume reading would have to have been done by someone with no relevant technical knowledge whatsoever. It's hard to imagine them getting any useful information about competence. Hiring someone to do your hiring might be a good idea, or it might be a painful experience in the difficulty of bootstrapping. So is the certification exam an example of the worst form of certification, except for all the others?

    I'd have to guess that a certification exam score is, if only slightly, better than nothing (or, rather, better than just a resume). The question then is more one of weighting. How bad does your other information have to be before the certification exam scores should carry significant weight? And how often does the typical interview rise above that threshold of informativeness? I have the unjustified feeling that, with some forethought, I could outperform an exam. But I don't think everyone is in my position.

  • Vwahahaha! Agreed!! (Score:3)

    by autechre ( 121980 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @09:29PM (#1381824) Homepage
    I like your style :)

    Do you subscribe to BUGTRAQ? Do you know how many more security advisories RH has to put out as a result of their silly GUI tools? Boy, do I ever...and guess what? Our server is about to get a hard disk upgrade, and the new disk has Debian Potato. In fact, all of our machines are moving to Debian; once I used it, I never wanted to go back.

    I'm firmly convinced that apt-get is the best thing since SMP. On machines at colleges where the staff changes every 4 years, the package manager MUST NOT SUCK. Also, on my own machines, I can install the base system of 28M, and then compile all other packages myself, so I'm in complete control (if I want more security, for example) Magnificent.

    You CANNOT install RedHat without installing X-windows and at least the VGA-16 server; this is, IMO, VERY BROKEN!! And how can I smoothly upgrade from 5.2 to 6.x, so that I can use the latest RPMs of Sendmail and not be an open relay any more. No, that was purely hypothetical...

    apt-get update
    apt-get dist upgrade

    Amazing. The Way It Was Meant To Be.

    And whoever stuck that extra /rc.d/ in between /etc and all the SysV stuff should be shot. Twice. At point blank range. With an elephant gun. In the head. (sorry, BOFH!)

  • As an MCSE... (Score:4)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @02:50PM (#1381825) Homepage
    As an MCSE, I'd like to take this opportunity to express my hope that the new linux certification process is as good as Microsoft's.

    These are IMHO the most important MCSE tests.

    70-215 Summoning He Who Shall Not Be Named 4.0
    70-38 Demonic possesion essentials.
    70-75 Implementing non-euclidean madness caused by manifestations of the dread Cthulhu 2000 in the enterprise.
    70-134 Advanced programming with Yog Sothoth

    Does the linux community have anything similar?

    --Shoeboy the MCSE

  • Re:As a Sun Certified Administrator... (Score:4)

    by Plasmic ( 26063 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @03:01PM (#1381826)
    You start off by saying "I think the certifications are bunk" and then proceed to explain that they indicate to other people that you have some skills and that your career has been bettered.

    I don't think that anyone is claiming that a certification is anything but a piece of paper that indicates that you might have a clue. In my opinion, certifications certainly serve that purpose.

    You also generalize; contrary to your claim, there are certainly certifications that prove that you have a top-notch skillset. For example, Cisco's CCIE certification is 100% deserving of the credit given to those who pass it (120k+ starting salaries and a lot of peer respect). Even the MCSD shows that you can at least do mildly adequate Windows programming (if there is such a thing).

    Are there certifications that are less than what most people make them out to be? Sure. Are most certifications less valuable than what most people make them out to be? Unfortunately, yes. Are they "bunk" or worthless? Nope.

  • The obvious important thing (Score:4)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @02:44PM (#1381827) Journal
    is not whether someone has a certification, but whether the certification is worth anything. Hopefully this organization's program actually contains the material and instruction necessary to turn people into useful Linux sysadmins, or something resembling one. If so, then I think they will get the imprimatur of the Linux community, which will mean that this certification will mean something. And since no one body controls Linux, a Linux certification might mean something, compared to more centrally-controlled certification programs *cough*MCSE*cough*.

    --- Dirtside | "Spirituality" is the irrational belief in the supernatural

  • Well I did....(Re:Well I Never) (Score:4)

    by cdmz1 ( 97535 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @03:19PM (#1381828)
    Well...normally I don't respond to comments like this, but I think that I will make an exception here. I have an MCSE, and as surprising as it may seem, I *do* know my ass from my elbow (unless I forgot to make my coffee...then anything is possible). Now I am not going to say that all MCSEs are intelligent, or at least clueful in regards to networking, but there are a few of us MCSEs that have a clue who have now been tagged with the open-source equivalent of leprosy.

    I worked pretty hard to achieve my MCSE. Bought some books, studied hard, played with NT (which is not nearly as horrible as some people here on /. are pretty quick to say), learned some great stuff, and most of all I had fun while doing it. I did not do it for any reason other than it was a good way to enter into the IT world above my current status as a help desk person. I had some of the skills i needed, but employers would nearly always choose the people who had certifications, because they "met" their qualifications and they would rather not hire someone who needs "on-the-job training" if they have someone who, certifiably, does not. By no means was obtaining my MCSE as difficult as undergrad Senior Seminar Philosophy class in college, but since there are not a whole lot of job opportunities for Philosophy BAs (who, incidentially were not smart enough to minor in comp sci or something useful like that) being able to gain entry into this wonderful profession via an access point like an MCSE is a pretty good way to go.

    Please don't get me wrong. I am also an MCT, but you will never catch me teaching. I refuse to water down my own certification for some poor schmuck who will pay $10,000 for a "boot camp" that lasts an entire week so they can go forth and fsck everything up. I assure you I had a *long* discussion with my employer regarding that.

    At any rate. I guess my point to all of this is that you shouldn't let the stand-out paper MCSEs who don't know anything dictate what you think of other MCSEs. Some of us are smart, nice, and even {gasp!} use Linux (if Bill only knew). while I am not going to argue that your average MCSE tends to be a little greener when it comes to IT (or networking or whatever you want to call it) there are some of us who might surprise you in the long run.

    Just don't assume that someone obtains a certification that they don't know anything...it really is a close-minded way to look at things (even if your experiences tell you otherwise).

    Just my thoughts. Flame away....

    cdmz1

    Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball

  • I am a sun certified system administrator, having taken the tests and passing and stuff. And let me say right off that I think the certifications are bunk. They have no relation to what you actually know.

    But they give HR a nice little metric. Especially for people like me who do not have a college degree but lots of practical experience. And I think my career is the better for accomplishing the certification, no matter whether it means anything technically...

    So do I think these certifications are a good thing? You betcha. But not because they're useful, but just because it gives us a credential that we may not otherwise be able to claim. Don't go expecting it to have any real world technical application. Just be glad there's some form of validation that HR can understand out there. And who cares who actually does the certification? Bets that HR won't... In fact, I know several MCSEs who wouldn't know a mouse when they see one... but they make more money than I do...

    Just take it for what it is... something that will help you to increase your take-home pay.


    If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.

  • Just finished the LPI117 Exam (Score:5)

    by DaGoodBoy ( 8080 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @02:54PM (#1381830) Homepage
    I was one of the first persons (ID: LPI000001003) to take this test. I just wanted to share my experiences with you guys.

    The testing center near my home is a local technical school. They were friendly and the exam area was comfortable. I arrived early and brushed through parts of the O'Reilly "Essential System Administration" I haven't read over in a while.

    While I was waiting, a gentlemen approached me and asked if I was there to take a Linux exam. I smiled and indicated I was. He was attending the school there pursuing his MSCE and had some questions about Linux and the exam. He was curious how I was preparing especially and what subjects the exam covered. I explained I was a consultant and have been using Linux since 1994 and recommended a few good books on the subjects covered by the exam. I also explained what I know about the exam structure and requirements. I also indicated that I chaired the Melbourne Linux User Group (http://www.mlinux.org/ [mlinux.org]) and that we have local meetings. He took my business card and said he would like to attend our install party this weekend.

    I was motioned to the testing area by the librarian and she explained that mine was the second beta exam she ever gave and the first Linux exam. I told her to expect a few more in the coming weeks and she logged me into the exam system.

    The test was challenging and I added comments for each of the questions, added why I selected the options I did or when I was guessing. The questions were appropriate for the target level you mentioned on the site. Good job LPI!

    When the test was completed I was given a printout that featured the LPI logo and some explanation of the beta period scoring. I am disappointed that I won't know the results for a while, but am glad I was able to help by providing another example test for LPI to mull over. If you want to contact me and ask me anything about the test, please feel free.

    Thanks to LPI for this effort at distribution neutral certification! I feel very strongly about supporting this and will be encouraging the members of our LUG to support it as well.

    Tony Awtrey

  • The IT industry in general (Score:5)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @06:17PM (#1381831)
    You know, I've always hated certifications.. but I can see where employers like them.

    See, it's not that Mr. CIO thinks that an MCSE is *cool* or *really smart* or anything, it's just easy for him, if he has a MS based network, to say 'well, MS certifies professionals, so it makes sense that if MS certifies them, we'll get more bang for our buck.'
    This, of course, isn't always the case....Quite the opposite sometimes, even.
    The hacker kid who has *no* certifications may be a far better asset to the company... and the person with the MCSE may be so narrow-minded that you are stuck on the MS path forever. (I'm not picking on MS, the same thing applies to *any* other vendor.)

    Now some certifications we may think of as more involved... certainly, if you are doing mostly network engineering, the guy with the CCIE is probably worth his weight in gold... but then again, the whole point of the CCIE was to provide a certification for an industry where there was none. Employers had *nothing* to judge a potential internetwork employee by. I must say, to this day, if someone has a CCIE, I can assume they know their stuff and are practiced... CCIE isn't one of those certifications you can study the book for for a week or two and then go pass... it was created for professionals who *already* had lots of experience. Now.. don't think I'm a cisco head... I don't mean to single them out, or to promote them, but it is a good example of what we need in the linux/unix world, and really, in the IT world in general.

    To look at it a different way is that I feel that MCSE, dmCLA, LPI, CNE, A+ don't adequately certify what *I* am capable of as an IT employee.
    There is no overriding certification, nothing in the industry that says 'professional, well-rounded, experienced IT person.... well, except your resume, that is!

    Now.. what am I (personally), as someone who is part of the hiring process, as the architect of the companies entire network, when I see on a resume LPI certified. Hmm.. Linux qualifications are part of the process. Am I going to take this person seriously? Sure. LPI looks reasonably good. Am I going to reject someone else with experience because they don't have LPI? Heck no.. I wouldn't think of it. To put it differently, most certifications are a plus to the holder, but not a necessity.

    And it does feel kind of threatening, doesnt' it? I've been using linux since .8x or so... I can't even remember. It was a mess. The concept of a 'distribution' wasn't even fully solidified. I've worked with Solaris, Irix, SCO Unix, Unixware (Both Novell and Sco) and the list goes on. And add NT/unix integration to the list. I feel *burnt* if someone expects me to fork out money to pay some company to tell me that I'm qualified to work on linux...
    (is this like how my uncle feels burnt that now that there are SCUBA regulations, he can't go diving without going to classes and getting his ticket, even though he's been diving for 30 years?)

    I'm rambling...
    I guess to make a long story short, certifications never make you look bad, but they are no replacement for experience.
    Or like the black-belt in most martial arts.. the unknowing see it as the goal to be obtained, but to those who obtain it, and to their teachers, it simply signifies the beginning.
    Just like an engineering degree is your ENTRY POINT into professional engineering, and just like your PH.D is your entry point into a medical practice, so is a certification in some product simply an entry point into the IT world.

    Or rather, do you tell the ninja master that he cannot teach you because he cannot provide credentials?

  • Well, I'll hire an RHCE first (Score:5)

    by mwdib ( 56263 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @05:57PM (#1381832)
    I'm not a network administrator, but I "manage" (in the business/personnel) sense, the network operations in our shop.

    I sent our network admin through RHCE (and was there taking one of the lead-in courses) at Red Hat. While many of the comments in this batch seem to assume that all certification consists of is a written exam, that's not true of the RHCE. It has a high failure rate. Written responses are only a third of the score -- the rest is hands-on debugging and server configuration. I've taken all the classes up to the RHCE, but there's not a chance in hell I'd be able to pass the exam -- because I don't have the years of experience that it takes to succeed when you get off the paper and in front of the broken box.

    Upshot: I'm one of the guys who hires geeks. Because I know what's involved, I'll give preference (and extra cash) for an RHCE -- as long as they keep the high standards up that RedHat's established so far.

    Wouldn't it be great if the other certification vendors -- LinuxCare, whoever -- made Linux certification mean something more than the toilet paper MSCE?

  • Certification is at odds w/ Linux Philo (Score:5)

    by scottKp ( 110626 ) on Tuesday January 11, 2000 @03:04PM (#1381833)
    This sort of seems at odds with the do-it-yourself ethos of linux users and linux hackers. I know that Linux is becoming mainstream and widespread, but linux certification with these types of certification tests just doesn't seem right. I learned linux by using it, as everyone else who knows anything about linux has. My experience with certification tests is that actual useable knowledge is not tested, but strings of generally useless fact.

    Here is a quick example: My friend just started working for a company that makes all their employees take the MSCE tests. How do they prepare for them, they all cram with study books to remember facts for a week before the tests, and they take a test a week every week until they pass them all (and supplying MS with much $) But what do they gain from this??? NO real or retainable knowledge! But the company gets more money if the employees are MSCE certified, and so the cycle continues.

    In addition the test (as far as I can tell) is useless. I had my friend ask me some of the questions. One which struck me was a section where you had to match up the names of the network standards to the IEEE standard numbers. Now, while its great to know what IEEE 802.3 proper name is, but it won't help you at all when your netwoek goes down.

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