[TriLUG] Are Certifications worth it?

[Marc M]

Look on Monster.com <http://Monster.com>. RHCE is by FAR better represented 
as far as what employers are seeking goes. LPI teaches a lot of differrent 
aspects that are intended to not be specific to any one vendor. In a perfect 
world, that is a nice thing. In a perfect world I would study all distros 
equally, weigh everything perfectly, and make sure that I don't form any 
unfair opinions. 

However I believe that most corporate envioronments are WAY more likely to 
run Red Hat than a lot of other distros, with the possible exception of some 
server farm environments that might run a lot of Debian, Gentoo, etc. This 
is for better or for worse depending on uses and other positive attributes 
of other distros. I am not saying RH is better, only better in terms of name 
recognition which of course buys it lots of market share among the 'lets do 
what everyone else is doing' corporate managerial types. 

Therefore it seems wiser to study for something based on the vendor that 
people are most likely to run with. If there was any Debian training 
available, maybe that would be a competition for it. I have noticed that 
SuSE/Novell has tacked on the 'Certified Linux Engineer' CLE certification, 
which is really just add-on to their Novell CNA/CNE track. 

Beyond name recognition it is also important to note that the RHCE is a 
tough exam that tests real world stuff with broken machines, hands on the 
network services, etc. No multiple choice or 'paper' certified individuals 
with this cert. My money is on RHCE.

Marc




On 8/25/05, uzoma nwosu <uzoma.nwosu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Following the "essential Linux skills" thread, someone posted a link
> to lpi.org <http://lpi.org>. Now what I would like to know is which cert 
> more
> valuable, LPI or RHCE? Or is there another cert out there that some
> of us should look for? Also, are there any study groups happening for
> this, now? I would love to take classes for this but I am too broke to
> do so.
> 
> Uzoma
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