*nix certification preparation

[Nico Kempe]

Heya, I am thinking about getting certified for Linux and possibly *nix systems in general.

So I have a few options right now:
- pay 400 bucks for a training of 3 months
- find (e)books and do a self-study
- take an online training (don't know the costs of that one yet)

after that the exam (LPI-certification) will cost an additional 120 euro's.

I've been using Linux for about 3 years fulltime now, thrown a bit BSD into it too, but I haven't been that active with it to feel confidend on this matter.

So, what option would you advise? Do you know some good books I can start with? I the training worth the money or is it just as good if I do a self study? LPI is a good certification, right? Should I go for the Photoreading first? Do I ask too many questions? How are you? Nice weather huh?

[Dave Kaminski]

CBT is an excellent option if you're self motivated and can teach yourself well enough. Otherwise, take a live course. I've taken CBT for a+ cert, network+ cert, security+ cert, mcdst, home pc security, small biz networking, a bunch of web design stuff (everything lynda.com) and more.

Check eBay too. There are plenty of good deals!

[Nico Kempe]

Originally Posted by Dave Kaminski

CBT is an excellent option if you're self motivated and can teach yourself well enough. Otherwise, take a live course. I've taken CBT for a+ cert, network+ cert, security+ cert, mcdst, home pc security, small biz networking, a bunch of web design stuff (everything lynda.com) and more.

CBT is online study?

[pi11]

Nico, funny post!

I personally do not believe in certifications, but I ended up doing one anyway. It helped convince my supervisor to promote me.

I think the best best best way to learn something is by practice. I try to take it further and I purposely paint myself in the corner by giving myself a challenge. Analogy would be to learn swimming by jumping into the deep end!

As for learning unix and linux, I simply said "NO" to windows. And jumped into linux. These were the old dialup days. For days I was completely useless. It took me 3 days of talking to ISP and reading manuals to figure out how to get my modem to work in linux so I can be on the internet. Then I picked up a few unix books from the library (because linux books weren't being written then) and devoured them. I learned the shell so well that it felt like home. Then moved on to X, which was a whole challenge in itself lol. Now if I look back its funny to see how long I took to figure things out. But all those dead ends I hit, I learned from. And that is your target too.

Thanks to all that self training that I did, when I had to take RHCE this year. I simply went for the Rapid Track course. 4 days of classes and 5th day was the exam. I passed with 90% score. And not to sound egotistical or anything, but I had not touched linux for 3-4 years before that class! Those 4 days were enough to see what RedHat was offering. I just had to connect that RedHat specific knowledge to vast base unix knowledge I developed to succeed in the exam.

Anyway, that is my little rant about certification and reaching the guru-statehood in anything.

[Nico Kempe]

I think certification in itself kinda sucks too, but it is a form of motivation to learn the material, and ofcourse, the main argument is showing it to employers.

Hmmz, dial-up days, rats, why didn't I go thru with Linux then? In those days it would have cost you money to look up something online, and the info that was online was different, in other words, in those days you would have had to learn Linux the hard way, which come to think of it is probably why I switched back to that other OS too.
Right now if I have a problem, Google is my friend, I just type something, and presto: instant solution! Well in many cases anyway.
Which is sad, because you don't learn anything from that.

I do remember one time I noticed that I still had a Windows partition on my disk, unused for 6 months. I believe I slowly deleted every byte of it before finally removing the whole partition, just for fun..)

But anyway, learning *nix, I did some research and found a few books that have a high rating:
- LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell (O'Reilly)
- Linux in a Nutshell (O'Reilly)
- Linux Bible (these are also available in Distro-specific flavours) (Christopher Negus)
- Running Linux (O'Reilly)

..and virtually no money to spend.
choices, choices..

[Nico Kempe]

Well I've made a decision now.
Yesterday the universe kinda helped me out by focusing on something else.

Basically I would 'lose' about 570 euro's on the training+exam, and the exam alone costs 120 euro's. So I could take almost 5 exams for that money.
I'm going for the self-study and maybe the online training, depending on the costs. I think there are plenty of resources online and as books to help me with that and to train myself, and if I need 4 exams to get certified, then it's clear I have to rethink if Linux is really what I want..

So wish me luck guys..)

[greys]

Good luck, Nico!

I think you'll do just fine with your self-study. All Unix systems are fairly logical anyway, so once you learn to do something properly, you will hardly forget it.