Linux Certification Study Group

Jonathan Hale maclaoch at earthlink.net
Tue Oct 16 19:12:37 CDT 2001


<rant>
For those of you who may not know me (which is probably most of you), please
allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Jonathan Hale aka maclaoch
(pronounced MAC-LAKE), the self-proclaimed l at mer.  I am a former KU student
who is now attending Johnson County Community College in pursuit of an AAS
in Information Technology.  I have about three years of professional
experience in the IT industry, mostly doing Desktop Support.  I am a CompTIA
A+ and Network+ certified technician, as well as a SAIR Linux & GNU
Certified Administrator.  I was also a beta tester for the LPI Level 2 exam,
but it is yet to be determined how I did on those as the results will not be
available until the first week of November.
First of all, I would like to commend all of you on your vision and
foresight for having expressed an interest in obtaining Linux certification.
Almost every month I read in industry magazines and professional journals
how Linux certifications will be valuable in the near term future, and I
believe (or, at least, would like to believe) that Linux will play a
significant role in IT departments, globally, in the years to come.  I,
however, do not want anyone to have any illusions about what we are about to
embark upon here.  I hope you don't think that you will be able to get a
Linux certification and then go out and find a Unix Admin-type job just like
that.  Although I do know of one instance where a friend of an acquaintance
took the RedHat certification courses from RedHat, got RedHat certified, and
within a very short period of time was able to find a Unix Admin job, I
think this is more the exception than the rule.  In fact, speaking from my
own experience, as well as that of a few others I know, I can tell you that
many times you will not even be able to get past Human Resources because
most HR people don't even know enough about Linux and Unix to realize that
the skills sets required are much the same.  Also, I would hate to see these
sessions become nothing more than the opportunity for people to get together
to memorize the answers to sample questions.  I'm sure we have all heard
horror stories about employers who got burned over the last few years for
hiring "paper" or "vapor" MCSEs.  I'd hate to see the Linux certification
programs degrade into the type of program that Microsoft certification has
become where, I truly believe, anyone who is willing to throw enough money
at it can eventually pass the exams, whether they really know what they are
doing or not.  Therefore, I believe that we should make an effort to insure
that these study sessions teach people the real world skills they will need
to function in the roles of Linux and Unix professionals.  I believe this
area enjoys some small measure of international recognition as a region that
fosters and encourages Free Software and Open Source development.  I think
maybe this has something to do with the fact that the Lynx browser was
created and used to be maintained at KU, as well as from the efforts of
individuals like Charles Steinkuehler who lives in Topeka and still
maintains some of the best pages I have seen for information regarding the
Materhorn variant of the Linux Router Project distro.  I would like to see
this tradition continue.  It is for these reasons, as well as the fact that
this appears to be a joint venture between members of both the Kansas Unix
and Linux Users Association as well as the Kansas City Linux Users Group,
that I propose we broaden our focus to include the certification programs
from commercial Unix vendors like HP, IBM, and Sun.  The first HP-UX exam
costs about $100, AIX certification is about $170, and Solaris certification
is two tests which are $150 each.  All of these programs are much less
expensive than the $795 that it costs to take the RedHat exam even once.
Also, I think it is worth mentioning that, from what I have heard,
Sprint-the largest private employer in the Kansas City metro-uses mostly
Solaris and HP-UX.  Just as Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie designed the
original Unix to be an operating system that could be portable across
hardware platforms, I believe the skills we develop through these study
sessions should be portable across as many of the Unix-type platforms as we
can manage.
When Steve King first started this thread, I said that I might be interested
in participating if there was enough interest and I had enough time.  As I'm
sure some of you may already know, at the time I said that I was unemployed
and had plenty of time on my hands.  I wish I had the reputation and
financial stability of a Bruce Perens, who can take or leave jobs as he
wills, or that I could live the life of an ascetic like Richard Stallman
(personally, I probably could-but my wife likes nice things) so I could do
with my time as I will, but I can't.  I would however still be interested in
being a point of contact for this group, as well as perhaps being involved
in developing curriculum and giving lectures as time allows.  As I still
consider myself a novice in many ways, I would hope that there are many
other more experienced people who are willing to step forward as well.  I
have received emails offlist from several of you over the past week, I'm
assuming because I seemed to be the person who knew the most about what was
going on.  I'm sure Steve's statement that his computer crashed and that he
lost the list of people who were interested didn't do much to win votes of
confidence for him (sorry Steve).  But, I don't think this should be the
responsibility of one person alone.  We need the apparent eagerness and
enthusiasm of the Steve Kings out there to offset the obvious cynicism of
the Jonathan Hales.
</rant>
I hope I haven't offended anyone or come across as condescending here.  My
only intent is to create a meaningful dialogue.  I will try to bring a list
of the objectives for as many of the certification programs as I can find,
as well as a list of resources that I have (you should, too!), and I hope to
see as many of you as possible at the meeting within the meeting tonight
(directions can be found at http://www.kclug.org.)




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