Slashdot Mirror
CompTIA Adds Linux+ Certification
11 platter hard driv writes: "CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry Association), the people who made the A+ and I-NET+ certifications, have made a Linux certification. I just received an e-mail a day or two ago that the test is out of beta. This seems pretty important seeing how CompTIA is non-vendor specific." Legions of PHBs and Kinko's nationwide look forward to the resulting resume changes.
LPI has been around longer, is also vendor non-specific, and has multiple levels of tests for various degrees of skill.
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
The test was a lot easier than the SAIR cert tests of the same level(Install and Config and Sys. Admin) but there were a lot more hardware specific questions (SCSi, LVD, RAID, Fibre Channel, Hard Disks, Video Cards, etc). I guess that is from there A+ people, maybe. I have not yuet recieved my results from the Beta exam but I am 99% sure I passed it. It is nice to see that a major certification company like CompTia has a linux certification for people to get. I have the SAIR cert but I thik this one will help a little more when I leave the military and go looking for a Linux (or Unix) sysadmin job.
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
At first glance this seems to be a fairly basic-ish certification as the course is aimed at the Linux Professional with 6 months of experience with the Linux Operating System, but after looking at it further it covers a lot of different area's. These seem to include installation, xwindows, planning systems and all the basic linux services. One very surprising thing is that so little of the marking schedule is based on Planning the Implmentation (only 4%), I would have thought a lot more should be based on this, as this would be a valuable skill.
Overall its good seeing a course which is aimed at linux as a whole, instead of one distribution, and is also something that I would have the skills to complete myself.
...or are these kinds of tests not worth the paper their written on? I really think it's funny when someone says to me "Yea, I just got my MCSE" and they think I'll be impressed. Usually, I just laugh and say something about knowing how to study to a test. In fact, when looking for a job I usually avoid the ones advertising for someone with one of these "degrees". I think real world experience is the only way to be good at this stuff. Sure, learning is never bad but I think these programs just put more unquallified people on the streets. This dillutes my marketability. I don't like that.
:)
Now that I've said all that, I think there are/were some really good tests on the market. Cisco engineer and Netware engineer are/were some of the certs that I really respected. But, you don't see those much anymore. I guess it's because they are too hard to get.
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
These new certificates will help a lot to counter the stigma some people perceive regarding linux.
Maybe the IT management community (yes, those who think that 'hackers' are criminals who vandalise computers, rather than prolific and talented programmers) will start to realise that Linux isn't actually a bastion for pirates and crackers.
Good to see.
So any bets on how long it'll be before linux-certified engineers are earning higher average salaries than w--dows certified ones?
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Looks like the hiring teams no longer need to actually find out how well you know your stuff, only if you have a piece of paper that says you do.
I'm just as happy as everyone else that Linux is getting more recognition, but I've seen too many people with A+, N+, CCNA, CNA, MCP certifications and Masters Degrees in CS, comming to me to actually learn the first thing about computers, to put any faith in any certifications, and I'm quite disturbed by the fact that many employers do.
Does anybody know of any real certifications out there that tests your skills, rather than your ability to memorize test questions?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
So it's vender neutral. So that means it's only about the kernel because linux is not an OS. It's just the kernel. The OS can be anything. Maybe it should be renamed gnu/linux+. Does it cover PDA versions of "linux" or any of the numerous other implimentations of "linux" ? If it's truly vender specific then it is only about the kernel because everything else around it is chosen by the vender. "linux" is not like Windows. So, now that we've decided it's only about the kernel, what kind of kernel is it about? There are many branches of the linux kernel being developed concurrently for different purposes. So lets assume they mean linus' branch. What exactly would someone with 6 months experience know about the kernel and how it works? More importantly, what job would require this certification of 6 month kernel knowledge? I know I'd want someone with a hell of a lot more experience with the kernel than 6 months if the job required that person to work on the kernel.
No this is not a case of symantics. When you say linux we're used to thinking about the distributions of debian, redhat, suse, slackware. But that is not linux. Linux is a kernel that can be used on any number of different operating system environments and it is on embedded systems and what not. A certification of "linux+" is misleading to any employer if any employer was stupid enough to rely on such a thing. If you're going to certify someone for an operating system, narrow it down to the damn operating system. A vender neutral gnu/linux+ is what they're talking about. That's not the same as embedded linux experience or experience with linux with any other environment.
change the certification to gnu/linux+ certification and it kind of makes sense and is useable. But trying to certify on all linux-based OS's by just having linux+ certification is not only impossible but totally useless.
Also, why dont they have WindowsNT+ or any other OS certifications? those are much more static and set in their specifications of what comprises the OS.
I have memory difficulties but have never failed to figure out a *N*X box after being placed in front of it, or in front of its 20' of manuals. Within a week of starting work in a *N*X shop I've always become a valued expert resource for the team, even on systems I'd never seen before starting the job.
But in this economy the smarts in the hiring department were shoved aside, because so much of the boom-time workforce was full of people who claimed "No problem, I can just learn that" without being able to deliver. Right now, those of us whose learning/execution style leans towards pattern recognition and understanding of the architecutre are getting the short end of the stick, because they want to ask a few poorly-worded, poorly-constructed test questions that supposedly boil down everything one would know. I've even caught some of them not knowing their _expected_ correct answer was not _really_ a correct answer!
Of course there are some environments in which this won't cut it. Hiring just _one_ person to be at the head of a support structure for a given vendor's *N*X is one example, that person should have enough background to answer from memory immediately. But even things so simple as filesystem mounting is different between vendors, and in 95% of the cases the differences between in-house policies at different companies are much more important than what particular commands/files are used on one vendor's system.
Nice to see that the problem-solving and architecture-understanding skills have been stomped out of the market, in favor people who can emulate a raw keyword search through a textfile.
Even Cisco is feeling the heat of competition. My last month at my old job I didn't have anything to do. So I decided to get a CCNA. Did it without ever touching a router And the practice tests I used had 10 questions straight from the real exam.
Now I'm learning Linux. This is what Linux needs, a good known cert. It needs to have it's holders know enough to be dangerous. Then you need to start pumpimg out people with that cert to act as a free sales force for linux. It worked for MS back in the NT days.
As far as knowledge, Cisco was pretty good. Their questions were straight to the point of the material covered. Microsoft questions were a guessing game. Some questions you had to read into it and make assumptions. Other times if you read into it you got it wrong. And then of course some of their answers are to upgrade to windows 2000 to use TCP/IP. Other questions try to get you into the MS way of doing things with MS Windows features even though there are better products available that people use. Examples are routing, back up, RAID software.
That's a fairly accurate description of how corporate hiring, and even much small business, does things in areas of high-tech. Part of the problem is that people responsible for determining who can do the job don't have enough high-tech background of their own to really understand who has the smarts and who just says they do. <ramble>And too often these hiring managers toss out resumes of smart people, then whine to the government that "no one qualified even applied for the job" to try to get more H1Bs to come into the country, take our paychecks, and mail them back to their own country, depriving our retail businesses of a lot of their revenues.</ramble>
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
get more H1Bs to come into the country, take our paychecks, and mail them back to their own country, depriving our retail businesses of a lot of their revenues.
:) ), but provides the employer with a better price/performance ratio.
Well, surely the employer has the right to employ whoever they like? Maybe the foreign worker is not as qualified as you ( and that's in your opinion
Apparently, globalization of economies is good only as long as it opens up foreign markets to American companies; as soon as the people from there start taking advantage of a globalized job market too, it is time for you to rant, isn't it? How about trying to learn some skills that distinguish you from the rest of the pack? But maybe whining is easier than competing.
The people who do come in are not exactly burger-flippers. For the most part, they are reasonably educated in their discipline. Sure, some of them send money back to their countries, but they also buy cars and homes and stuff from "our retail businesses". Nobody's taking "your" paycheck - they have taken a big step to leave their homes and come here to work for it. Go do something worthwhile instead of crying - you were lucky to be born in the land of opportunity, learn how to live in it.
You are 100% correct. The guy who sets up NFS at home, and plays with various things, generally has a BETTER chance of being hired if I interview him than the guy who juust took a linux course last weekend because he heard it's a new buzzword.
If you do that kind of stuff at home, dont' sell yourself short on what you know.. you'd probably find you know quite a bit MORE than most who just learn through certification/courses.
And you are so right about sysadmins being dangerous....
I'll say. it took many years before I really realized that I could be confident in my own knowledge. As you say.. there are always areas you don't know anything about because you've never had to work with them before... but as a sysadmin.. you have to be general.
I think this is going to be both good and bad, in the same way that it's been both good and bad for Microsoft.
Granted, this is going to create an army of mindless zombies claiming that their new certification makes them experts in the field. Which is exactly what happened with the MCSE, etc. The market saturation is going to drive down the average pay for the average Linux professional, but it will also be proof that knowledge in Linux is important.
In Salt Lake City, everyone has their MCSE, so jobs that previously paid $40k/year for that certification now pay just over half that. It's become a worthless exam around here. But as a result, it's almost impossible to find a *nix job anywhere. It's even harder for us Perl hackers.
If exams like the RHCE and Linux+ start saturating the market with "professionals", it's going to start edging on Microsoft's market share, but at the same cost that Microsoft has paid.
I came up with this one today.. so sorry I posted it elsewhere already.. but..
I liken A+, N+, this new Linux certification, and those like them (MCSE even)... to the PADI Open Water Diver certification.
For those not familiar.. scuba diving is a self-regulated industry. There is generally no law that says you can't dive.. but a dive shop won't sell you tanks, or gear, or sell you air if you don't present a certification. They COULD.... but they won't. Wanna go on vacation to go diving? In general, a dive expedition won't take you out if you aren't certified. Oh.. they can make exceptions... but you get the idea.
You study for several hours.. take a few classes, do some practice diving, and then get run through some tests to get your certification.
Now.. NOBODY who takes the PADI Open-Water certification an passes would come out of it thinking 'I AM NOW AN EXPERT DIVER'. And that's the problem... with N+, MCSE, etc.. people come out of them thinking 'I AM NOW AN EXPERT'. That's what bothers us.. isn't it? It's not that they took it because they want to get int ot his business, and come to their new job willing to learn and grow.. it's because they tend to show up thinking 'I'm certified, I know it all.. nya nya'. And of course.. they don't.
Can you get Slashdot certified? What exams would you have to pass?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
And I have to say, the certification is crap. Utter crap. Allow me to elaborate.
I started studying for the exam way back in early 2000. I bought a book (the "For Dummies" book, for chrissakes!) and skimmed through it. For various reasons, I didn't get around to taking the exam until July of this year. By then, the test had changed, including manmy questions about Win2K, third-party processors, and a much greater emphasis on trivia than I had been lead to expect. I had not studied for any of these things.
Furthermore, the things I had spent the most time cramming (IRQs and DMAs, mainly) were not on the exam. At all.
So I'm sitting there at the test machine, slowly realizing two things. One, I have never seen any of thses questions before in my life. And two, it doesn't matter, anyone with a bit of experience (NOT six months as a computer tech, much less) could answer these questions. I can't remember a specific example, for which I apologize, but even in areas where I had NO experience, I was able to get by by choosing the "least-worst" answer.
I passed the exam, and that is meaningless. I freely admit, as a tech I am very green. At my summer tech job, my boss had to correct me after I put an IDE cable in a hard drive with the red stripe facing AWAY from the power connector! That's a pretty basic mistake, and one you wouldn't expect a "professional, experienced computer technician" to make. But at the time, I had a card in my pocket saying I was exactly that!
My point? I cannot speak for any of the other CompTIA exams - maybe they are incisive and highly effective tools of tester skill that only the best of the best can pass, tests that lay one's ignorance open to the blistering light of knowledge - but the A+ exam does not achieve its goal of accurately evaluating the experience and skill of the test-taker. This makes me worry about Linux+. Do we really want a bunch of Linux+ professionals entering the job market, and making Linux look bad?
On a side note, I have successfully used my certification card to impress attractive women. Anyone else find these things useful?
I'm the stranger...posting to
How seriously do folks take the brainbench.com cert's? Just wondering because I'm about to start taking their tests.
That site has ~5 linux cert's. They can be passed via a ~50min, $25 online exam. The tests are open book with 2min to complete each question. The employer can verify it was really you that took an exam by giving you another version of the test downloadable by employers for free.
"Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design
His rant's main point was that 'hiring managers toss out resumes of smart people, then whine to the government that "no one qualified even applied for the job"' which, if true, would be lying.
It is agreed that one has to keep up on the certification treadmill.
"Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design
(Hey look, posting anonymously is good for something, since the following is probably not what comptia wants folks to say....)
I took the beta exam too, and found it hideously terrible. For a significant portion of the questions, several of the pick-one multiple-choice answers were actually correct -- and for another large portion, none of them were.
I'm pretty sure I passed too, but if I didn't, it reflects worse on them than it does on me. The beta exam provided the opportunity to comment on each question, which I did liberally. I sincerely hope that the final version fixes all the problems, but I'm not holding my breath.
They don't make someone an expert. But, If I bring someone on my team with a MCSE I expect them to be able to do a certain baseline of functions. For example, add users, put machines in the domain, understand WINS at a decent level, etc, etc. The MCSE has a bad rap because there is no "expert level" certification. They need one, bad.
Look at Cisco. They now have a layered certification system. Their final level, the CCIE, is their expert level. You don't meet any paper CCIEs for a reason.
I've taken the RHCE exam, the LPIC Level 1 exams, and the SAIR exams. By far the best exam, of course, is the RHCE since it involves a lab exam. Only time will tell if Red Hat protects this exam from brain dumps and simple HOWTOs. It wouldn't be hard to mix it up enough to do that.
So, in conclusion, certs are a tool. I think it's crazy to look down on people with certs, but it's even more crazy to hire them for the simple reason they have certs. If a person has a cert I'll quiz them on thep product/technology enough to see if they can back it up. If they can't then I know they just studied for the exam, not the product/service and they just lost points.
So there are dozens of different Cert courses out there on the market, A+ being one of them.
As someone who is thoroughly grounded in the basics of Linux and Networking, but is not yet "guru" enough to be considered an expert, what is a worthwile Certification to persue so as to get my foot in the door as an entry level grunt?
i.e. Someone who assists the company gurus by handling the menial tasks that they have no interest in dealing with.
At least by starting out as a grunt, I can learn first hand from the company gurus where I should be directing my studies.
Any senior gurus here on Slashdot wanna give me/us some insight as to what you would be looking for in an entry level grunt?
McDoobie
Mainly by lying. Tell stories about how you got the card - spending hours disassembling computers to learn the answers to questions, family traditions about computers - you know, emotional stuff. Women dig that, supposedly.
I do apologize, however. I shouldn't have left my statement as it was - it implies that the card alone, without a backstory, is enough to impress women. You use the card to intrigue women ("Hey, what's that?") then tell your story. Make it good.
And remember: Knowledge is power. Power is an aphrodisiac. Therefor, your A+ cert. card has the potential for - interesting - applications.
Yes, this is all tongue-in-cheek.
I'm the stranger...posting to
The problem is that the A+ exam does not even really evaluate the information it claims to test. According to the certificate hanging on my wall, when I passed the exam I had a solid grasp of a large number of facts involved with operating systems deployment, motherboards, disk drives, printers, and networking. I did not really have the degree of skill in these things my certification indicated, and that's the problem. It certainly is an entry-level cert, but it does not accurately evaluate an entry-level tech.
I'm the stranger...posting to
The A+ website has some dead links (such as "http://comptia.org/certification/aplus/URL", which is supposed to link to the FAQ. And there's no obvious way to mail the organization. Did they certify their web designer?
what does kinko's have to do with it?
My God, man. You can certainly whine. And it comes across like you aren't genuinely interested to the answers to your questions, only in displaying that you know what all those things are. It makes my head hurt.
.tgz files. The Sair exams seem to favor SuSe heavily, and therefore stuck to RPM management. Shell scripting will no doubt be similar. It would be assinine to stick to only one language.
I am extremely excited by Comptia offering a Linux+ cert. Having completed their A+ and NET+, I feel confident they'll do a good job. Have you taken any Comptia exams, or are you just ranting to show off? The NET+ exam was very platform independant, ranging from Windows to Novell to Unix to hints of Mac.
Not to mention the Comptia name recognition. I have mentioned to my employer before ideas of attempting the LPI or Sair Linux certs and they have no idea who I'm talking about. Sair who? LPI Who? But when I mention my NET+ cert they allways know who Comptia is, and trust them at that.
I'm still interested in your reasons for ranting. You may not intend to, but you're coming across very elitest proclaiming "I can't imagine working for a company that activly and supports redhat on the server end." I'll forgive your grammer, but why such a statement? We use Red Hat for several things at our company, from Squid servers to routers to web/ftp servers to health monitoring servers. I work in an environment where I am one of two people competent in Linux and the other is four hours away. This means every Linux server application has to be as easy to use as possible with as much available documentation as possible. Red Hat was an easy choice. My office mate could care less about the "open source freedom fighters", he just wants to be able to pick up a book and get his work done. From my trip to the local book store last night there are absolutely more books on Red Hat then any other distro. You are either to young, to inexperienced, or just plain to inflexible.
Back on topic: I imagine sections on package management will be cross-distro, i.e. discussions on different systems like RPM, DEB, and
You also have questions you need to ask yourself. Will you not accept a job from anyone running Red Hat? If you refure to use Red Hat now, forgoing the RPM package mechanism, and not learning about it the process, how can expect to be a well rounded candidate for a Linux position? Remeber, in most cases it's not you telling them what to do, it's them telling you what to do. It's good that you're passionate, but there are things you must consider.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Except for the CS degree, those are all entry-level certifications. For network administrators, I would look for CNE or MCSE certs, depending on what platform you were looking for of course. If I were hiring someone into a position where I expected them to learn and grow, I would hire someone with A+, MCP, or the like.. but to think that someone with an MCP is going to lead your enterprise migration from VMS is ridiculous..
MCSE and CNE are good certifications I think, just due to the sheer number of tests you need to take. For an MCSE with no previous MS certification, you need 7 tests under your belt. MCSE+I is 9. You don't just go out one day and say "I think I'll get an MCSE.." It's a big career move, and a huge committment. You will need to get recertified periodically, and it does cost money to study and take the tests. There are enough tests in the series to weed out people who aren't truly committed to learning.
I think certification is important depending on what you want. It's only one piece of the puzzle, and you certainly need to look for real-world experience and a demonstrated ability to learn and adapt. But if I were looking for someone whose job would mainly be to troubleshoot LaserJets, HP certification is the first thing I'd require!
OK, here goes my karma, but... well, I have to say it. You are an ignorant asshole (and a coward, sometimes the title just fits). Anybody accepting civil deaths "for a good cause" is.
But that's not all. You're an asshole because you're interrupting a discussion with some bullshit that doesn't belong just because you're either too stupid to know it, or because you're simply an asshole running around crying for revenge. Revenge always leads to escalation. Escalation is what lead to what you're crying about.
I know I will regret answering to each and every stupid troll cropping up, but... hey, eventually the author of one will read what I wrote and be really pissed off. That's gonna be my moment of triumph.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
But what I have found, especially with the MSCE stuff, is that they look only at the MS solutions, and never at the competition. So you get this legacy certificate in legacy software. MS is in the process of cancelling their NT4 certs, and getting modern drivers for NT4 is hard to do. The point is, if you want third party stuff, support it. It's the same all the way around.
With third party certification, at least they teach you practical things, although the A+ software course I was on was a five day MS ad.
But it took me a grand total of 12 minutes to pass the exams. The fun thing was that in the the servey (which uses the exam question), selecting "no further course" is a wrong answer. Well...
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Umm this stupid-ass gamer is in charge of a huge WAN,multiple LAN's and 2 fiber nodes with 16 application servers 2SQL servers (each hot backup/failover to 2 other machines (3 servers per SQL), and over 360 workstations with 120 wireless laptops. Much of what I learned before getting here was organizing smooth running lan parties for Duke Nukem. If someone can manage a 30-40 person lanparty they can easily manage a 200-300 user corperate lan. Anyone that can organize multiple machines that are not alike, different OS's different patch levels, different patch levels of application software, and Prima-donnas that think they know their machine but cant configure their own network card is super valuable.
Please send me your unwanted lan-party runnung gamers, they are very welcome here!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"18" answers a lot. I am not trying to be derogatory by this statement, but you have not yet reached the point where you are humbled by your true stupidity. Only by accepting that you do not know even the smallest decimal of a percentage point of the knowledge pool in the IT industry, will you ever be taken seriously.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
Servers are generally not continually fiddled with. When somebody makes a configuration change, they usually have a very good clue as to what they're doing. Once installed and running smoothly, servers require very little baby-sitting, as the techs who work the night shift at any NOC will gladly admit.
That "crappy desktop stuff" is far more important than you assume, because you'll always have users who think they know what they're doing and can convince somebody over you that they shouldn't be included in your workstation policies because they need to do something for some lame part of their job that they really don't need to do, but they end up pulling it off with HR because most everybody wants them to just shut up and go away. Boom, you've got AIM or BearShare or MusicMatchJukebox on a desktop, just opening holes in your network as your user happily plays on the company's toy.
This is only one example. There are thousands of other examples. Understanding the desktop is a tremendous value for any corp. Being the manager and the tech is a goal to shoot for, because you will be paid better, and have the knowledge of both worlds to make a very smooth running network.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
I got dinged on this one - on the Linux+ beta; all the questions that I got related to package management were rpm based. I may be a linux novice; but I know what I like and RedHat ain't it. I used slackware for a bit back in the 1.x(1.2?) days; and more recently Debian.
So I had only used rpm once or twice; and yet had to answer a half-dozen or so rpm-based questions on a "vendor-neutral" exam.
I used the input fields on the exam to complain about just that fact.
Your management is lucky, having not gotten burned on one of the hundreds of thousands of bad MCSEs out there. I'd bet you could do the job, whatever it is (you didn't say) whether you got the certifications or not. The problem is, your management leans on that as a means to determine whether you can or not. That should get you in the door, because an interview is not a very good way to do that. But within 6 months it should be rather obvious whether you can do the job or not based on whether you are getting the job done or not. I'm assuming you are getting the job done. What about those other guys without the certs? Are they getting the job done as well as you are? Or are you doing better? And would you be able to do better if you had simply studied well, tried things, learned from mistakes, and not taken the exams?
The value I see for most certifications is being able to prove to a new prospective employer than you have the foundation to do the job.
But there is a reason management likes certifications for people who can prove, and have proven, their ability to do the job well. They can use that in promoting the business. If the business is offering a service to other customers who want some way to judge how well that service might be, they can use the numbers in promoting the business. That makes the certs valuable to the business even long after you have proven to your own management your actual worth. They can now promote the business better to prospective customer and that is effectively the same as an entry-level situation.
But I must congratulate your management on paying up for getting those certs. Many don't, or do very little.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Thanks for bringing up the point that the exams are split between rpm and deb. LPI is a vendor and distribution neutral certification exam. We do not recommend, specify, or require any training program or courseware. You're free to study on your own from the published exam objectives or to work with one of the many training and courseware vendors who support LPI.
Additionally our development process for the exams is community based and open to anyone who wants to participate. Right now we're in the middle of beta testing our Level 2 exams. During the beta, you can take both of the Level 2 exams in one combined form for only $84 (USD) at any VUE testing center. (See the bottom of the page.)
With regard to your certificate, be sure to contact us at info@lpi.org. If you're overseas, it sometimes takes things a while to get there via snail mail.
Thanks for supporting LPI!
Jaredjared@lpi.org