I dont'know about other certs, but for the CCNA cisco offers a service know as cisco networking academy.
In 2002 I engaged in the networking academy and I must say I was impressed. We had 6 months of classes with plenty of hands on activities and laboratories. We learned a lot with the practical classes. I got in touch with different routers and switches and in the labs we built full networks passing through carefully thought design to mounting the cables and configuring the routers, switches and PCs. To receive the academy diploma you had to produce a threaded case study detailing every aspect of a network design for a school campus.
I can't say if all the academies are like this, but I was pretty much satisfied with the service I got. I got out of the course with a job offer that was pretty good for a 16 year old kid still in highschool. I really think that the networking academy offered me more than a paper saying that I'm a CCNA. One of the coolest things is that after engaging in the networking academy you gain access to a site that offers all the studying material constantly updated, even after you're out of the academy.
What I mean is, if you're really into networking and would like to get a ccna, you should check a networking academy. Learning from the book is probably cheaper and faster but messing with a real router is much better.
This has upset some people who are not quite willing to move to so-called untested software. Some of their claims seem legitimate, but I wonder if all these people will really be left in the cold.
This is really not true, since almost ALL the features in the 2.6 branch are available as patches for the 2.4. The 2.4 branch has achieved a nice level of maturity and adding a lot of new stuff to it now makes no sense.
The people complaining should learn the magic of open source. They should realise that at any desirable time they can start mantaining their own tree with their desired features. Hell, starting a new tree is not even necessary since there is such a big variety of 2.4 trees around that the feature they want is most likely already beeing supported by someone else in one of them.
GPL does not give any user the right to give the isos away. GPL forces redhat to make the software and the source code available for whoever wants it. Just take a look at SuSE's policy. They do make their distro available (without non-free software) for FTP install and they do give away the source code. And besides most software used by SuSE beeing under the GPL, SuSE does not give ISO images away.
The fonts problems on linux really blow away many people from using linux, but with a little configuring you can get them to look just as nice as in windows. Currently there are many enhancements happening in the linux font rendering.
But as everything nowadays, the developers are having patent issues. The deal is that in order to have nice looking fonts (at least with the current fonts that are available) you have to use the BCI (Byte Code Interpreter), wich is patented, so many distros do not distribute freetype compiled with the BCI turned on (some distros don't care about it and turn the BCI on anyway, I assume this is what happens with redhat). And even when BCI is turned on, some distros
really do a lousy job when configuring the fonts.
I have mozilla running with fonts exactly like they look in windows (i did compare the fonts using vmware and they really are exactly the same) but I did have to configure many things. If you are willing to do this too check the Gentoo Forums. Unlike what happens on other Linux distros comunities, the gentoo users don't give up until they've got it like they want (and don't mind sharing their work), so you'll probably won't have a hard time getting help in the gentoo community.
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I dont'know about other certs, but for the CCNA cisco offers a service know as cisco networking academy.
In 2002 I engaged in the networking academy and I must say I was impressed. We had 6 months of classes with plenty of hands on activities and laboratories. We learned a lot with the practical classes. I got in touch with different routers and switches and in the labs we built full networks passing through carefully thought design to mounting the cables and configuring the routers, switches and PCs. To receive the academy diploma you had to produce a threaded case study detailing every aspect of a network design for a school campus.
I can't say if all the academies are like this, but I was pretty much satisfied with the service I got. I got out of the course with a job offer that was pretty good for a 16 year old kid still in highschool. I really think that the networking academy offered me more than a paper saying that I'm a CCNA. One of the coolest things is that after engaging in the networking academy you gain access to a site that offers all the studying material constantly updated, even after you're out of the academy.
What I mean is, if you're really into networking and would like to get a ccna, you should check a networking academy. Learning from the book is probably cheaper and faster but messing with a real router is much better.
Just remember, YMMV!!
yeah one guy at work remarked this morning "cool now I don't have to check error returns ..."
I assume you work for Microsoft.
This has upset some people who are not quite willing to move to so-called untested software. Some of their claims seem legitimate, but I wonder if all these people will really be left in the cold.
This is really not true, since almost ALL the features in the 2.6 branch are available as patches for the 2.4. The 2.4 branch has achieved a nice level of maturity and adding a lot of new stuff to it now makes no sense.
The people complaining should learn the magic of open source. They should realise that at any desirable time they can start mantaining their own tree with their desired features. Hell, starting a new tree is not even necessary since there is such a big variety of 2.4 trees around that the feature they want is most likely already beeing supported by someone else in one of them.
GPL does not give any user the right to give the isos away. GPL forces redhat to make the software and the source code available for whoever wants it. Just take a look at SuSE's policy. They do make their distro available (without non-free software) for FTP install and they do give away the source code. And besides most software used by SuSE beeing under the GPL, SuSE does not give ISO images away.
The fonts problems on linux really blow away many people from using linux, but with a little configuring you can get them to look just as nice as in windows. Currently there are many enhancements happening in the linux font rendering.
But as everything nowadays, the developers are having patent issues. The deal is that in order to have nice looking fonts (at least with the current fonts that are available) you have to use the BCI (Byte Code Interpreter), wich is patented, so many distros do not distribute freetype compiled with the BCI turned on (some distros don't care about it and turn the BCI on anyway, I assume this is what happens with redhat). And even when BCI is turned on, some distros really do a lousy job when configuring the fonts.
I have mozilla running with fonts exactly like they look in windows (i did compare the fonts using vmware and they really are exactly the same) but I did have to configure many things. If you are willing to do this too check the Gentoo Forums. Unlike what happens on other Linux distros comunities, the gentoo users don't give up until they've got it like they want (and don't mind sharing their work), so you'll probably won't have a hard time getting help in the gentoo community.