[ubuntu-uk] Linux Courses

[Avi]

Dino T. wrote:

> It would be both, for my CV and learning experience. I dont want to be
> investing time and money however on a course where it'd be worthless
> as a qualification.

I think you're going to hit an oft-encountered problem, in that there's
little intersection between the two.

LPI appears to be the 'standard' Linux qualification but it doesn't
require much real-world knowledge to pass. As is the nature of exams,
it's relatively easy to treat it as a brain-dump, rather than a test
of understanding. I gather Linux+ (the other main qualification) isn't
a lot different. Even being the standard qualification, it's not really
held in very high regard by the sorts of people you're looking to
manage you, but might be by the people doing the hiring - recruitment,
personell departments and agencies love initialisms.


The usual source for getting 'real' training is to hire a consultant,
really. UKUUG used to occasionally send me details of such courses,
where they'd hired a consultant and were selling tickets, but they've
stopped doing so since I stopped giving them money. 

The problem you're going to see is that for a lot of employers the
first measure of how good someone is is their experience. Linux being
both sorts of free, and community driven, means it's not hard to gain
experience without it necessarily being *paid* experience, you just
need to rent a server, stick a web page on it and not get hacked :)


If I were in your position, I'd look at doing a course that does some
proper training in Linux with a view to an LPI, and then getting an LPI
at the end of it. If you're looking for Linuxy admin work, though,
nobody is likely to hire you unless you're already running a server
of some sort.


The above is almost entirely based on me asking the same questinons
about a year ago, but then somebody gave me a job before I had a chance
to put any of it into practice :) Some of it might be different now.

-- 
Avi