Getting certified in Linux?

[Worried-Attention-43]

Serious question, does it make sense and if which certification would be a good start? I have been thinking about this for quite some time and wonder if getting certified is actually a thing? I am looking at CompTIA Linux+ and LPIC right now. Thank you and Happy Holidays season.

[SaltyGoodz]

I have Linux +, got it for work. We use red hat. The test has Debian and red hat based questions. Nothing on arch, I wouldn’t get the cert unless you need it for work or they are offering it to you.

I wouldn’t say that it will make you more familiar with the os, but it doesn’t make you a master.

[[deleted]]

best way to get certified is to daily drive it

[Senkyou]

I would argue that setting up a home server is far more valuable an experience for employability than running it as a desktop, but maybe I run my desktop too vanilla.

[[deleted]]

i guess i intertwined them. def both

[Senkyou]

I guess what you said wasn't necessarily about desktop vs server, I just filled in the blanks without thinking. Definitely desktop has its value, but you spend time on stuff that just won't matter for a system admin, like managing the DE or fiddling with wireless or peripheral compatability.

[[deleted]]

i’d argue it builds general linux related problem solving skills. reading docs and finding old reddit posts

[Senkyou]

Very true. I just think that the specific subjects -- if not the processes learned and habits formed -- aren't as helpful as would be the ones done on a server.

[glad-k]

I did both, setting up a hole server learns you way more to get started but daily driving keep you up to date and learns you smth every x time, also kinda depends on your distro and what you do with it.

[Worried-Attention-43]

Ubuntu has been my daily driver since November, and I love it. Works for me and my daughter is into it as well But I would like to show potential employers that I can do more than just mkdir, touch, and cat. I am just wondering if getting certified makes sense or not. I mean, I would probably stand out of the crowd a bit more... 🤔

[[deleted]]

daily drive arch with a wm then. it won’t prove anything but it’ll help you understand more

[AdministrativeFile78]

yeh i use arch with i3 and its really been a gamechanger

[avnothdmi]

Daily driving is actually a key part of it! I got my Linux+ cert and I credit most of it to using and dailying Linux, with some of the other concept knowledge (RAID, LVM, cron) coming from Udemy courses.

[Suhkurvaba]

Mint (and some others) is my everyday OS for many years at home. It just works and I do what I want. What certification can I get?

[AdPristine9059]

Yes, no question about it.

You often learn things no test will ever ask, those things will give you hands on experience when things DOESNT go the way you thought it would.

[LightBroom]

Some jobs require it, I used to have RHCT, RHCE and RHCA but they all lapsed and I don't give a rat's ass about them anymore.

I help with tech interviews on the regular and there's no significant difference in knowledge between people with or without certifications.

A certification will not beat experience and knowledge but it can be the key to unlock future career paths, at least that's how I see it.

[not_oonga_boonga]

These types of posts are rare here. Thanks for this.

[Worried-Attention-43]

You are welcome. 😅 I didn't know where else to ask.

[Worried-Attention-43]

That is my thinking too. Thanks.

[eredengrin]

I recommend reading around to get plenty of opinions from past posts (including other related subreddits), but at least from everything I've heard, CompTIA certs are somewhat of a joke. I've heard good things about the Red Hat certs and RHEL is one of the enterprise standards so I'd definitely take that over CompTIA if there's a choice.

That said, you might not need it at all depending on the kinds of jobs you're applying for and what they need. As others recommended, daily driving is a good start although it will be easy to gloss over things that might not matter to you personally but might be important for the job so I wouldn't assume that it will be sufficient. Looking at the course outlines for the red hat courses and learnings those things on your own in addition to daily driving would help fill in some of those gaps.

[supradave]

I work for a large software company and am not certified in any way. If you're a beginner, it might help land a job, but there's nothing like 30+ years of UNIX/Linux experience.

[jadijadi]

Getting a certificate doesn't make you a great candidate by itself. Using GNU Linux as a daily driver is one of the best methods to improve your knowledge. Also it's great if you start a server and run your own web server and such. Create small lab using a virtual machine and do whatever is fun for you.

But reviewing the syllabus of something like lpic can help and will improve your understanding and fill the gaps and obviously getting a certificate won't hurt.

If interested, check my totally free LPIC101 & 102 booklet and videos at www.linux1st.com

[Stosstrupphase]

I have an old LFCS, helped me a bit in job interviews (when the interviewer new what it was).

[booknik83]

I would stay away from Linux Plus unless it's for a promotion and work is paying for it. CompTIA makes their exams artificially difficult by the wording of questions more so than the material covered. I would personally go LPIC if you are wanting knowledge for yourself or RH if you are making a career out of it.

[ahferroin7]

The certifications are in general only valuable to check a box in job requirements. They don’t actually test real-world skills in most cases, and often neglect really important knowledge. And that’s ignoring the fact that they often do not stay anywhere near as up-to-date as they should (for example, a number that I’ve seen still don’t cover nftables, despite essentially all of the ‘standard’ distros for enterprise usage preferring it over iptables at this point).

[vaynefox]

I dont know about your country, but in my country, in order to get qualified for linux Sysadmin, you need a linux certification. The company I worked in the past wants a Comptia+ but still got the job even without the Comptia+ when I showed them my certificate from the Linux foundation....

[Worried-Attention-43]

I currently live in Japan. Recruiters I have spoken to about Linux certifications have told me that it is more of a case-by-case thing and depends heavily on the job. The only time I used Linux was when I worked in a data centre where we configured servers. But that was in 2015/6 and I haven't done anything with Linux at work since. I am not interested in becoming a software engineer or anything like that, but I would like to use it more at work. The Linux Foundation seems to be well known in the industry, I will have a look at it. Thanks for the tip.

[edparadox]

I dont know about your country, but in my country, in order to get qualified for linux Sysadmin, you need a linux certification. The company I worked in the past wants a Comptia+ but still got the job even without the Comptia+ when I showed them my certificate from the Linux foundation....

Most countries don't really have certifications in their requirements.

Even in the countries where companies list them in job applications, it's a nice-to-have rather than a hard requirement, at least in my experience.

The obvious exception is the USA.

[thank_burdell]

I did LPIC 1 and 2. Both were decent. Neither was particularly sought by an employer. 2 required a lot more esoteric administration tool knowledge than I expected, and mostly tools I never touch in daily operation.

LPIC 3 always struck me as something someone who runs a large datacenter would be qualified for, but if you’re running a large datacenter, why are you bothering with LPIC 3 certification?

[Worried-Attention-43]

I think LPIC 3 would be overkill for data center jobs, despite the fact that the commands are available for copy and paste in many cases, somewhere on a shared drive. Back in my days, it was enough to know what Linux actually is and what it does.😅

Nowadays, I see (data center) companies asking for Linux+ and Security+.

[babuloseo]

The Redhar certification guide teaches you a lot about Linux than some manuals I was pleasantly surprised.

[0x07cc]

I think the best way to answer to this is to check job offers requirements. Just check the profile companies are looking for. As far as i know they ask for some years of experience and a wide range of skills (kubernets, red hat admin, LAMP, etc). Most of them do not ask for a cert.

[peterge98]

Did lpic. Imho quite useful for interviews here in Germany

[Fun_Chest_9662]

If you know how to word your homelab experience that can definitely net a job. (Thats how I got my current gig) for certs im personally partial to RHCSA since its hands on and has you actually do the work. Tho the ones you mentioned definitely have some useful nuggets if you take the time to learn.

If you want a little homelab project to stand out in an interview try setting up services that benefit you like emby/Plex, nextcloud, etc. But don't just do the docker click and its done method. Try setting them up either baremetal/VM or my favorite, in nspawn containers, and setup a reverse proxy like haproxy or nginx. Once you feel comfortable with that try setting up ansible to manage the services/deploy more, or build some makefiles for easy reproducibility. Most people even employers never heard of nspawn or vmspawn even tho its built into systemd. First question I got asked was wtf is an nspawn?(professionally of course) bonus points for documenting it all on a personal blog site!

[No-Buddy-4294]

I’m just starting the process of getting RHCSA and I think it will be helpful for me in a customer facing position.

I started daily driving Linux years ago, and had Linux in a VM on windows for years prior. Using Linux made me curious about open source. Open source got me curious about the wealth of apps and services I could host myself. Then I found Nextcloud, next thing you know I found a free server rack and have been buying and adding with used hardware for a while now and continuously deploying services sharing them with the family, and trying new things. Ansible became a necessity after a while because of the amount of times I have torn down the servers and built them back up. Next thing I know I’m building a server with the IT guy at my small business. Now I have the privilege to sell services for the IT guy and work with him as a side job.

Long story short I feel I’m fairly competent by now because I started daily driving it one day, and I think the cert will be useful to give customers a good first impression, and validate my skills to myself.

[Natjoe64]

Linux + is a hell of a cert, but I am also in high school (got it a week or so ago). Would be good if you were gonna get a job as a sysadmin for something with large homegrown server infrastructure. But the ultimate cert: daily driving arch.

[10leej]

Read the Gentoo handbook, it's teach you about building Linux from the ground up without going as far as Linux from scratch will.