Re: Red Hat and LPI Exam

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 19:15, Daniel S wrote:
> Thanks for the information from everyone!  I think I
> am going to stick with Slackware and keep the Red Hat
> book for info.  I have been on the fence about taking
> the LPI or the RHCT/RHCE.  I may still look into the
> RHCT but I am going to concentrate on the LPI for now.

I don't recommend the Red Hat crash-course+exams unless you
have lots of hands-on experience.  Maybe if you were a long-
standing Solaris guru with a lot of GNU service experience.

LPIC-1 is a much better start IMHO.  And it's largely applicable
to the RHCT/RHCE as well.


On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 18:52, Robert G. (Doc) Savage wrote: 
> Today their RHEL "current product" has four flavors (AS, ES, WS,
> Desktop). All are still based on the 2.4 kernel, but that will change
> with the release of the all new RHEL4 with a 2.6 kernel and SELinux in
> early 2005.

Correct, because what I call the "Community Linux" releases:  
  CL3 = Red Hat Linux 8 (.0), Red Hat Linux 9 (.1), Fedora Core 1 (.2)
  CL4 = Fedora Core 2 (.0), Fedora Core 3 (.1)

Map to the equivalent "EL" (Enterprise Linux) versions.

> Anybody who's not living with RHEL on an everyday hands-on basis will
> have very little chance passing today's exams, and no hope in hell of
> passing the RHEL4 exams next spring. You'd be wasting your time and
> money trying.

There are only a few details to RHEL that aren't in the "community
distributions" of Fedora Core.  Just knowing those will give you enough,
even if you've only supported Fedora Core.

Running CentOS is _not_ the same.  You need to understand a few things
about Red Hat's commercial distribution, namely the Red Hat Network (RHN).
But outside the actual distribution, it's all the same stuff.

> Go ahead and buy the books, but if you're seriously considering getting
> an RHCE anytime in the foreseeable future, I'd strongly recommend you
> scrape together the $2500 fee for the RH300 course. For their Jan-Sep
> 2005 schedule, see https://www.redhat.com/apps/training/?start=20.

The next time I attempt the RHCE, I'm going the full RH300 route, not
just the RH302 exam route.

> There's one in Atlanta from Jan 31 - Feb 4.  But if you can see your way
> clear to taking it instead in Raleigh, NC from Jan 24-28, I'd encourage
> you to do it there. That way you'd get to meet lots of the folks you've
> come to know only by name on the fedora and taroon mail lists.

I wanted to do that.

But I ended up going to Atlanta (I was in Orlando) because my employer was
pressuring me to get it (along with the MCSE, Master CIW, OCP, etc...),
and they weren't offering it in NC for a few weeks.  Damn that was my
worst job ever -- I almost didn't get on the road to take it.

I'll never forget the phone call on the night after I took it, "Did you
pass?"  I told them before I left that I wouldn't know until next week
at the earliest.  Then I got chastized for not passing it until it was
regraded 2 weeks after that.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                    b.j.smith@ieee.org 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly
retraining for the latter, omitted "software assurance" costs in 
compatible desktop OS/apps for the former, no free/legacy reuse for
latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.



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