I have spent all week at the Red Hat office in Dallas taking RH131 Red Hat Linux System Administration.
Today I took the exam and it felt easy. It felt so easy that I really thought that I had aced the exam. Unfortunately, I didn't. I passed with an 87 though so now I'm a Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT). It's a pity that they don't tell you which parts you messed up on.
My next step will be to take RH253 Red Hat Linux Networking and Security Administration and the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) exam. My goal is to be a Red Hat Certified Security Specialist (RHCSS) (although if work will continue to foot the bill after that then I'll complete all of the classes and exams to be a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA)).
I took my RHCT so long ago it's since expired. I can't say the actual certificate has proved much use in real life, however I was very happy with the standard of the education I received from Red Hat and I have found the training very useful over the years.
Red Hat may not be my favourite distro - Debian is clearly superior
Re:RHCT
Mr. Muskrat on 2008-04-06T16:24:07
They are very serious about their training, exams and certifications (which is why you have to sign a NDA before the exam; expect all sort of legal trouble should you attempt to dilute the brain pool).
As for favorite distros, I don't really have one at this point. I cut my Linux teeth on Slackware back in the 90s. In the past I've tried Debian, LFS, Gentoo, Caldera, a slew that I can't recall the names of (many of which, like Caldera, are no more). RHEL is nice, as is Fedora, and I know where to find everything. Ubuntu is what I use at home on two desktops and laptop; it has the best wireless support so far.
Re:RHCT
ajt on 2008-04-07T08:52:50
They are serious and given how worthless some vendor's certifications have become they have good reason to be. For me it has turned out that the certificate has been useless however the training has been invaluable.
I'm not a fan of pieces of paper, I have several and I know people with more than me you haven't got two brain cells to rub together and I know people with nothing on paper who I know are some of the smartest people I've ever known. The cynic in me knows that sometimes having pieces of paper can dazzle PHBs and open some doors that otherwise would be closed.
On a personal level I was very pleased to get the certificate and even if it never did anything other than sit around and most recently expire, I'm proud I got it.
