RHCE

[Mike Jang]

Dear Chadley, 

On Thu, 2004-04-29 at 10:36, Chadley Wilson wrote:
> My company has decided to send me for Linux training. 

Congratulations!

> The boss wants me
> to do the relevant training to bring our company up to speed with IBM
> and and other major PC brands that are selling Linux on there PCs for
> end users.

In other words, one question is based on your judgement on the Linux
market. Both Red Hat and SUSE/Novell are doing well. Red Hat however
does have half of the current Linux market, and are still seen as the
market leader. I think it's possible that Novell will make inroads, but
I think it'll take time, possibly years. I mean, it did take a few years
for Microsoft to take market share from Apple and Netscape, among
others.

> Now the boss wants to know how to tell if this is the the correct
> course.

As others here have stated, the RHCE (and RHCT) is one of the very few
certs that allow you to demonstrate your hands-on skills, I think it's
somewhat like showing you can fly in a real-live flight simulator.

> And he wants to know if we shouldn't maybe go down the SUSE route.

As SUSE is working with LPI on certs, that is the main alternative. The
LPI exams are more standard multiple choice exams. These are sometimes
associated with "paper tiger" certs. That may not be fair. The people
behind LPI have worked hard (using psychometrics) to make their multiple
choice questions a relevant test of real-world skills... but others
suggest they are still multiple choice questions, whose answers can be
memorized.

> My question is a difficult one because I need to justify and prove prior
> to actually going on the course that RHCE would be the right way to go.

The RHCE exam is more expensive than the LPI certifications. A direct
comparison is difficult, as prices vary all over the world. Documents on
older versions of the LPI website suggested that LPIC-2 or LPIC-3
certification is equivalent to the RHCE. In other words, you would have
to take four (4) LPI exams to be certified at the same level as the one
RHCE exam.

> I have already mentioned that RedHat base platforms are by far more
> widely supported than any other distro and that FC will be the best for
> us to use on our our hardware because it is very configurable and has
> such great hardware support.
> But one has to bear in mind that I am trying to explain this to a person
> who has no idea of computers and operating systems let alone Linux.

To do this, you'll need current market studies. It takes some work to
find these online. Google and linuxtoday.com, among other sites, can
help with this search.

Good luck!
Mike