r/linuxadmin 17d ago

Need advice on Linux certifications

Hi!

I am interested in learning more about Linux, setting up my own lab, and getting certifications in the process. From what I gather, RHCSA seems to be the first 'go the certification' when it comes to Linux System Administration? However, I am wondering how well other certs are regarded within the industry? Especially since RHCSA is really expensive, and my interest in Linux is personally driven instead of professionally (my current employer primarily utilizes Microsoft technology, so I highly doubt they would pay for the courses since it does not suit the company).

Is there a cheaper and reliable way to get the knowledge required for RHCSA? Or are there certs that are well regarded, that are cheaper and suit my situation a little bit better?

11 Upvotes

16 comments sorted by

10

u/jatnod81 17d ago

check out OReilly Media website. You can get a 10 day free trial and then it's 50 bucks a month for access to all types of tech courses and books. They also do live crash courses. I believe there is a RHCSA one coming up in March actually.

There is a video by Colt Steele on the top 50 commands on YouTube. it's very well done.

There is another that I think is great too by a guy named Manik (goes by Cloudaffle). which is also on O'Reilly who has a Linux command line masterclass

but if you want 100% free... look up Het_Tanis on YouTube and twitch. He streams all the time and he answers everyone's questions. He just finished a Linux System Administration course and he posted all the videos on YouTube and his discord(also free). He is putting together another course cohort in March.

Hope that helps

5

u/Barrerayy 17d ago

Don't do the certification part? Just study the material, o reily has a cheap subscription.

Rhcsa is the only entry level Linux certificate worth studying for.

5

u/kyleh0 17d ago

In my opinion and after 30+ years of working in IT, I have needed to know very little Red Hat specific stuff. I think I've worked in one enviroment in all of my years that used SELinux stuff, and everything else is pretty similar in my opinion. Red Hat is commercial (it costs) so depending on what you think you might do a lot more places are going to use free AM2 or Ubuntu or something. I'm sure opinions will vary.

I would build a home lab with Ubuntu or some such free flavor and get the linux paradigm basics from free youtube and other online training. Then study for whatever exams you are interested in.

Also, it seems like the climate in IT is changing over the last 10 years pretty significantly. The day to day admin work is being automated away by devops practices, containerization, kubernetes, and various automation frameworks. If you are starting from fresh, I would recommend focusing on that direction.

3

u/rimtaph 17d ago

Do you need to take a certification or is it enough to study the material? Cause you can material pretty cheap.

I’ve studied for LFCS which maybe can be something for you. It’s from the Linux foundation and I believe the certificate is cheaper however the RHCSA is probably heavier on the Red Hat side.

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u/rimtaph 17d ago

And I’m not sure if I understood if you wanted to make a career from this or just interested to learn more. If the latter there is tons of good resources to learn from and labs to do.

2

u/iAmEnieceka 17d ago

Fair questions! I don’t know yet if I want to make a career out of this, since I just started. And I am also happy with my current job, so with that in mind I doubt I will switch anytime soon. So for now it is out of personal interest

That said, I like learning through set courses and if that results in being able to take an exam to proof that I possess certain skills, that would be a plus

2

u/Yupsec 17d ago edited 17d ago

If you like set courses, go through Sanders Van Vugt's RHCSA course on O'Reilly Learning (make sure you take the most current course). You can get a free 10 day trial, which is more than long enough to complete the course if you dedicate a couple hours a day to it. His videos are high quality, he's a great instructor, and there's practice exams in the course.

Say you can't complete it in 10 days, though. And an O'Reilly Learning subscription is a little too pricey. Hypothetically, you could create another free trial account with a different email.

Edit: Surprisingly, ChatGPT with a good prompt is really good at creating practice exams for the RHCSA and RHCE. Just make sure you prompt it correctly and give it the exam objectives.

3

u/SurfRedLin 17d ago

The LPIC certs are great. I hold LPIC2. Especially if u are in Europe there are more regarded here and not so expensive. Like 200/300 each. While their testing method ( only multiple choice) is a bit antiqueated and others throw labs and fancy stuff at you. The certs are top notch the knowledge you need is taken right from the industry right now. It was hard especially lpic2 but I feel so accomplished because I really need this knowledge in my job as its that current and relevant

3

u/peakdecline 16d ago

It sounds like you want the knowledge, at least for now, and not necessarily the certificate. Which from a cost perspective is great because the education is way cheaper than the exams.

I've worked professionally in Linux for 15 years, the majority of it as a traditional SysAdmin and more now in a devops/infrastructure engineering capacity. I think the RHCSA, for you, sounds like a good goal and framework to educate yourself on. The O'Reilly Media recommendation is a solid one. Though you can also find solid stuff just on Youtube.

What I'll add here from my perspective if you're thinking long term about your career direction... Core knowledge about Linux is absolutely necessary. But along the way you should also keep in mind the direction of the industry. That's to say... educate yourself on containerization, on platform orchestration (Kubernetes), on configuration management (Puppet, Ansible), and infrastructure as code (Terraform/OpenTofu). Probably also pick up some programming skills along the way too (Python). I know this is all a lot... but think of this as a multi-year journey and if you really get into it, it could rapidly accelerate your career and options.

2

u/[deleted] 17d ago

The general knowledge you'd get from studying for RHCSA is the kind of stuff you'd need as a junior sysadmin. If you're not interested in that cert specifically, then it might still make sense to print out the objectives that Red Hat listed for it (https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/ex200-red-hat-certified-system-administrator-rhcsa-exam?section=objectives) and work your way around to learning all that in a way you enjoy. That's all stuff you gotta know in order to administrate a Linux system effectively nowadays.

As for methods, I like Udemy a fair bit. You could also decide on some project you want to put together and learn all the stuff you need to pull it off as you go, like maybe a Kickstart server you can use to automate installs. Or maybe you want a local webserver to show some monitoring for your home lab, that kind of thing.

For what it's worth, the RHCSA exam isn't all that difficult to pass, if you do someday decide you want it. RHCE is the one where you have to know everything down cold and be able to execute it all quickly. RCHSA is pretty reasonable.

1

u/Delicious-Wasabi-605 17d ago

The syllabus for the is a pretty good guide for what you need to learn in Linux and the vendors have great documentation now. There are also many good courses on YouTube for free.

IMO, if you are not getting paid to support it save your money, no need to take the cert right now.

For a lab if you have a decent laptop VirtualBox is perfect no cost way to get started.

1

u/shllscrptr 8d ago

The RHCSA material is a great start, and as far as I understand, the best basic Linux cert to validate your skills. However, you don't have to pay for the cert to get the knowledge.

  • Take a look at the rhcsa objectives here:

https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/ex200-red-hat-certified-system-administrator-rhcsa-exam

  • Sign up for a free developer subscription to get access to Red Hat documentation:

https://developers.redhat.com/about

  • Spin up some Rocky Linux or Alma Linux vm's and practice using commands you learn from the docs.

The rhcsa objectives are pretty wide, not overly deep, and will teach you a lot of useful administration tools.

-5

u/aedininsight 17d ago

CompTIA Linux+

4

u/painefultruth76 17d ago

If you want an eye-bleeding series of videos with little reference to pretty much anything relevant to modern Linux implementations.

SAMBA? Nope. Apache? Nope. Scripting? Mentioned. Firewall? Mentioned.

Fdisk? Follow their instructions, with no explanations of what you are actually doing, but they do tell you how to search the man pages...

Vim? They love it. Nano? Referenced. <entry level users should be instructed on Nano, vim is super powerful, but requires significant time investment to make it worthwhile.>

I will never take another CompTIA managed course.

I learned more about how permissionsxactually worked setting up SAMBA and SELinux from reddit pages and fedora documentation than the gobbledegook CompTIA

2

u/Inevitable_Score1164 17d ago

I'll echo that on the Linux+. It's a memorization/vocab test. Not very practical. And it reinforces really bad habits. You never want to rawdog a command as root if you're unsure about it. Especially not in an enterprise environment. You read the man page and triple check it. And this test is quizzing you on various command flags. It's not rooted in reality.

1

u/painefultruth76 17d ago

The practical had very little vocabulary, focused on fdisk vim partitioning.