As a fairly proficient desktop Linux user for many years, I’ve always been curious how much of that knowledge would translate to getting a cert like this. I’m definitely not down playing the significance of these.
I recently passed my Sys Admin cert from Linux Foundation and 50% of things by me were done on the fly:
- View to what website the cerficate has been issued
- Git commiting and pushing
- Smart finding and deleting / moving
- NFS and SSHFS mounting
- Firewall redirection probably using iptables
- Overall user management
- Docker container management
- Sysctl kernel parameters persistence
- Systemctl server managing
- AppArmor which I failed
- LVM disk extending
- From source compilation using make
- NTP time synchronisation
that’s all I remember. Overall I find that typicall Linux Desktop differs from these certs and the job.
Going through LFS207 right now, meant to prepare for the LFCS. Gotta say, the material is unsatisfying, a few issues here and there, quite a bit of information that isn’t up to date and uninspired instructors (at least it seems, they make so few appearances they might as well have not recorded themselves at all) make for a really lame course, which would all be acceptable if it had been free or really low cost and by an external organisation, but no, it costs a heck ton for what it offers and it still manages to be less than insightful when it’s coming from the same foundation sponsoring Linux development, guess sponsoring is an entirely different matter from knowing or teaching (or proofreading paid material).
What it is undeniably good for, though, is letting you know that certain topics exist at all, so you can go deeper by yourself, stuff which you might not care about or come across otherwise.
Safe to say your Linux desktop experience will only translate as much as you put effort into playing around with your system, which, in a perfect world would be the least you’ll ever need, it’s definitely undesirable to make the desktop a CLI heavy experience, and in fact, I’d say that today’s Linux desktop manages to save you from the details pretty well, so you really have to go out of your way to learn sysadmin concepts and tool usage, stuff that, if you don’t need a certification, you can do just as well on your own with free articles and courses, whichever you can find
Do cert actually matter in candidate pick? Or just for profile on linkedin?
It’ll get you past the AI for human eyes to land on the resume. But having hired a lot of IT guys in the past, I would take experience and no certs over certs and no experience.
To take that a little further, I recruit on enthusiasm, experience then certs last.
There’s too many “experts” out there that I might not be able to fire due to employment laws.
Certs are what I’d train my team for, to show to our clients.
I’d assume you’re more likely to get an interview, and it would probably be viewed higher than someone without.
Not essential, but advantageous.
I do believe that some companies look at certs for sysadmin roles. As a requirement not a boost and you’d likely need more than just Linux certs then. Probably also some Cisco and stuff.
Well, in tech, if you have experience, that tends to be the biggest deal by far and can often do all the lifting on its own. But hiring managers also appreciate certs and formal education, especially if you don’t yet have much experience.
It would likely give you an advantage Vs some other person they’re considering with your level of experience.
