DISCLAIMER: I have not read the entire article yet, but still wanted to comment on some of the other comments so far. If I mention something already stated in the article...well....shoot me.
Now...
Actually the LPIC is seeking to be that baseline and has largely succeeded in rallying the community. Ubuntu, Novell and to a lesser extend RedHat all either have the LPIC-1 as their foundation or as a required part of their certification.
As you mentioned in the article, LPI is now heavily involved in the Linux+ cert and they are actually tied to each other. If you take your Linux+ now, you can have it submitted to LPI to count as your LPIC-1. Sort of a twofer.
Although I can't speak from experience, I have talked to a good bit of people who can and from what I hear all the certifications are a joke.
My personal opinion would be to agree to that IT certs are mostly a scam these days. Really, what does it mean to be "certified" these days? It means you were able to pay someone to allow you to take a test and you were able to answer the majority of the questions correctly. With the exception of few cert exams (such as the RHCE), you don't actually sit down and prove that you can accomplish anything other than regurgitation.
A lot more people have just the certifications than an actual understanding of the general thing they are certified in.
Agreed. There are many people that simply memorize a brain dump and then regurgitate it for the exam, yet couldn't set up a server or configure a network to save their life. This lends more to the argument that certs are mostly a joke. Even worse, the same could be argued regarding an IT related college degree these days.
I suppose the certifications can be regarded as a foot-in-the-door but should never me regarded as more than that in my uneducated elitist mind.
Certifications for better or worse are still very highly relevant in the career world. Possibly even more so with the current state of unemployment where you now have people with a Masters and many years of experience competing for the same job and salary as those with a Bachelor's and minimal experience. I can speak from experience that I have recently been looking to change jobs and have seen many many positions where the employer either preferred or flat out required specific certifications. So as much as we love to hate them, they are still very much needed in the "real world".
There is no equivalent to Cisco CCNA in Linux certifications, and by that I mean that there is a need to have a quantifiable baseline of knowledge that tells a prospective employer what the person actually can do.
Yes and no. I would argue that CCNA is less about a "baseline knowledge" of what one can actually do and more name recognition, but still a mixture of both. In this regard, the closest thing for an employer looking specifically for a linux administrator would be one of the Red Hat certs. Usually, more specifically the RHCE. I have found that the majority of employers looking for a linux admin are looking for one to run a Red Hat environment and thus will get the same name recognition tingles from the RHCE as the network admin needing employers will get from a CCNA.
Good read. Been thinking about doing Linux+ myself for awhile. Making me rethink it.
In today's employment situation, the more certs the merrier. The Linux+ exam is rather cheap (for a cert exam) and will get you two certs for the price of one. It will also allow you to continue on with the LPIC-2 afterward to look even better. That said, I wouldn't put TOO much effort into studying for it as if it were some amazing top tier cert. If you don't have any others, there are certainly more important ones out there. The CompTIA certs are more like the low hanging fruit though.
