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#1 2016-03-25 17:31:01

TuxForLife
Member
Registered: 2015-11-14
Posts: 18

Arch Linux Career?

I'm interested in pursuing a career to be a Linux Sysadmin, however, I am not too sure where to begin.

After some research, the best option seems to be to go for RHCSA/RHCE certification, but I actually fell in love with Arch, and would love to stick with pacman!

Is there anything certificate similar for Arch Linux, or is it too "bleeding edge", and not stable enough? Is my best option going into the Red Hat world, or what do you guys suggest to someone with 3+ years of casual/intermediate Linux use?

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#2 2016-03-25 17:52:07

nomorewindows
Member
Registered: 2010-04-03
Posts: 3,362

Re: Arch Linux Career?

Arch isn't recommended for 24/7 uptime servers, so there would never be much of a reason for certifying it/or the tech. Much of what you learn on Arch might give you the bleeding edge to help you pass your certification.  Linux certifications are not much in the eye as much as A+, which is still a debatable whether it is worth having.


I may have to CONSOLE you about your usage of ridiculously easy graphical interfaces...
Look ma, no mouse.

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#3 2016-03-25 18:12:54

headkase
Member
Registered: 2011-12-06
Posts: 1,975

Re: Arch Linux Career?

If you want a job with Linux then go with Red Hat, they are the first: $2 Billion dollar open-source corporation.  If you learn Red Hat, through Fedora most easily, then when you actually go looking for a Linux job those jobs will want Red Hat skills.  Arch is a great Linux but as nomorewindows stated: it is not meant for a production server, it is meant for an intermediate to advanced user desktop.

Edit: and CentOS is a direct clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux if you want to sharpen your chops without actually buying a RHEL license.

Last edited by headkase (2016-03-25 18:14:07)

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#4 2016-03-25 18:37:19

Stevearch
Member
From: North Wales
Registered: 2014-04-21
Posts: 80

Re: Arch Linux Career?

Don't forget LPI! I'm LPI-1 Certified, their certs are quite popular with employers smile

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#5 2016-03-25 18:38:49

TuxForLife
Member
Registered: 2015-11-14
Posts: 18

Re: Arch Linux Career?

It's too bad I can't use Arch for anything, I'm in love with it! Thanks, I'll look into CentOS/Fedora

I frequently see "Bachelor's in Computer Science", however, I recently got my Bachelor's in something else, and I really would prefer not to go for another Bachelor's any time soon (or at all, personally). I would just like to get some relevant credentials and start working as soon as possible.

In your opinions, what do you recommend to do to get started? Get a LFCS/LPI/RHCSA/RHCE/etc.? It's really confusing to me, I don't know which is best >.<

Last edited by TuxForLife (2016-03-25 18:39:08)

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#6 2016-03-25 18:40:42

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: Arch Linux Career?

Moving to GNU/Linux Disucssions...


Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

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#7 2016-03-25 19:14:35

Trilby
Inspector Parrot
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,452
Website

Re: Arch Linux Career?

TuxForLife wrote:

I frequently see "Bachelor's in Computer Science", however, I recently got my Bachelor's in something else

There is undoubtedly a great deal of variation in computer science degrees/departments/programs, but the few I've worked closely with (or at least in close proximity to) the Bachelor's of Computer Science isn't worth the paper it is printed on.

None of my formal education has been in anything related to computer science, but at my last university I was urged to teach a programming class.  I did - it was marketted not to CS people, but to psychologists and behavior people.  A couple CS students showed up, loved it, and kept coming back to me to learn more.  I took on one CS student as a research assistant in an animal behavior lab because he saw more opportunity to learn about actual programming in our lab than anything in his department.  I was more than a little disturbed to hear what the CS curriculum included (or didn't include).  They learned how to make fancy web pages - that's about it.

Again, there is undoubtedly a wide range, and some CS degrees would provide you with wonderful knowledge.  So by all means go back for another degree if you want to learn more.  But if you want a certificate showing you know something, sadly - due to universities like the one I used to work at - that BS certificate doesn't mean much of anything.

Certificates may be handy, but if you really want to show that you know what you are doing, code something.  There are any number of ways to sneak through a training program and get a certificate, but one can't code something useful without actually having the requisite skills.

EDIT: Caveat Emptor: I do not consider myself a computer scientist, or hardly a proficient programmer in the grand scheme of things.  But I can often get things up and running perfectly functionally in a small fraction of the time that a couple of CS BSes would spend debating various theories of how it might be done.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#8 2016-03-25 19:49:31

TheChickenMan
Member
From: United States
Registered: 2015-07-25
Posts: 354

Re: Arch Linux Career?

Degrees in computer engineering are generally more meaningful than CS. Or at least the computer engineers that I have known have seemed to have learned more and more relevant things than the CS people. I may be bias though. I come from an institution known for being a good engineering school and am a chemical engineer myself.


If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
Niels Bohr

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#9 2016-03-25 23:46:17

clfarron4
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From: London, UK
Registered: 2013-06-28
Posts: 2,163
Website

Re: Arch Linux Career?

TuxForLife wrote:

It's too bad I can't use Arch for anything, I'm in love with it! Thanks, I'll look into CentOS/Fedora

It is good for setting up systems from what I would call a "bottum-upwards" perspective, since you have to install/configure most stuff for your system, which is a good thing.


Claire is fine.
Problems? I have dysgraphia, so clear and concise please.
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#10 2016-03-26 00:16:11

nomorewindows
Member
Registered: 2010-04-03
Posts: 3,362

Re: Arch Linux Career?

Electrical Engineering would more likely get you farther than Computer Science.
Previously, some 4 year degrees would include just about every discipline for CS, but now I'm not sure.  I haven't looked it up in years. 
I was able to take a fuzzer test for an employment agency, for a Cisco related job.  It was open book, internet, and I was able to score good, but they still wanted someone hardcoded in order to hire them.  Am I the one that's disconnected?  I just showed that I was capable of doing it...but they still wouldn't consider hiring me.  I'm not even sure about the competency of the agencies to be able to tell if I'm qualified.


I may have to CONSOLE you about your usage of ridiculously easy graphical interfaces...
Look ma, no mouse.

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#11 2016-05-25 21:43:18

painejake
Member
Registered: 2015-05-09
Posts: 4

Re: Arch Linux Career?

I'm a software developer for a small company, it being a small company we all do a bit of everything which is pretty cool. So my computer science route (being my primary role) has done me well.

I use Arch for my main dev machine and we use CentOS across all our server, so I'd start there. In all fairness you'll always be able to transfer things you know from distro to distro, most things are similar thats the beauty of Linux.

If you're set on a computer science course I'd check this out: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction … ardx-cs50x

It's free, doesn't take that long and gives a solid base understanding of the principles (of CS) that you can take and expand anyway you want smile Then you can focus more on something (possibly) more relevant. Cisco Networking/Red Hat cert for example?

Last edited by painejake (2016-05-25 21:44:30)

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#12 2016-07-14 19:10:25

niezniszczalny
Member
Registered: 2015-12-11
Posts: 66

Re: Arch Linux Career?

I've got one straight question. Let's say that I want to have a job as a server maintainer (or sth like that). W will of course learn Read Hat, take some courses about servers on edx, coursera etc.
But what exactly should I show my recruiter? What kind of project can I make alone? When I want to be a webdev I simply make website or webapp as my first project. So what project should it be if I want to work with servers?

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#13 2016-07-14 19:15:04

headkase
Member
Registered: 2011-12-06
Posts: 1,975

Re: Arch Linux Career?

niezniszczalny wrote:

I've got one straight question. Let's say that I want to have a job as a server maintainer (or sth like that). W will of course learn Read Hat, take some courses about servers on edx, coursera etc.
But what exactly should I show my recruiter? What kind of project can I make alone? When I want to be a webdev I simply make website or webapp as my first project. So what project should it be if I want to work with servers?

You want to be able to configure servers both for their local configuration settings, like Puppet or similar - configure many servers at once, and at the very least you should know how to set up your RHEL servers to act as domain controllers within a Microsoft Active Directory setup.  So, the RHEL servers themselves - how to configure and keep up to date, and also integration with the most common user control software you will meet in the real world - AD.

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