Christopher Chan said:
I did not take any Unix/Linux course prior to my RH300 course which is and was my only such course ever and I did not take any of the 'lower' ones.
All I had prior to this was about two years of tinkering with Linux on my own and having to learn enough to teach it to complete linux newbies. (More like a sham you'd say)
The RHCE courses are spread out across different levels and topics and so one should be able to digest what was presented before moving on to another one and finally the exam.
A prerequisite of being very familiar with hardware and basic operating system concepts is all that is really necessary.
i can't disagree, though i don't want to... heh. rhce is pretty easy as long as you pay attention, take notes, and remember that the instructor is telling you 90% of the test... i know several highly experienced ninja sysadmins who had trouble because they didn't pay attention, thought they were above the course. you don't pay attention and you don't learn the x-window troubleshooting.
and alot of it is intuitive troubleshooting, and having pretty solid knowlege of the o/s before you go in. it's not for beginners. at least 2 years of linux/unix knowlege is required before you go in.
really, after taking the course i feel that all i really got was a $2,500 book that lycos paid for.
also, there are tons of lpi books out there, amazon has oreily's for 25 bucks or so.
Since I didn't take any of the RH1xx or 2xx courses, I cannot really say much. The RH300 is rather disappointing in that respect...the instructor really did not teach much, I felt, except go over the material and through the practicals.
So at best it was exposing you to new areas covered by the exam like you say. One person I met at the exam who had not gone through any RH course reasoned it this way:
The exam costs 5000 HKD. The RH300 course costs like 13k HKD or more. If he fails the first one, he is still better off passing the second time and he has the sufficient background to forego all the RH courses....
So imho, the RHCE cert only really says that you have the bare minimum to handle administrative and support needs of running a RH box which was why in another post I said the RHCE will make sure you get the basic requirements to support and administer a RH box. However, when you are coming for a zero Linux background, the RH 1xx and 2xx look promising but I cannot vouch for them.
