I've never done any formal Linux training or have any Linux certs. I started out a few years ago studying Data Communications and found myself a network support job at an ISP. Later on I moved to the NOC where I had to help check some files and run some scripts on the DNS, RADIUS and MTA servers which were all running Solaris. At the same time I read through a copy of UNIX for Dummies. All that was enough for me to write on my resume that I had a bit of *NIX experience.

In my present job I work almost all day long on Linux systems - mostly Slackware, RHEL, CentOS and also some custom stuff my company develops based on Montavista kernels. I basically learned on the job and my knowledge is quite extensive now. After over 7 years of experience I had never missed not having formal *NIX training until a few weeks ago......

We use sed and awk in some install scripts to manipulate the output of ifconfig and bind that output to some other stuff which I'm not going to go into right now.  Anyway one day the installation failed and after troubleshooting I noticed that this system (which was running RHEL5) had a very old version of ifconfig which was giving some strange output. I found another system with a new version of ifconfig and tried to copy it to the problematic system but it wouldn't let me. So instead of copying it to /sbin I copied the file to /tmp and checked the file permissions and group and file ownerships and compared them to the old file in /sbin and they were exactly the same. I was logged in as root and I was not even able to delete or move the old file from its place. I was most amazed. This was the first time I had been logged on to a system as root and the system wasn't allowing me to do something I commanded it to do. Anyway it turned out that the old ifconfig file had some file attributes which  was causing my problem and they had to be removed before I could swap the files and continue with the installation.

You will never use everything that you learn in formal training but it is good to do the courses just so you have the background and a good reference book to look things up when you get stuck. Who knows - in formal training they might even teach you that being root and having full permissions on a file and group and file ownership is not always enough to do what you want.

Anyway whether you do formal Linux training or not here's my advice;
1. Read UNIX for Dummies.
2. Learn the Linux CLI from here; http://linuxcommand.org/.
3. Learn VI; http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html.

BTW, I read earlier in this thread that someone said that RHEL is a beast, but I must disagree. Beside the rpm and yum commands I find that RHEL is almost exactly the same as any other Linux system.

Wow, thanks for the response. I currently do a lot of the stuff you did while you were NOC. My plan is to pass the linux + then move into the red hat certs. I think I would like to be a linux admin after my stay in NOC, but we shall see.

Yup, I'm doing well thanks. I'm working very hard though I'm loving every moment of it. I've been blessed with a very interesting and challenging job, a great team and an excellent team leader.
I still pop in here every few days even though I don't post as much as I used to.

I signed up for the Linux+ exam part 1 on Saturday and part 2 for next Saturday =0

Off and on since June. It has only been a month since I've been studying full fledge + the hours at work when I'm working with it. Going through the objectives, I believe I have a good chance at it. We shall see though.

I almost took a course but I'm going to wait for the Red Hat certs to do that. Even though the cheapest class is around 2-3 k.

part 1 698/800 = pass yesss