Each Linux distribution has its own way of doing things, storing config files or administering the system. Differences are only skin-deep though and while it gets a bit of effort to go from one distribution to another, it's usually not dificult. RedHat is popular in North America and in Asia mostly. SuSE is better known in Europe but is making its way into the US market since it has been bought by Novell. In any case, a Linux system can be quite daunting to approach: it's made of hundred of bits that work together but require you to have a broad and sometimes fairly deep knowledge to truly become productive. Linux is wonderful for that very task: building plenty of small low-cost servers for what usually requires larger budgets and entails licensing headaches. Plus *nix allows a fair dose of flexibility that other systems usually don't offer unless you purchase the specialized software that someone else's thought you would need. To make sense of the jungle of options, services, configuration files, issues that every system administrator is faced with, I decided to get a solid background in Linux systems and get a RHCE, following the Red Hat Certified Engineer curriculum. I took it easy and paced myself over a rather long period of time, passing first the intermediate RHCT (for Technician) certification. The Certification Exams are practical only (read: no paper, no writting) and take half a day for the RHCT and a full day for the RHCE. They are divided in different sections, such as troubleshooting and Installation/Configuration.
Comments NadaFriday 21 June 2013, at 17:21 GMT+8 [X] This type of comparison isn't very useufl. Red Hat is a commercial distribution. Distros like Ubuntu are not. This is the same mistake Mark Shuttleworth made when he originally made a blog post claiming that Ubuntu had overtaken Red Hat in server usage. This figure is lumping together enterprise-grade corporate websites and someone who wants to put their baby's first Christmas pictures on the Internet for grandma and uses a free copy of Ubuntu to do it. When pressed, Shuttleworth admitted that the Ubuntu figures included non-paid versions and Red Hat issued a comment saying that there's been no confirmation Canonical has ever had even one corporate paid-support customer. :-) As such, there's no way from this single figure to conclude that Red Hat is dying (their financials say otherwise anyway). The pie (websites) may simply be growing larger. If Red Hat were to die, we'd lose a major source of innovation and financial support in the Linux community. Losing them or IBM or SUSE would seriously hurt the kernel, LibreOffice, etc. Losing Canonical, sadly, wouldn't affect things at all since they give back barely anything to the community. |