>>>Well Evan, if you go for the RedHat training and cert course, you can come visit us, walk the couple of miles to RedHat headquarters (gotta see the Jolt Cola award), take the class, and get certified.
>>>
>>>;-)
>>
>>That must be nice. Did this have any bearing on Jerry choosing Red Hat over Mandrake :-)
>>
>>With the $700US+ cost just for the exam, I don't see taking it anytime soon. Now I know how Redhat can give away all that software and still make a profit.
>
>Yep. It's a real exam too. They give you a "broken" system and you have to fix it, including searching the web for drivers to download and stuff like that.


I've been looking at various Linux certification programs too. My big problem is they expect you to remember what you've learned! ;-) So much to learn, so little time left.

While it is true that all Linux distros have a version of the same Linux kernel and GNU tools at their core, there is no standardization about Linux file system hierarchy. They all have the same basic mount points and /etc is used to store most config scripts, but they can differ on where the config scripts for booting are, and with what tools they are edited. SuSE, for example, uses YaST to change configurations. Even if you don't use YaST you have to know that after you manually change configurations you must run SuSEConfig to get the config scripts re-read to change the system. Othewise, you have to reboot.
When I was using RH you only had to change ~/.profile to edit your user environment. In SuSE you edit ~/.bashrc. Small differences from distro to distro. Some will get good at one distro but fumble around on another. This is especially true of distros like Corel, that tries to mimick Windows as much as possible. Others, like Debian or Slackware, try to follow older Linux protocols. Market Share will probably decide which Linux Religion begins to dominate, but the minor Distros will never disappear because, at heart, there is not that much difference for an informed user.