Comments on: Novell, Canonical Bolster Linux Certification and Training Efforts

By: yogesh

yogesh — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:22:42 +0000

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By: Novell News Summary – Part II: Update on SUSE, OES, Linspire, Samsung, LG, and Kyocera Mita | Boycott Novell

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:20:44 +0000

[...] even though it’s not necessarily the case. In any event, we have found some blog posts on the subject, but there is hardly any news coverage (unless ComputerWorld (IDG) UK counts ). Novell earlier [...]

By: Blogrotate #16: The Weekly Roundup of News for System Administrators | The Pythian Blog

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:18:36 +0000

[...] big news on the training front was that Novell and Canonical are joining forces to bolster Linux Certification and training efforts to compete with Red [...]

By: The VAR Guy

The VAR Guy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:08:32 +0000

Tim: Open source typically triggers strongly opinioned reader comments based on emotions rather than facts. In this particular case, The VAR Guy wants to offer you some kudos for recapping the three distributions pretty darn well.

And yes, The VAR Guy thinks CompTIA needs to assist the open source world. You’ve raised a great point on that topic. In addition to cloud guidance, The VAR Guy hopes CompTIA offers some LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc…) guidance.

Base Linux certification seems to be a starting point these days. Cloud, LAMP, SaaS… all natural next moves.

Thanks again for raising some strong points.
-TVG

By: Tim Wessels

Tim Wessels — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:11:54 +0000

Novell, Red Hat and Canonical are sponsors of the three most popular and well-polished Linux distributions. Red Hat has a long and important history in open source and Linux and leads the other two as the leader in the Linux server market. Novell, which acquired SUSE in 2004, was one of the first European Linux distributions to attract widespread adoption. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the other “data center” grade Linux distribution for commercial Linux users besides Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Canonical’s Ubuntu is without a doubt the best desktop Linux distro in terms of ease of installation, updating and general use but they are a distant third in the Linux server market.

All three of these distros do have their weakneses…Red Hat really lacks a popular desktop distro and what they have is not free. Novell has a very decent business class desktop distro in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, but you must pay a subscription after 60 days to keep receiving updates. Both Red Hat and Novell do have community Linux distros…Red Hat’s Fedora distro is more geared to the “advanced” Linux user, while Novell’s openSUSE.org distro is quite accessible to both new and experienced users. Canonical’s Ubuntu distro is the hands down leading Linux desktop distro. It is free and you can purchase support if you need it. Ubuntu server is the weakest of the three Linux server distros (SLES, RHEL and Ubuntu) but has jumped out in front on integration with the Eucalyptus project so it can emulate the Amazon cloud. Having three really strong commercial Linux distro sponsors is a good thing for Linux and open source software.

When it comes to training, Red Hat and Novell have a long standing commitment to training and support. Ubuntu is just taking its first steps in offering training. Both Red Hat and Novell also have a long standing relationship with the reseller partner channel. Again, Ubuntu is just getting started in courting channel partners. All three would be wise to focus on training certs that are vendor neutral like those from CompTIA and LPI. Novell has previously worked with CompTIA and is now working with LPI to strengthen the value of vendor neutral certifications. This effort is to be applauded and I would encourage Novell, Red Hat and Canonical to work with CompTIA and LPI on developing certifications for cloud computing, which I think will be the next huge market opportunity for IT certifications.

Tim Wessels