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Linux Software

Seeking Hands-on Training Programs? 43

Posted by Cliff from the practical-classes dept.
thekernel32 asks: "Recently the topic of getting people trained in the Linux/UNIX environment has troubled me. Where are people going for this stuff? I recall taking an Microsoft Networking Essentials class that I dropped out of. The reason why I dropped the Microsoft class was because we were being taught about the existence of Routers, File Servers and other networking topics, but we never saw or [worked with] any of them. I really feel that it would have been more useful to get hands on experience with daemons and real hardware, rather than just being told that they exist. What decent training programs out there have a hands on approach?"
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Seeking Hands-on Training Programs? More

Seeking Hands-on Training Programs?

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  • Your only paying for the teachers salary, the facilities and course material.
    If you were to buy your own and bring it along I doubt they would mind.

  • Cisco Certification (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A friend of mine recently became Cisco certified. He had to configure a hardware router (among other things) for one of the exams. This could be the sort of thing you're after. Check it out. [cisco.com]

  • Recomendation: Onsight, Internal Training Depts. (Score:3, Informative)

    by aguasch ( 636904 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2003 @01:18AM (#5132975)
    I worked for Morotola [mot.com] for many years, and had quite a few training classes through them. I imagine many other big companies have internal classes that are very hands on. Ours were 10-20 people, each with their own machine, which worked out really well. Lots of coding/experimenting/lab time is a must.

    Most of the instructors were using stock Motorola class stuff, some of which wasn't great, but if you have a good instructor that can make up for it.

    The best instructor was James Lee from Onsight.com [onsight.com] who had a bunch of custom Perl (beginning and advanced), CGI, TCL, and a few others, all of which were outstanding. These are the guys that wrote Hacking Linux Exposed [hackinglinuxexposed.com] and I recently got Open Source Web Development with LAMP [opensourcewebbook.com] that is just excellent, and really mirrors their training skills.

    I don't know if they do classes outside of Motorola (their web page seems to indicate they do), but I'd highly recommend them.

    In general, if you work at a big enough company, they probably have good internal training classes available, or can send you to classes that are good outside.

    I'd be wary trying to pick one on your own, though. I had very bad luck with some "big names" like Learning Tree [learningtree.com] which seem to just cobble together classes quickly, and try to debug them with you as the guinea pigs at hundreds of dollars a pop.

    • I'd totally agree with the last note in the parent post. Big training firms that put out more classes than you can remember definately put out some really poor quality classes. I wouldn't suggest you take any class they haven't offered for at least a year. Of course this means you can't take any class about new technologies until they're older technologies, but you're better off that way since you won't learn it wrong.


      My company sent me to two Learning Tree classes which sounded great on paper, but were pretty lame . The instructors seemed to have walked in off the street and read the training paperwork, but didn't have any real world experience, so they couldn't help me with anything not in our handouts.


      I also took a class from some other similar company (forget the name) and had a worse experience, so I guess Learning Tree isn't the bottom of the barrel.


      I'd definately try to find a local LUG and pick brains of other geeks. You will learn one way to do it which is not guarenteed to be the best way, but it's a start. How you really learn is to have several LUGgers try to teach you the best way, and you get to learn a lot in their holy wars as they explain the pros and cons of their positions.

    • I agree wholeheartedly with aguasch. As another former Motorolan, James Lee's classes on Perl from Onsight.com are indeed outstanding.

      James has that mix of technical savvy, presentation skill with an affable demeanor and enthusiasm for the material that you always want but almost never find in instructors. If you ask a detailed question, you get a detailed answer. His Perl classes were far and away the most enjoyable programming courses I've ever taken.

      In fact, I liked his course and demeanor so much I befriended the guy. Absolutely top notch...
      His company does do training outside of Motorola, both in the Chicagoland area, and anywhere in the US.

      One of the only down sides of my new employment is that their training department developed their own (inferior) classes in the areas James instructs, so I can't recommend them to coworkers anymore.

  • Find a LUG (Score:4, Insightful)

    by reaper20 ( 23396 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2003 @01:19AM (#5132980) Homepage
    Where are people going for this stuff?

    A few hours with a LUG will do wonders. Yeah, people harp about 'certs' and 'proper training', but noone knows linux better than the people who love it and are willing to help others.

  • hands on approach? (Score:5, Funny)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2003 @01:25AM (#5132996) Journal
    Recently the topic of getting people trained in the Linux/UNIX environment has troubled me.... What decent training programs out there have a hands on approach?

    Well, with linux, you have three choices:
    • a turgid man page: it's guaranteed to list every command line switch, and possibly even describe a few of those switches. Unless it's a GNU/utility, in which case you should see the Info page. The Info page is hidden somewhere inside of emacs, which is the real OS.
    • the source code itself: it's GPL'd after all, and if we have to write it to produce the functionality, you ought to have to read it to use the functionality. Please disregard (but only at your peril) any comments; they're probably out of date, and certainly obscure. Unless the comment mentions "here be dragons" or "may overflow on some architectures".
    • the hairy ass: kissing the ass of a linux guru will sometimes get you an answer, along with condescension, contempt and strong body odor whilst you're told (between muttered "umask 077" calculations) how it's intuitively obvious.


    Hands on. Yeh.

    Linux is free: download it, install it, disconnect it from the modem until you know what you're doing, and play with it. That's about as hands on as you can get.

    Did I mention it's free? And that rabid OS zealots will be more than happy to help you install it if you act at all attracted to the Kool Aid they're pushing? And did I mention it's free?

  • Apple's technical training is hands-on (Score:3, Informative)

    by plsuh ( 129598 ) <plsuh@gooBALDWINdeast.com minus author> on Wednesday January 22, 2003 @01:55AM (#5133109) Homepage
    I'm a curriculum developer for Apple's Technical Training and Certification [apple.com] department, and I also act as the backup sysadmin for our Reston, VA training center. All of our courses are hands-on using serious equipment, with an iBook laptop and a G4 tower at each student station, along with a G4 tower for the instructor and possibly also (depending on the class) an XServe rackmount, a Windows 2000 Server, and Solaris servers, all networked together.

    The classes run three to five days, each day covering on average three chapters. Each chapter consists of an instructor presentation for about 30 minutes, followed by a student exercise that runs between an hour to two hours. As you can see from the time involved, our approach definitely emphasizes the hands-on aspects.

    I can tell you as one of the people who both writes and teaches Apple's courses, most people will zone out if they have to listen to the instructor for more than 30 minutes. At the technical training level, I can't imagine sitting through a straight lecture class for a whole day without a hands-on piece, and really retaining very much of the content.

    --Paul

    Paul Suh
    Curriculum Developer
    Technical Training and Certification
    Apple Computer
    psuh at apple dot com

  • You haven't seen the worse (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2003 @02:23AM (#5133197) Homepage Journal
    The reason why I dropped the Microsoft class was because we were being taught about the existence of Routers, File Servers and other networking topics

    You know what - THAT's an advanced topics in Microsoft Networking Essential! I once received a call from an MCSE asking me why he couldn't see the domain controller and its neigbours in the Network Neighbourhood. I checked and told him that he's in the wrong domain and he insisted that he's in the right domain because he has typed the correct domain name in the 'NT domain' box something like that. I told him it's the TCP/IP domain we are talking about and the Netbios traffic couldn't passthru the routers. Then he, with pride and professional tone, told me that Netbios is on the top of any networking protocol and devices such that it SHOULD be transparent to Microsoft Network, and that I should look into the problem...

    Things go downhill from there.

    • Re:You haven't seen the worse (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      He is correct - you should have configured your routers to pass NetBIOS broadcasts on to adjacent segments. That's your fault, not his!
      • Why you all Microsoft guys like to post as AC? :)

        You mean, have me drilled holes in all boundary routers and rewrite the security policy in faour of your Microsoft shares? Next time you'd ask me to drill holes for corporation-wide Quake Tournament! (oh may be I'd accept :)

        I don't usually answer AC but you asked the exactly same question that MCSE was asking(hey, is that you?) The best quote from him:

        "Why do you worry about the security? Microsoft Network has all the advanced access control than any other OS."

  • Unix/Linux Training (Score:3, Informative)

    by mark*workfire ( 220796 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2003 @02:23AM (#5133198)
    Global Knowledge [globalknowledge.com] has some pretty good training courses. I haven't taken any of the Unix/Linux courses, but their Cisco courses have bene informative.

    Their Unix/Linux catalog is here http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/category.a sp?pageid=9&methodid=c&catid=199&country=United+St ates&translation=English [globalknowledge.com]

  • Red Hat (Score:2, Informative)

    by fulldecent ( 598482 )
    Rad Hat has some nice certification programs that seem to be versatile and respectable: RHCE [redhat.com]
    • Rad Hat has some nice certification programs that seem to be versatile and respectable
      The problem is that none of the Red Hat-conducted introductory install and admin classes are currently scheduled. And while I am not a huge fan of formal training in the IT world, when taking on something entirely new one needs a place to get started.

      sPh

  • Guru Labs (Score:3, Informative)

    by Derek ( 1525 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2003 @03:04AM (#5133334) Journal
    They had some pretty good hands-on courses when I last checked (about 1 year ago) and their instructors are top notch.

    GuruLabs [gurulabs.com]

    -Derek

  • If you live in a largeish city, then you probably have a few community colleges. One of these probably has a good CS department that may have some good classes for you. You can usually take classes ad-hoc, you don't need to be a full time student or anything. They may have evening or weekend classes, but I prefer to take them during business hours and have my job pay for them.

    Community colleges often are trying to give you real world skills you can use today, and are a good bet if you have one with competant CS instructors. Don't take anything where it's more theory than practice though, such as at a real college where they want you to have tons of unnecessary (in the real world) prereqs first.

  • At my uni [ncl.ac.uk]there is a sysadmin course [ncl.ac.uk] for the information systems studends taught in a special lab cut off from the rest of the network as that the students. Looks like a fun course but its not available to the CS guys which is a shame.

    Does anybody else have this sort of course available to them as part of their degrees>

  • I recall taking an Microsoft Networking Essentials class that I dropped out of. The reason why I dropped the Microsoft class was because we were being taught about the existence of Routers, File Servers and other networking topics, but we never saw or [worked with] any of them.

    Of course you didn't deal with routers and other networking equipment, it was a Microsoft networking class. Like most OS vendors all they care about the network is that it is attached to the computer. Once your computer can talk to the default gateway; that is as far as the OS vendor needs to go.
  • I just happened across this post today. Sorry for coming late to the discussion. I'll keep this post brief so as not to spam too much. 8)

    My company offers hands-on Linux and UNIX training. We are located in CT, US. Our training is high-quality and competitively priced. Our instructors are professionals employed full-time in their field of instruction.

    We have RHCEs in house and the owners are experienced Software Engineers with real engineering degrees. Our company consults with local enterprises developing Internet applications based around Unix/Linux and Java technologies.

    We offer you no-bull, hands-on, down-and-dirty training.

    Coincidentally, we have a new set of courses beginning within the next month or so. You can enroll or find more details on our offerings at our website, http://www.innovationsw.com [innovationsw.com]

    Other topics include Apache, Postgres, PHP, Java/JDBC/Servlet/JSP, Solaris. We have plans to expand to J2EE/JBOSS, XML and PERL in the near future.

    -joe

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