I'm a little surprised at the $250 minimum for the verified track.
While that's a tiny fraction of what one could expect to pay for a typical certification prep class and likely less than a single credit hour at an accredited university it's quite high relative to the norm on edX.
I've taken some very good courses on edX, primarily from MIT and Berkley, none of which have required even half as much as a minimum.
Still, I intend to give this a look when it launches.
I'm a bit bothered by how Linus is deified as the sole creator of Linux. This phenomenon of course is not unique to Linux and Linus, of course. We routinely look for heroes and lone wolves whom we want to believe did all of the work by themselves, but the reason I single out Linux is because it was "just" the missing component of the GNU operating system.
Whatever the relationship between GNU and Linux nowadays and despite the examples of GNU without Linux and Linux without GNU, for many years in the beginning they were inextricably tied together and would have never succeeded without the other. To say that Linux is by Linus and nobody but Linus is not fair to all the work that Linus based Linux on top of.
It's not just unfair, it's really confusing. Judging from the course description, the "Linux" that Linus Torvalds wrote / maintains (the kernel) is not the "Linux" that you learn about in this course (the UI/userspace).
We will probably arrive at a consensus about what to call Linux + GNU + everything else around the same time we agree what line endings should look like in text files.
This looks like a good starting point for people from a predominantly Windows background that want to make the jump to Linux. Does anyone know if it is worth doing the Verified Certificate? I would be more than happy to sign up to it if it has any worth in the job market.
Getting your way around the command-line is, IMO, a great skill to have. With more and more companies using Amazon and other cloud services to host their apps knowing linux is very handy even as a developer. Most of the job listings, especially for startups do require the developer to have linux / command-line familiarity.
I definitely agree. The question I have is if it is worth paying for a verified certificate? It is $250 for the certificate and if it does not really count towards anything I would rather take the course for free and then go write a Linux certification instead.
>'The question I have is if it is worth paying for a verified certificate?'
I'd say that depends on what you want to get out of it.
I have a couple of verified certificates. I haven't had the chance to put them on a resume yet, but I fully intend to for a number of reasons. I'm already pretty well established in my career, I believe in what these programs are doing and I'm plainly proud of my accomplishment.
That said, I expect people will look at them the same way they do technology certifications or most degrees - worthless.
I understand where they're coming from as we've all encountered incompetent people with such credentials, but I think it's a bit unfair to toss these certificates in the same bin.
Reason being, these certificates have no established value.
Logically and anecdotally, people sign up for these courses because they want to learn something. If someones goal is scamming their way into a job they'd be better served by shopping at a diploma mill than slogging through an edX course.
It's an interesting problem.
How do you popularize these courses while establishing and retaining value for them - goals which are to some degree at odds with each other.
That's a nice way to frame the real question. Does this adequately signal what we've learned or are other methods like certifications required. I'm sure the people behind edx are looking to push legitimacy as strongly as possible but I believe ultimately any of this will boil down to personal projects and portfolio building.
I'm going to try and get my employer to pay for it either way.
While that's a tiny fraction of what one could expect to pay for a typical certification prep class and likely less than a single credit hour at an accredited university it's quite high relative to the norm on edX.
I've taken some very good courses on edX, primarily from MIT and Berkley, none of which have required even half as much as a minimum.
Still, I intend to give this a look when it launches.