Hello everyone! I'm a Linux newbie who would like to obtain his RHCE. I also have very little money so paying for training is not an option. Can someone please suggest the best training materials and method of self-study for obtaining the RHCE?

Thank you!

This book has proved very useful.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...72253657&itm=1

While not directly related to the exam this book never makes it far from my desk.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...96009305&itm=3

Also, look at these for the exercises:

1) http://www.piebox.org/
2) http://www.centos.org/

How about going out and getting a job and getting some experience the hard way instead of paper-certing and making a great certification worth less.

The book linked above is very valuable. You may also wish to take a look at Fedora Core Unleashed as an extra text. Also get yourself a spare computer so that you can do the lab exercises without messing up your production system. An extra system will also make it easy to work through the networking aspect of the exam. If you can't afford to get a copy of RHEL, I would suggest you use CentOS which is a free RHEL rebuild.

I don't see anything wrong with someone self studying for the RHCE. The certification would not be worthless at all since an individual has to be very knowledgeable about Linux and Redhat in order to pass the exam. Its a practical exam, not a multiple choice exam that you can just cram and pass even if you don't know much about Linux.

You're right... it doesn't hurt and I did assume too much when reading the initial post. I hate that someone is "a Linux newb" and expects that they will be able to pass the RHCE like one could with an MCSE (yes MCSE is somewhat tough -- and only because you have to somehow digest so much useless M$ trivia knowledge at once -- but not very difficult in the scale of certifications) and get a job (with no experience) making 70kUSD/yr. If you didn't know already, you'd be surprised at the amount of interns who currently believe this. I'm just frustrated and a bit on my high horse .

FWIW, I just took the revised 70-290 MCSE 2003 core exam and got half a dozen simulations that force you to go through all the motions. The rest was still multiple choice but it's definitely much harder to pass without some "hands-on" experience now.

Anyway, that's same reason I think taking the class(es) for RHCE might be better, just to get that hands-on lab experience. Sure, if you have spare equipment handy I suppose you could build your own lab environment with CentOS or White Box or something like that, but for most people that's a lot of effort, myself included.