IT, ICT courses and certificates

A lot of people including me are looking for specific courses around computer science, engineering and programming. There are world wide certificates available. To increase the chance of getting university acceptance or getting employed, I listed some of them which are popular:

ICDL:

This certificate is recommended for people below age of 12. The test contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Web browsing, Access, windows fundamentals and computer hardware fundamentals. So if you use your computer daily, you surf the web and do office work, you can go and give this test without any preparation. This certificate has a low value and not much worth getting.

Click here for official website.

LPIC (Linux institute):

Linux fundamentals, Linux powers billions of smartphones, big part of the web and workstations. LPIC consists of different levels, from beginner to expert, this certificate has medium value, holding the expert certificate gives you a lot of advantages.

Click here for official website.

RHCA, RHCSA (Red hat):

Red hat certificates are very well known and accepted everywhere, these certificates are similar to LPIC but they are much more advanced and a bit harder, the courses are a bit expensive, but its worth it. It has a high value.

Click here for official website.

CCNA (By Cisco): 

IF you like networking this is for you, Cisco also provides some training and examinations for networking which is also very good if you can get into the high levels. They have a high value.

 

Click here for official link.

 

Microsoft courses (Azure etc.):

Microsoft also has some courses for it's own cloud platform, artificial intelligence and etc. This is recommended because it has free online learning to some point. It has a high value.

Click here for official link.

There are many other certifications as well that I might not write about, these are the most important ones that I found, comment below if you have any suggestions so I can add it.

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I switched to linux for one month.....

A month ago I got fed up with Windows crashing, being slow and updates actually making it worse than better. I know I don't have the fastest PC in the universe, It's an old 2nd generation quad core i5, with 4 gigabytes of RAM and a mechanical drive, but this must be sufficient to run windows stand alone properly.

There are no versions of Linux that are "Original" or "Main" each have different tastes and looks, and it's up to you to choose what do you want. Linux has a lot of "Distributions", ran buy a company or community. For example android is ran by Google and manufactures pay some money to use it, on the other hand community driven distributions are free. Most companies have 2 distributions, one is enterprise (for companies) and a free version.
At start I used a Virtual machine to get started and I went for ubuntu, it was a nice distribution but very similar experience to windows, but I wanted to go more deep into and giving up some support because ubuntu is widely used.

Ubuntu User interface

 If you see the graph of Linux distributions in Wikipedia, there are some main core distributions that others derived from it. Friends recommended Fedora so I went for it.
 Fedora is a redhat sponsored, Community driven distribution with an easy user interface and active community, that has a real Linux taste to it.

Getting started:

It wasn't hard, I live booted the OS from the flash drive and did my daily web browsing and typing, Changing date and time, background, the GUI was very good and buttery smooth. So I installed it on my main hard disk.

As a daily driver:

My first usage of Linux terminal was updating the system, you might thing I went through a series of hack-like commands but no, it doesn't work like that. typing these phrases can help you a lot:

• sudo dnf intstall <something>: obviously to install something.
• sudo dnf update: updating the packages(Apps) that are installed.
• sudo dnf remove <something>: Removing a specific package.

sudo means super user do (something like run as administrator in windows)

Updating all applications at once, very convincing

 The hard part:

Some apps like Adobe software don't run in Linux so you should run them in a windows virtual machine but I had dual boot so I used my pre-installed windows.
A real usage for Linux is editing the core part of the OS dependent on your usage, installing themes, editing the kernel, and mostly developer work. for example some Linux distributions are only 750 MB in size so you can run them in super old laptops and PC's.
It takes time for your brain to understand what is going on the screen, if you come from a windows background. (like me 😊 )

Conclusion:

Pros: 

• 100% editable, customizable from the kernel to GUI. 
• Ultimate security, no one can spy on you unlike windows which instantly reports your data to Microsoft.
• One of developers favorites.
• Faster work done using Terminal.
• Works on literally any PC, light Linux versions can be installed on a single core processor.
•  Supports x64_x86 , ARM, and many other CPU architectures so you can install them on PC's, Phones, and other stuff. (I saw someone that installed it on a nintendo)
  

 Cons:

•  Takes time to learn and master.
• Some applications are not supported like Adobe apps.
• Gaming is limited. (some game engines regret to work on it.)

I'm keeping it and now windows only opens up in my PC to run some games or Photoshop.

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