Hi,

Long time since I last posted here. 4 years actually.

Anyway, I now work on the Certification team at the Linux Foundation. We offer LFCS (LF Certified System Administrator) and LFCE (LF Certified Systems Engineer) certifications. We also offer specialised certifications, such as COA (OpenStack), CKA (Kubernetes) and CFCD (Cloud Foundry).

The LFCS and LFCE can be taken on your distribution of choice (well, CentOS 7, Ubuntu 16.04 and openSUSE Leap 43). The major benefit is that whilst these exams are skills-based, live exams, they can be taken from the comfort of your own home on any machine with Chrome, a browser plugin, and a webcam, as they are remotely proctored, and you interact via Gate One (a browser-based terminal emulator).

Some of the competencies you complain about are in our exam competencies. These competencies are decided upon by a panel of diverse experts from the industry, of which I am a member. These are based upon the skills that are required in the modern environment, based upon extensive research in the industry.

Whilst the few people in this thread may not use SAMBA, iSCSI or Kerberos, there are a lot of people that do, and they are still relevant skills to possess. If you want to be certified as a Linux generalist, you should know how to do these things. If you didn't, there'd need to be specialised tracks to cater for employers looking for specific skills. Kerberos is rampant - FreeIPA for example - which I see in a great deal of places. Employers need to know that prospective employees have this core skillset.

Our exams are constantly reviewed, and updated as needed, in line with the ever-changing environment we find ourselves in. For example, we are actually refreshing LFCS and LFCE, due for release early next year (I am tech lead on that project, as well as COA and CKA).

Please note, I'm not trying to sell anything here, we are a not-for-profit organisation anyway.

Cheers
ZB