Linux Academy is it worth it to subscribe?

zodiark

Hi guys, newbie question here.

I'm planning to start my Linux Essentials to RHCSA study.

My question is, is the Linux Academy subscription worth it to subscribe for?

What I have right now was the free 2 months subscription courtesy of Microsoft Visual Studios, but it's lacking the Hands-On library which I think is the best feature of the site.

What I can see is 1 month and 1 year subscription, do they have 3 months or 6 months type?

Thanks

DoubleNNs

I think it's worth it.

joneno

Yup...I got in during Black Friday. Good videos.

zodiark

I really wish they have subtitles on their videos.

srocky26

It's definitely worth it IMO. The videos are great and the hands on labs really help solidify the information. They also let you spin up up to six linux machines for your studies.

I've used it to pass Linux+, Azure, and AWS certs. I've started studying some of the docker videos and will move onto Google cloud soon.

I had let my subscription lapse for most of the last year and renewed in October. When I went to cancel they offered me another two months for free.

zodiark

Guess I will subscribe then.

Thanks for the replies guys

More power!

yoba222

I don't recommend Linux Academy and I know I'm in the minority to state that.

In my opinion, they do not put enough effort into curating their content to keep it 100% typo and syntax error-free as well as current for the latest exams. I'd expect imperfect material somewhere such as Youtube, but then I don't pay Youtube $30 per month.

They seem more like 80% correct and up to date, which to me is unacceptable for the price.

zodiark

What Linux Academy differs from other training sites is, they have a cloud based lab that you can access through web browser or VNC, which I think is handy specially for me, since most of the time I'll be training in our office.

Any others training sites that offer this feature? Thanks

DoubleNNs

zodiark wrote: »

I really wish they have subtitles on their videos.

So do I.

duta74

zodiark wrote: »

What Linux Academy differs from other training sites is, they have a cloud based lab that you can access through web browser or VNC, which I think is handy specially for me, since most of the time I'll be training in our office.

Any others training sites that offer this feature? Thanks

itpro.tv via PracticeLabs and CBTnuggets have something like that, but with much higher price.

For me these servers are not an advantage, I can create them in my virtual environment.
Real advantage for me, for what I subscribed, are Azure and AWS Hands on Labs, that I did not see no other one which comes with subscription. For example, on Opsgility such Labs comes with additional credit.

Also latest courses they improved quality.

JockVSJock

What I like about Linux Academy is that you can spin up all of those RHEL7 VMs to prepare for either RHCSA/RHCE. Most of the time, they will spin up and tear down quickly. Al thought there have been times, when I've had to tear down 6 VMs and tried to bring up six more and wasn't able to do it. I've tried to log out and log back in after clearing cache on the browser and still had issue.

If you have a tech issue, their support is pretty quick to reply and will work thru the issue until its resolved.

The only thing I don't like is that they don't keep their content up to date and some of the pdfs they have that are related to coursework have misspellings and grammatical errors. I think perhaps its just to hard to keep up with all of the changes.

yoba222

JockVSJock wrote: »

What I like about Linux Academy is that you can spin up all of those RHEL7 VMs to prepare for either RHCSA/RHCE. Most of the time, they will spin up and tear down quickly. Al thought there have been times, when I've had to tear down 6 VMs and tried to bring up six more and wasn't able to do it. I've tried to log out and log back in after clearing cache on the browser and still had issue. If you have a tech issue, their support is pretty quick to reply and will work thru the issue until its resolved.The only thing I don't like is that they don't keep their content up to date and some of the pdfs they have that are related to coursework have misspellings and grammatical errors. I think perhaps its just to hard to keep up with all of the changes.

I made 5 "base-image" vms which I then clone and delete as desired. They each have 5 individual static IP addresses, each an extra unformatted 2.2GB partition to use in playing around with fdisk/gdisk, and each have my public SSH key for the host imported for easy SSHing in. It takes 1-2 minutes to delete and clone one. I usually don't need more than 1 or 2 at a time.Screen shot attached.

/pub/beer/

I used them to try to refresh my RHCE and my biggest complaint was the instructor (Terry) speech patterns. I'm sure he's a great guy and super smart, but I found that it was hard to stay engaged.

I may go back for non-RHCE related training in 2018 if I have room in my training budget. But at that point, the Linux Foundation has some coursework that may rank higher for me.

JockVSJock

I've seen options where you can speed up the audio/video of the video...I've not done this myself, however I've read about others who are trying to "hack" their learning and some report success with this.

IMO, Terry is pretty good when it comes to troubleshooting issues with various labs. That guy doesn't quit.

/pub/beer/ wrote: »

I used them to try to refresh my RHCE and my biggest complaint was the instructor (Terry) speech patterns. I'm sure he's a great guy and super smart, but I found that it was hard to stay engaged.

DoubleNNs

I personally always listen to training videos and podcasts at faster speeds. Especially for podcasts, getting through 2 episodes in an hour as opposed to 1 is always great.

DntH8Me

Just pony up and get the 1 year subscription (I just renewed for 201 the amount of information on the site cannot be gone through in 1 month or 3-6 months. I believe I first signed up in 2014 and they just continue to add more content.

WMH

I was an early user and subscriber to this company. As they grew, their product deteriorated rapidly. Anthony James simply doesn't have what it takes to run company. Quality control is poor, Tech Support is awful and it just won't get better. Run away from this company as fast as you can!

yoba222

yoba222 said:

I don't recommend Linux Academy and I know I'm in the minority to state that.

In my opinion, they do not put enough effort into curating their content to keep it 100% typo and syntax error-free as well as current for the latest exams. I'd expect imperfect material somewhere such as Youtube, but then I don't pay Youtube $30 per month.

They seem more like 80% correct and up to date, which to me is unacceptable for the price.

2019 update: Currently a Linux Academy subscriber and couldn't be more pleased with the content. For the AWS labs, you actually spin up AWS instances live.

DZA_

Their content library is quite extensive and the labs are well engaging enough to make the website paid. With that being said, there are specific and general topics that you can learn, i.e. introduction to SSL Encryption/Cryptography. I've been a subscriber for a while and I can recommend it to anyone who has the education budget for it.

StrikingInfluencer

I actually just subscribed to them for some alternative content.  Before I subscribed I was using some udemy courses, which I think udemy is a fantastic resource for the price.  However, I found some of the courses I had to be lacking in depth and I wasn't seemingly prepared for my exams.  So I bit the bullet and subscribed to LinuxAcademy.  Now I see some mixed reviews here with some people having high praises and some people seemingly throwing them into the shredder.  I haven't been subscribed that long but from what I've received so far I have to say I'm pleased with their content.  Especially for the Azure and AWS courses -- being able to spin up VMs in THEIR environment and not worry about cost or running up a bill is incredibly nice for a cloud newbie like me.  

So far I think their content is solid, the amount of courses offered is worth the money, and lastly the only real complaint I have is I think their website design could be better.  Every time I log in I find it odd that I have to go and dig for the courses that I am learning.  There should be a really easy like "My progress" or "My courses" button.  All this aside I'm quite pleased so far and $50 a month isn't all that bad.  I think $50 a month for a few months is well worth it.  The best investment you can make is in yourself.    

SecretUser

$50 a month? Yikes.

You should definitely check out the sales that they have on Black Friday/ Cyber Monday. I only have to pay $150 for the entire year. As far as their content, I think that they focus heavily on the objectives for the test rather than teaching you from the bottom up. However, their labs are very convenient and worth it for $150 a year in my opinion.

LonerVamp

My problem with udemy is their model of crowdsourcing their own content and leaning on their users to police it. You get bad courses, stolen courses, and sometimes really shady content if you're not careful. I will happily pay a bit more for curated or even contracted content. That said, you can find good stuff on udemy, but like all things that are essentially user-supplied content, you must be diligent to avoid those that game the system.

Disclosure: I'm a LA subscriber (and PluralSight, soon to be discontinued and Pentester Academy).

NetworkingStudent

LonerVamp said:

My problem with udemy is their model of crowdsourcing their own content and leaning on their users to police it. You get bad courses, stolen courses, and sometimes really shady content if you're not careful. I will happily pay a bit more for curated or even contracted content. That said, you can find good stuff on udemy, but like all things that are essentially user-supplied content, you must be diligent to avoid those that game the system.

Disclosure: I'm a LA subscriber (and PluralSight, soon to be discontinued and Pentester Academy).

I have used Udemy before. Seems like they have a sale once a month.   Every course is $9.99. Act now!!  

.It looks like they have some brain ****  tests. Also, a-lot of the courses look like someone was in hurry to produce them.  I’m shocked at the high price that is charged for these courses $200.00 + 

Im not a huge fan of Plural Sight.  They keep adding more developer courses, and programming courses.   They have less TraditionalIT courses, when compared to other training providers

shochan

Great discussions/opinions here, IMO...I haven't purchased any of the higher monthly subscriptions...I have purchased a couple of Udemy courses ($10 ones)...I find myself bored with the presentation of the content, either I fall asleep or wander off to some other website while listening...It is a bad habit for sure.  

So, have you found a trainer/training site that talks about the subject/content, then immediately starts a "hands on" how to configure the subject/content...this type of training would help reinforce the material for me, IMO...maybe I haven't seen enough of these type of training videos to know which ones actually provide this type of training videos.

DFTK13

zodiark said:

I really wish they have subtitles on their videos.

I actually just checked out LA and they currently have captioning available for the following courses

AWS Concepts
AWS Essentials
DevOps Essentials
LPI Linux Essentials
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Docker Quick Start
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate Level
Kubernetes Essentials
Cloud Native Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
Ansible Quick Start

You can click the gear icon on their videos and captioning will appear as an option. I tried it out and it works pretty well. They're constantly expanding their course list with support for captioning so finally it's a move in the right direction. 

DZA_

Does anyone here have their employer pay or currently have a learning engagement program where their employees has a subscription with a CBT website? I know that my previous employer used to have a CBTNuggets subscription and currently the bank here has a partnership with PluralSight so the content is all free.

yoba222

No idea on CBT but by my math LA is costing my employer ~$37/month.

DntH8Me

yoba222 said:

No idea on CBT but by my math LA is costing my employer ~$37/month.

Why not get them to just get the yearly subscription? much better value and if you get it 'on sale' it renews at the sale price

ITrascal

LA is good. But i canceled last month and went with Orielly. Its ok so far. But Sander's french accent can get boring after awhile. Imma try and stick it out tho. its 8 bucks cheaper than LA

thomas_

I recommend Linux Academy.  I’ve been a member for a long time now.

Hawk321

I have a full LA subscription for over 2.5 years. Is it worth ? Mostly not. Their content is far away from "deep dive" and almost everything feels like a quick overview of whatever topic you want to learn. For example Ansible, LPIC-1 and 2, LXC or the "network deep dive"...nothing of those courses covers the exam topic enough to pass or to get your real live job done.

Than they promotions act like a snow ball system "raise your chance to win this, when you recommend X friends on channel Y".

Also I noticed the massive promotion of AwS, Azure and Goolge Cloud Systems..., not bad but also not good. Let me explain, in the  pro world, all those 3 cloud providers do play a minor role. Are they big ? YES. But "cloud" is nothing special or vendor specific. 99% of all stuff is pure basic linux tech just with a fancy name. What I try to say, companies who hire Linux Ops do operate mostly their own kind of cloud or run a mix of own hosted stuff plus some particular services remotely. There are many powerful data-centers out there who have more knowledge than aws or azure...just not so well known.
However, I miss the diversity and neutrality at LA in this case.

What me bugs is the lack of erratas...found a typo, bug, error in one of their courses ? Nothing happens to fix that for all people. MAYBE you get an email...that's it.

LA tries to play bullshit bingo often particular with Docker and co ... once you are in the Linux field for a couple of years, you will understand what I mean here.

Meanwhile I totally ignore their cloud instances and do everything on my own 3 clustered servers ---> a complete different experience.

My advice, get a book and do it right. To believe you can learn something within 10-30h of video playtime compared to a 1200 pages book is far away from reality.