6/4/2008 -- Oracle is almost ready to go live with the Oracle Enterprise Linux Certified Administrator (OCA) certification. This certification, a stepping stone to upper-level Linux certifications to come, requires passing two exams:

• 1Z0-402, the Enterprise Linux Fundamentals exam (which went live on March 22).
• 1Z0-403, the Enterprise Linux System Administration exam (which closed beta on March 31).

The Fundamentals exam -- which you can skip if you're already certified for LPI, Linux+, Ubuntu, Red Hat or Novell -- consists of 87 questions that must be answered in 120 minutes (with 57 correct required to pass). The exam's topics include, messaging, printing, text editing and enterprise Linux fundamentals, among others.

The System Administration exam -- for which appointments are now being taken for the production exam -- consists of 113 questions that must be answered in 120 minutes (with 62 percent correct required to pass). Topics include Linux kernel compilation, client networking, enterprise Linux installation and more.

Both exams are administered through Prometric testing centers. More information about Oracle's Linux certification offerings can be found here.

Book of the Week: 'A Quarter Century of UNIX'
If you're looking for a pleasurable summer read, you can't do better than one of the older classics: Peter Salus' A Quarter Century of UNIX.

Published in 1994, this book is still available and as enjoyable today as it was then -- though I do hope that another edition will be issued when UNIX celebrates its 40th anniversary next year.

One of the things that make this such an easy read is the approximately 250 pages that are divided into 29 chapters. By keeping each chapter so focused, it's each topic is given an adequate amount of attention and the book avoids getting bogged down in minutiae the way many similar ones do.

Salus conducted over 100 interviews with key figures in writing this book and has included photographs of the major players. If you're at all curious about how we came to be where we are today in the operating system environment, this is one book you'll want to stow in your carry-on for summer travel.