There are so many Linux certifications available that to choose one can be a daunting task. When you are first setting out on getting formal credentials for your Linux knowledge, you want to avoid the analysis paralysis state where you overanalyze too much. The first important lesson is that you can begin with one Linux certification from a certain provider and continue with another after that.
First ask yourself if you want to certify for a certain distribution or if you want a distribution agnostic credential. Examples of distribution-specific certifications are the RHCSA and LPIC-1 exams, both which are the stepping stones to working professionally with RedHat Linux and Debian Linux, respectively.
Now if you want a distribution agnostic certification, you should look at the CompTIA Linux+ certification. CompTIA offers a plethora of IT-related certifications and this one has increased in popularity. As was noted in an article by Tom’s IT Pro, the CompTIA Linux+ certification is high in demand on sites such as SimplyHired, Indeed, and LinkedIn Jobs. If you look further in the table you can see that RHCSA and RHCE (the sequel) exams are also high in demand. This goes to show that RedHat is a widely used enterprise Linux distribution. Don’t underestimate the strength of Debian Linux though. Although it is under-represented in the table in that article, it is used professionally as well. This of course also goes for Ubuntu which was forked from Debian, and to this day many OS developers work on Debian and Ubuntu at the same time. For more information about this topic, check out “The similarities are just as interesting” in the blog post Debian or Ubuntu, where did they go different ways?