LPI 101 down

Ahriakin

Impressions for what they are worth....
First up I am likely biased as I do not like Linux - sure it's free and has a lot of good tools I want to use but it's blatantly obvious there are too many fingers in the pie. Good to get that out of the way first . I only ended up doing this course as the one server we have that runs it (a so called turnkey solution that the vendor doesn't like actually turning the keys on) has had a few too many problems to just ignore anymore.
I used CBTNuggets (went through the Linux+ course first and then their LPI Level 1) and the LPI in a nutshell guide aswell as creating Debian and Ubuntu VMs to play with.
I went into this course hoping the gain the information I needed to at least maintain the essentials of a Linux server (configure the network, permissions, hell even learn just how to navigate the system). To this end I think the courseware is great, much more focused than the Linux+ material and it has helped me a lot so far. My gripe is with the exam itself. Microsoft are often accused of demanding useless minutiae for their exams but this one took the cake. I think it is important to know the essential commands and their most common switches (I've been in IT since DOS and love Cisco stuff so I'm fine with command line) but some of the details required on the questions were nuts, literally a string of 3-4 switches and multiple included variables with minor changes from answer to answer....nothing I couldn't find from simply running the man or info for that command once I at least knew (as I did) which command I needed to perform the function. To me an exam should test your understanding of the tools needed not minute details that you can easily find in seconds when needed. Reading some of the questions and the functions they were testing made me literally look at the screen incredulously, I felt I was back troubleshooting Wordperfect for DOS... command line is fine, using it as an excuse to stay in the dark ages is not. My other major gripe was the section on XWindows, it was actually funny - I expected some questions on the setup and config from command line but that was it, absolutely nothing on actually USING the GUI or it's tools to troubleshoot problems, it was all about fixing it from the command line. Why even bother to have X in there at all if you're going to pretend there is no GUI to use?

So really what it comes down to is I liked the course, hated the exam.
Oh well maybe 102 will be better

sprkymrk

Congrats on the pass, and thanks for the review.

Uchiha Sasuke

Congratulations mate

Ahriakin

More of a rant than a review I guess ...anyway thanks guys.

ajs1976

congrats