[Gloucs] LPI Manuals

Fri May 7 00:15:53 BST 2004

I can't speak from an employers point of view as to how valuable they are but personally I think they are definitely worth getting.  

This is because it proves to potential employers that you do have a certain level of knowledge rather than just being able to blag on a CV or in an interview.  Also you can feel as though I have achieved something from your learning and thus motivate yourself to learn more, which is always a good thing.

However with regards to the LPI, the downside is that although it inevitably gives you a good grounding in the subject, it does not necessarily reflect your ability to do a job - much of the information required for the exam can be memorised rather than learned and understood and thus can be quickly forgotten.  Also it doesn't give you any of the troubleshooting skills that are often needed and can only be gained with experience.

Having only recently graduated myself I find this experience versus paper certificates to be a typical catch-22.  Employers prefer experience over certification but how can you get experience if you no-one will take you on because you only have paper certificates.  Unless someone decides to place some faith in you and take you on with no experience, you end up having to go the long way round.  However, I recently realised that it is a good thing to work your way up because you get a much better grounding for the future rather than leaping in ...anyway before I go off on a complete tangent and start talking about bunny rabbits wearing fairy outfits..

I think if you get certified and are able to prove your competency by actually using what you have learned, for example helping with projects on Sourceforge, you can't go wrong !

I've been looking into taking the RedHat course and I think it looks pretty thorough and seems to be more hands on than the LPI's.  

The LPI exams cost about £65 each, I've only done level 1 so far, and it's not difficult as such, i.e. the exam doesn't require any real thought or analysis - you just need to know commands, switches and general basic admin stuff.  The level 2 digs a bit deeper on the things covered in level 1 and for level 3 you get to chose a specialist subject (hoorah!).

I think that covers everything except comparing to other certificates.  I can only comment on CCNA and Watchguard and I don't think they are comparable because they are very different and it really depends on what you want to get out of them, so I'll just leave it there and in conclusion of this essay I would like to say in a Starsky and Hutch style, "do it".

Goodnight

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Porter [mailto:hailstorm at fairadsl.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 7:17 PM
To: Gloucestershire LUG
Subject: Re: [Gloucs] LPI Manuals

Jill Tovey wrote:

>We were talking at the meeting about general introductions to Linux and then good sites for LPI revision etc so I thought I'd forward on this link which provides good notes for the LPI Level 1 and 2.  
>
>http://www.nongnu.org/lpi-manuals/
>
>Note that there are some sections from the syllabus omitted in the manual such as "maintaining the system time" (102) which featured quite heavily in my 102 exam, so if you exclusively use them as revision notes make sure you read the syllabus and lookup as necessary.
>
>Regardless of whether you are taking the exams or not, they're good reference/introductory manuals.
>
>Enjoy 
>  
>
Hi,

LPI looks like it may be quite a useful addition to the University 
degree I'm taking and have planned in the future to try getting some 
certification if possible. I have a few of questions for you or anyone 
really. How highly is this certification held? (MSCE is quite common 
these days whereas I've read that RHCE is very hard going) Where does it 
fit in, in terms of difficulty, compared to other such certifications? 
(i.e. Redhat, Novell, Cisco, MSCE). Also how expensive is it?

Thanks,

Simon

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