Ziff Davis on Linux certifications

The Ziff Davis site Channel Zone has two good articles on Linux certifications. The first article "Linux Certifications Can Pay Off Big" looks at how certifications help get your foot in the door for jobs and the differences between the various certification vendors. The information about the Novell and Red Hat certifications is interesting. also of note is the related links which will link to the second article.

"Red Hat to Offer Top-Level Certification" article gives information on the new Red Hat certification which I've talked about & linked to here.

Samba Classes

John Terpstra the author of Samba 3 by Example: Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment has been teaching classes for the Freedom Technology Center for a while. Here is a link for upcoming classes. Also Amazon has the book the used books are at a decent discount to the new books.

There are more and more Linux classes starting up across the country adn I'll try and bring news about these different courses when I can get it.

Current Status of Linux certification Programs

I've seen a number of articles written over the past couple of years regarding the different Linux certification Programs which are avaialable. Unfortunately some of the programs haven't kept themselves current giving other programs an opportunity to gain more of a market share. From what I've read & seen Linux Ceritifation isn't as high of a priority as in Europe where Linux has a larger base of users.

The four articles can be found here 1, 2, 3, & 4. I listed them in chronological order from most recent to oldest.

Some of the upgrades which have been talked about haven't come about such as the LPIC3 and the SAIR certifications are basically dead in the water. I haven't heard much about the Linux+ certifications, but that might be more because I bypassed the Linux+ test and started looking at the SAIR & LPI tests. From what I've seen the LPI series of tests are a good starting point for Linux certification. From there everything should depend on what your specific Job entails and where you look to be moving towards in the future.

Sample Questions for the LPI certification tests

I've found two places on the web which has offered up a few sample questions for the LPI tests. The first is obviously on the LPI site itself. Under the Tasks and Sample Questions link you can go to the sample questions for each test. This site offers up 14 questions similar to what you should find on the real test. The one downside to these questions is that you have to go out on the web to research why each answer is right or wrong. But the questions are easy enough that it shouldn't take too long to realize why each answer is right or wrong.

The other site which offers up sample questions is on the Elite certify site. Unlike the LPI site this site does offer up an explanation as to why each question is right or why it is wrong. This site offers up 7 questions which should give you a good idea of what to expect from the test.

Online Study Guides

There are two good online study guides I've found which have helped in preparing for the LPI exams.

The first is put out by ExamNotes.net. It's a 9 page .pdf guide which covers most of the topics which are on the test as well as giving links to some other sites which have information on LPI certification on the web. I've found that this works good as a overview of what to know when you are preparing for the actual test.

The second study guide is put out by CramSession and its a little bit more detailed .pdf guide going out to 31 pages. This one actually costs money but I've found that it's worth it in this case. This guide goes more indepth into the different commands that are out there.

All in all both of these guides were worth the time (and dollars in the Cramsession case)to go through them and they did help in preparing for the first LPI test.

new resource for those preparing for the Level 2 LPI certification

This is from the LPI newsletter. Snow.nl have been supporters of LPI for some time, and have created this free resource.

This is an online book which offers up just about wverything you need to know to pass the LPI Level 2 Certification.

From the preface of the online book is this:

This book reflects the efforts of a number of experienced Linux professionals to prepare for the LPIC-2 beta-exam. It is -- and always will be -- a work in progress. The authors previously obtained LPIC-1 levels, and wanted to participate in the beta-exam for various reasons: to help LPI with their beta-testing, to learn from it and to help others to pass the exam.

Novell Certified Linux Engineer (CLE) program & SUSE Certified Linux Professional program

I know this is somewhat old news but in trying to keep uptodate on the different Linux Certifications out there I heel it's important to make this info known.

what is a Novell Certified Linux Engineer

Novell's newest certification, the Novell Certified Linux Engineer, is the Linux services certification of the future-- today. Not only will this certification validate your knowledge of Linux, but it will also qualify you to install and administer Novell Nterprise Linux Services in either an exclusive Linux environment or a mixed OS environment.

The SUSE Linux Certification

With Novell having bought SUSE I haven't heard if these cert programs will merge into one or if these programs will be kept seperate. This will be important information to sta on top of for the future.

On Line Linux Test sites

Today I want to talk about the different On-line test sites which are available out there.

The first site is the Real-Questions.com site. I used this site for some of my prep for the first Linux test. The questions were decent enough along with rotating the answers and questions around. The test picks 60 questions from a pool of 323 questions which they work with and rotates those questions. Within each question the order which answers are given are alos rotated so that someone can't associate a question with a particular letter. Along with the test comes a .pdf doc which is downloadable and lists all of the questions and answers. The one downside to this site is that there are no explanations given for the answers. You have to either accept their answers as is or research each answer you have a question on individually.

The second site is a site I've used for other certifications called MeasureUP.com. The test they make available is for the Linux+ certification. They offer a demo test for free but it's only 10 questions long. the good part of their tests are that the rotate the answers around and the provide an explanation for the question and answers. I'm not sure what their total base questions are but they usually sit around 250 questions.

The third site is from the people who put out the Exam Cram books, and is set up for the Red Hat Certified Linux Engineer Exam RH300. The test is all web based and you can get your answers instantly. They do offer explanations with their answers unfortunately they don't rotate their answers. The test does pull from a small group of about 75 questions.

The final site I'll look at today is the Boson software site. They offer tests on a number of different Linux tests such as the Red Hat and the LPI tests. Their tests generally pull from a pool of 200+ questions. The free download only offers 12 questions. The questions don't rotate on the free download but the answers do. They also offer answers when you get a question wrong right away and their answers show why each answer is right and why the other answers are wrong.

I hope this gives some ideas as to where to go to get some online help for preparing for a Linux Certification exam.

BIG CHANGES ARE COMING TO BRAINBENCH IN JULY!

*All tests in the Branbench library will be FREE from July 1 - July 14
*On July 8, a new capability will be added to your account whereby employers can leave their e-business card with you
*Over the years you have asked for greater employer exposure - well, starting July 15, employers will have FREE access to our database of interested jobseekers
*All this in celebration of member 5 million last month!
Here is Brainbench's home page.

On Line Linux Training for Red Hat Linux Certification (RHLC) redefined

Whizlabs, a market leader in IT Certification exam preparation, is proud to offer the RHCE (Red Hat Linux Certification Exam) Instructor-led, Online Training. Designed and delivered by highly experienced and certified trainer and backed up by "Unconditional Test PASS Guarantee," it ensures your success in the RHCE exam.

Study Guide for Linux System Administration

I've found another site with a study guide for preparing for the LPI tests. It breaks everything down to the tw tests which are required and the guide for the first test is focused on the RPM test. Both study guide can be downloaded from either FTP site: Savannah or WAMUG.

The Audience for this is listed as " candidates who have at least one year experience doing Linux administration professionally." the coursed have been produced by LinuxIT.

I'm going to spend the weekend looking over things to see what kind of information is included in all of this.