redhat.com | TiVo Special

redhat.com | TiVo SpecialRed hat is offering up a TiVo Series2 DVR 40 hr system with 3 month subscription for anyone taking a Redhat class. Dates and times are listed lower on the page for anyone interested.

LPI News - Linux Professional Institute Announces Two New Approved Training Materials

LPI - LPI News - Linux Professional Institute Announces Two New Approved Training Materials LPI announced earlier this week two new sources for training for the LPI exams. I know LinuxCertified has been around for a while and has been offering up unique and original ways to train people. LinuxCertified also offers a Linux+ training program for free for those interested in it ( I doubt it has been updated to match the new objectives, but then noone else has updated their material yet either)

The link here is for some sample chapters from Linup's training manual.

CertCities.com | Q&A: Novell Certs Go Linux

CertCities.com | Q&A: Novell Certs Go Linux Back on Oct 13, Cert Cities did a good Q & A with Dan Veitkus, vice president of Worldwide Training Services for Novell. there is some good information here in regards to Where Novell wants to take their Linux certification programs.

As noted earlier today in the CRN study, it looks like Novell is keeping to the idea that people will use a vendor-neutral Linux certicifation first before the get involved with their programs.

CRN | 2004 Certification Study

CRN | 2004 Certification Study Last August the CRN magazine published a study concerning certification, importance of certain certifications and how they relate towards job advancement and skills.

An important result from their study is that vendor-neutral certifications are gaining in importance. It seems that as more shops pick up on open-source systems they need people who are qualified in Linux without being qualified in a specific type of Linux. The Linux+ and LPI exams fill this need.

This is one trend which needs to be watched over the course of the next couple of years to see how far it develops.

LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell: Part 2, Chapter 4: Linux Installation and Package Management (Topic 2.2)

LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell: Part 2, Chapter 4: Linux Installation and Package Management (Topic 2.2)The O"Reilly site has a sample from the LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell book. This has been one of the best books that people have relied on when preparing for the LPI exams. The chapter which is available relates to the LPI 102 test and focuses on Linux Installation and Package Management.

Repost: LPI 101 best options for materials

I know a number of new people have stopped by & this is a repost of an earlier article to give people an idea of some of the material earlier in the weblog:

As promised I'm going to list the sites I've found which are the "best of" sites or the one to focus on when preparing for the LPI level 101 exam. I'm going to break everything down into two sections, the first section will cover the sites which gave the best overall indepth information on the topics covered by the exam the second section will cover the sites which offered up the best study questions to use in preparing for the exam.

1. For the areas with good background material which covers the topics on the certification exam the first place to start is the Cramsession guide available on Amazon, if you want to work with an older version of this guide a free one is available on the Novell site in .pdf format. The "LPI Linux certification in a Nutshell" book is a good book, I borrowed a copy form my local library, along with the LinuxIT study guide that is available online. Also check out the LPI Forums.com site for any other hints or ideas that others might have posted on the forums

2. In regards to which sites offered up the best study questions without a doubt the two to focus on are the Testemulation site and the Real-Questions.com site. Between the two if you can do well on these tests you should pass the actual certification. A second site is located here, which basically covers the Testemulation site.

With these sites in hand you should have everything you would need to prepare for the LPI 101 certification exam. The nice thing about most of these sites is that they are free. The only one which aren't free are the LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell book which you should be able to borrow from a library and the Real-Questions.com material which should only cost about $40 and well worth the price. I hope this helps some of you out there.

linuxvalue.com Interview with Ross Brunson

linuxvalue.com INTERVIEW: Ross Brunson The author of the new Exam Cram book for the LPI has an interview up on the linuxvalue.com web site. It doesn't say when the interview first was published, but the interview does offer up so good info on where Ross sees Linux going and the value of certification in todays marketplace. Also Ross's LPIC Boot Camp site is refernced in the article too.

LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2: Linux Professional Institute Certification Exams 101 and 102

LPIC 1 Exam Cram 2: Linux Professional Institute Certification Exams 101 and 102 This is a follow up from an earlier post regarding this book. The items I want to add here are a link to an informit.com page with a sample chapter from the book. And from reading the conversations over at LPI forums those who have read the book say it has helped them with preparing for the LPI exam. One issue some people have had is with the CD in the book not installing properly, but that still hasn't put anyone off from the book. The material in the book is an excellent guide for preparing for the LPI in its own right.

redhat.com | Training Specials

redhat.com | Training Specials Red Hat is running a limited time special for anyone looking to take some Red Hat courses through a certified Red Hat training facility. This special is only good until Dec 17th.

This might be more of a way to get their name out in the corporate eye to help match with Novell's new certifications. Either way if you're looking to take some Red Hat courses this will be a good way to deck yourself out in clothes with the Red Hat logo on them.

NOVELL: Novell Certified Linux Professional (Novell CLP) Practicum now available

NOVELL: Novell Certified Linux Professional (Novell CLP) Practicum now available: "Novell Certified Linux Professional (Novell CLP) Practicum now available" The Novell site has posted their information about where someone can prepare for the Novell CLP exam.

It looks like Novell is starting to come out with their material in a major, look at the previous post. This will make for some interesting moves next year with both Red Hat and Novell trying to make their move within the enterprise systems. Getting "their" certified people into different corporations will be one measure of their success or failure.

New Study guides available for Novell Linux Certification

Novell has been in the process of distributing their own certificaiton for Suse and now it seems that the first study guides are being sold. quepublishing.com has both books (although the CLP book isn't available until Dec 04) online. The Certified Linux Engineer guide is available here, and the Certified Linux Professional guide is available here. The price for either book looks to be $54.
A sample chapter from the CLE guide can be found on the site also.

I have no idea what the quality of either book is or what the author's relationship with Novell might be but with the Novell exams being new I would imagine there would be some relation between the authors and Novell or that the authors are very fast at taking tests and publishing a guide about the test. It will be interesting to see what other materials are made available for Novell's tests in the future.

******************* UPDATE
InformIT.com has posted the same sample chapter on their site also.

David W. has written a short & not flattering review of the one chapter that is online. It appears that the book is focusing on the GUI tools and not even mentioning the command line. If this is true regarding Novell's certification I wonder if they are trying to be more like Microsoft in regards to what they want people to realy know.

Certification: Is It Right For An Open-Source World?

Linux Pipeline has an article regarding whether Linux professionals need to be certified. Those who say it isn't necessary are those who work with established programmers and don't need to worry about whether the programmer knows their stuff or not.

"Certification means the same thing in Linux and open source that it means in Microsoft--it doesn't mean you know your stuff," says Faber Fedor, an open-source consultant with services firm LinuxNJ.com Inc. "You're competent enough, but just because you have a driver's license doesn't mean you're ready for the Indy 500."

One thing I noticed was that there are more companies out there moving toward Linux and the need to get people trained in Linux is growing. This might be a good growth area for training companies to look into. A good example is Keycorp which is looking to train it's 1,400 employees in Linux and at a cost somewhere between $2,500 and $3,500/ per person there's gold in them there hills.

LPI Initiates New Quality Improvement Process

Over at the LPI site they have a posting regarding new changes to their LPI tests. This change only applies to their English-language tests.

Essentially they are going to add new questions to the test to beta test new questions for future exams. These beta questions will not be identified in any special way but the will be spread out within the test as if they were normal questions. The beta questions will not be included in the exam grade, but they will be used to give LPI an idea of what questions to rotate into future exams. To compensate testers for their time LPI has also added an extra half hour to the exam to give testers an opportunity to answer all the quesitons.

The biggest reason for this change is to make the question rotation faster and make it harder for brain dumps and other services to offer up their questions. I know for a fact that there are services out there that do offer up questions that are exactly word for word what is on the test. This change will make it more difficult for that to happen.

Troubleshooters.com site

The troubleshooters.com web site has a number of articles relating to Linux, Linux applications, Server Maintenance, and troubleshooting in general. Granted this doesn't have a direct relationship with Linux certification but this site is a good site to find tutorials on just about anything Linux. Hope this helps.