Recently there has been a discussion on the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) mailing list about why LPI does not publish its own training materials to help students prepare for their tests. I started to answer in the mailing list, but instead I decided to answer here.
LPI, of course, is a non-profit organization that creates certification exams for Linux systems administrators. It is distribution neutral, and tries to be comprehensive in its tests.
When we started LPI many years ago, there was a long discussion about whether LPI should create its own training materials.
At that time “Linux” was a fledgling industry, and the number of Linux books, publications and (particularly) training classes were relatively few.
Many certifications at that time (including a “direct competitor” of LPI) offered both certification AND training, with the training being very, very expensive. It gave the impression (correct or not) that the certification existed just to create the demand for their training classes. There was definitely a perception that when class demand dropped, the certification would be changed to drive training revenues back up.
LPI decided to “take the high road”, and be *just* certification. This left the training companies to compete with each other, not with LPI, and to make the best training courses possible. We hoped that people could continue to learn from a variety of sources, whether it was lecture-lab, books, CD-ROMs, Internet forums, or just “the school of hard knocks”.
Personally I also believed (and still do) that since LPI can not possibly test every aspect of the systems administrator’s job (nor can someone creating a course teach all of that job in a reasonable period of time) that what a systems administrator really has to know is a superset of the LPI exam material and therefore a superset of what would be in any one training guide or course. By having the students seek out the information from various sources, they are instigating and duplicating what any good Sys Admin will be doing for the rest of their lives. They are learning to sift through the vast amounts of “data” out there, and find the information that they need to do the job.
I believe that no book or class of “training material” will prepare you completely for the life and job of a Systems Administrator. You have to DO. You have to type in the commands, have the frustration of not having them work, receive the epiphany of understanding, and after that you will know it forever. I was a Systems Administrator (in a lot of ways I still am). Been there, done that.
The founders of LPI agreed that we should publish the objectives and sample questions to allow the prospective test taker treat that as a guide, and to allow them to see the areas that LPI (and the systems administrators that contributed objectives and questions to the tests) thought were important. Likewise any training company (or even an individual) could independently develop good training materials for LPI’s exams. This would foster competition and openness, two of the hallmarks of Free Software.
Since that time there have been many books, CD-ROMS and classes produced around LPIC exams. Many people have successfully studied the objectives and sample exams on the LPI site using these training materials and passed.
I think LPI picked the right philosophy, and while there should always be a review of the listed objectives and test questions to make sure that those still give a cohesive and comprehensive mapping of the tests, I would still reject the idea of LPI creating its own “study guides”.
Carpe Diem
