LPIC-1: A Review

Posted by Madu in Certifications Oct 3rd, 2009 | no responses

I very recently finished both LPI-1 and CompTIA Linux+ so decided to write a brief review. This one is on LPIC-1 and Linux+ follows soon.

I started with LPIC. Preparation for the first part of level-1 took me quite a while but I finished part-2 within two weeks of finishing part-1. A little rundown on what I did.

LPIC-1 part-1:

Primary study material:
Linux Certification in a Nutshell – O’Reilly

Secondary study materials:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/lpi/

Practice exams:
http://www.mcmcse.com/forums/exams/index.php
http://www.penguintutor.com/cgi-bin/quiz/index.pl

Study duration:
3 months/ part-time

Important note:

The primary study material I used was an outdated. The exam objectives had been changed and got a quite a few surprises in the exam.

LPIC-1 part-2:

Primary study material:
LPIC-1: Linux Professional Institute Certification Study Guide.

Secondary study materials:
None.

Practice exams:

Materials in the accompanying CD
http://www.mcmcse.com/forums/exams/index.php
http://www.penguintutor.com/cgi-bin/quiz/index.pl

Study duration:
10 days after finishing part-1.

Study material review:

“Linux Certification in a Nutshell” – Despite not covering the exam objectives, this book is an excellent study for anyone wanting to learn Linux. I have been using Ubuntu exclusively for couple of years and after reading (the first part only) I was amazed at the amount things that I did but had no clue of what was really happening. This book really made me admire Linux for it’s simplistic and organized way of handling things. The book is very well written.

“LPIC-1: Linux Professional Institute Certification Study Guide“- Adequately covered the exam objectives. I only used this book as reading material for LPIC-1 part-2. The practice questions that come in the CD maybe a easier than what you’d find in the exam. But the other two practice exams I did was of great help. This book alone will not provide 100% of the exam contents. No certification book will and you need to dig around a little. Compared to Nutshell, I did not think this book is a good source to read to learn Linux. This book is more exam oriented and will not give a good explanation of things. For example, concepts like inetd, xinetd and TCP_Wrappers, I did not completely understand them by reading this book but I read that part of Nutshell and understood it perfectly. But if you just want to pass the exam, this book will not fail you.

Exam review:

I did not find the exam particularly difficult although I almost failed part-1 because I had missed many exam objectives. The pass percentage is about 65% which is a little lower than some other exams. But overall, this examination covers very important topics which are very relevant in daily Linux usage. Part-1 covers quite basic but important topics and you will need to learn things like commands and their options bit in-depth. Part-2 I felt was easier than part-1, maybe because it covered many topics so questions do not usually check very in-depth information like command options. If you have used Linux part-2 will be relatively easy. Although I will not go for the second-level, I should say that this examination is very worthwhile.

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