Re: LPI and Distros...

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2004 at 11:32:10AM -0500, Ken Keefe wrote:
> Firstly, I wasn't able to locate the "Level Objectives" that they kept
> talking about on the website, can you either point me to them or just
> summarize them? I'm sure they were right in front of my face...

http://www.lpi.org/en/obj_101.html
http://www.lpi.org/en/obj_102.html
http://www.lpi.org/en/obj_201.html
http://www.lpi.org/en/obj_202.html

> Next, what study materials do you recommend? I've only seen a "Bible"
> book at my local bookstore, but I didn't like it that much.

I'd suggest O'Reilly's LPI in a Nutshell.  It's not completely current
(none of the LPI books are, as far as I know), but it's not bad.

> Plus there only seems to be books on the level one exams...

The second edition of LPI in a Nutshell will cover Level 2 as well,
but I'm not sure when it will be available.

> Finally, I noticed that LPI is distro independent, which I think is very
> admirable. My question is, what distro should I use to study that is the
> most "standardized?" I use Mandrake right now, but I think I am growing
> out of it. In Mandrake, I have been doing my best to move away from
> "Mandrake" tools and especially graphical tools, but a lot of the time I
> don't know if something is only in Mandrake or standard to Linux

You should be fine.  When you take the 101 exam, you are given the
choice of Debian (dpkg) or Red Hat (rpm).  At the end of the exam, you
get a couple of questions on one or the other.  If you are comfortable
with rpm at the command line, you'll do fine.  (Mandrake, SuSE, and a
whole bunch of lesser-known distributions are all rpm-based.)

> (example: the "service" command I thought was standard, but I don't
> think it is.)

It's not quite standard on Linux, but it is a tool Red Hat (and most,
if not all, of the other rpm-based distributions) picked up from IRIX
(IIRC).

In this case, just remember that "service foo start" is equivalent to
"/etc/init.d/foo start".

> I have been reading a little bit about Gentoo and that sounds
> pretty good.

Gentoo is a mistake.

  a) Wasting processor time (and your own time) waiting for things to
     compile when those things have already been compiled 1e666
     times by other people is insane.
  b) There's no QA on binaries you build yourself, so your system
     could have any number of unique, likely unfixable bugs.

If you want to waste your time fixing random breakage (and therefore
learning about your system, granted), then Gentoo is fine.

> I understand that this is supposed to be a Red Hat list serve, so if
> you want to email me off list, that would be fine.

I think you've got the wrong impression of this list.  A lot of us are
Red Hat/Fedora users, but not all of us are.  (Heck, Jonathan Drews is
usually using some random BSD.  :-)

Personally, I stick with Fedora for a lot of reasons.  Examples:

  a) Real package management, with real QA'd binaries, makes it
     possible to manage a large number of systems and ensure a
     consistent environment.
  b) Both community and third-party vendor support.

That said, I've never tried to talk anyone (except newbies who want my
help :) out of using SuSE, Debian, or several other perfectly fine
distributions.

> Also, I have been thinking about using Slackware as a server distro, I
> have read many sparkling reviews for Slackware in the server department.
> Anyone have some comments or suggestions?

People who use Slackware are even less sane than the Gentoo users.
Slackware was great in 1994, but it was left behind a *long* time ago.
(It has no package management.  It has no real QA.  It doesn't even
have a significant user base.)

If you really want to experience that kind of pain (and learn from
it), try LFS.

  http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

But *please* don't try it on a real server.  Real servers should run
an environment that *someone* has done *some* testing on (and, no, "it
boots" isn't testing :-).  Otherwise you are just begging for
problems.

Perhaps package management (as a concept) and managing-lots-of-servers
should be Monday's topic at the Carbondale meeting?  :-)

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-7360             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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