Alan, I'm biased, but that was a very, very fine essay about vendor neutrality...
@Scott: Alan's last sentence is worth to be used on LPI's website, IMHO. Best regards, Taki Alan McKinnon said the following on 11.03.2008 22:19:
To my mind, this is a no-brainer question. Vendor-neutral Linux certifications are a necessity, vendor-specific certifications are a luxury.I hold current RHCE and LPI certs, I have authored and designed LPI-aligned courseware and courses, and delivered them. In my current day job I deliver RHCE courses as part of my duties.I can attest that the vendor-specific courses and certification concentrates in large degree on *how* something is done on that vendor's system and the reason why the software works that way is a secondary item. The vendor is interested in checking if the candidate can do specific actions the way they were designed to be done.LPI exams are different. Because they are not aligned to a specific vendor, what gets examined is the upstream defaults. There is an obvious focus on why a piece of software works the way it does, what is correct usage and what is incorrect. Thus, the candidate is tested n their understanding of how the system works as a whole.This is not to say that vendor-specific certifications are without value, that is not true. They are indeed valuable. But if all current Linux vendors with certification programs were to disappear tomorrow, Linux itself would still exist, life would continue and the industry would still need to be able to measure the skills of administrators in general.I have heard the argument that Red Hat's certification for example does not tell you much about someone's prowess when confronted with SuSE, or Debian or Slackware. I do not agree with this viewpoint as a Linux administrator is daily called on to learn new things. Even when using only Red Hat Linux he/she will often need to pick up new skills that are not covered in the Red Hat exams. This is no different really from moving to SuSE from Red Hat - new software, new skills.The real difference is as I have mentioned above - the type of testing that is done in each class of certification:Vendor-specific certifications test the *how*. Vendor-neutral certifications test the *why* and are thus more fundamental.
-- Dimitrios Bogiatzoules Product Developer Linux Professional Institute E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.lpi.org GnuPG Key ID A7E4D183
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