On Wednesday 12 March 2008, Dimitrios Bogiatzoules, LPI Product Developer wrote: > 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
<blush> Thanks for that Taki :-) It took 4 tries before I got the wording right, I had to try real hard to NOT come across as my usual dismissive bigoted self, so thanks to everyone who had nice things to say about what I wrote. Scott, if you think what I wrote is worth using by LPI, please go right ahead and use it alan > > 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. -- Alan McKinnon alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
