On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 11:15, Roy Ong wrote: > I do agree and understand that "LPI has always been committed to LSB" > and I'm very glad it is. Yes, to a certain extent, LSB doesn't help in > the general process of building Linux system administrators but at > least, it does provide a wonderful platform for which LPI can drive > home the required generic skill set that a Linux system administrator > should have. Its a common building block.
Most distros are similar enough that LSB does its job, and it does it well. As I always say, there is more common between Linux and BSD than DOS (7.0/95, 7.1/95B/C/98/SE/ME) and NT (NT 3.x-4, 5.0/2000, 5.1/XP/2003). Linux distros are just bundles of vendor assumptions and differences in focus during integration testing. The underlying technologies are still there and quite the same. > I guess the key here is really the "generic skill set" which would > result in the Linux system administrator being able to work on a > variety of distributions - LPI, and I guess its the work of all on > this mailing list, to find, shape and scope what this truly is. I'm impressed with the early LPI work and the attention to detail, before LSB was "really there." With Fedora and Debian now providing much of the community base for most distros (Debian being far more mature in this matter, as much as I'm a huge pro-ponent of Fedora), LPI has its bases covered. > Been educated in Linux as a RHCE, I have, many a times, found myself > to be too distribution dependent. Many of the skills that I have > learnt only apply in RH based distributions. The nice thing about learning Red Hat is that they tend to be on the "leading-edge" of adoption. They do this in their ".0" distros, which still continues today, despite name changes. So always making sure you deal with Red Hat's latest community release (now Fedora Core), you can typically learn all the issues before they hit other distros. Red Hat gets a lot of flak. But they also solve a lot of issues with future compatibility that everyone benefits from. Although sometimes people disagree that it was the right direction for the future too. ;-ppp > Over time, I have learnt to adjust but this could have been alot easier > if I have learnt the "generic skill set" instead. I call this "learning technologies, not products." E.g., with my Internet being flaky all last week**, I spend a lot of time on the phone working with different entities who are evaluating collaboration and messaging systems (among other solutions). I cringe when I hear "Exchange replacement" because there are a _lot_ of proprietary implementations out there that are no better (except for using a real SQL back-end, instead of an Access/MDB-based storage method like Exchange, despite marketing to the contrary in newer releases). I easily spend just 1 hour going over "here's the technology, standards, non-standards, etc..." before getting into the actual product implementations. Because once you understand the techology, then it's 100x easier to understand the product implementations available. It's far less common in the Linux world, but let's be honest, there is still _lots_ of marketing. Heck, Red Hat is the Microsoft equivalent when it comes to marketing -- although not its software, it's the anti-MS in that regard (more than any other commercial Linux vendor). > I see LPI as the "savior" of sorts in this perspective and its was > with this thought that I wrote "Any specific preferences for deviation > must be kept at a minimal" Yep. LSB is quite good. I've been through the 1.3 spec and was massively impressed. Especially in some areas where Debian, Red Hat and SuSE not really differ with each other, but really just vary in how much of the LSB 1.3 spec they have fully implemented. > In any case, I do think that our views do not differ. LSB provides a > good working platform for LPI - but LPI needs to constantly take items > into prospective, shaping and scoping, in order to come up with a > "generic skill set" for a Linux system administrator. I don't think anyone believe anything other than that being the exact attention to detail LPI enforces upon itself. -- Bryan **NOTE: I also worked on a couple of FAQs. As a (former?) Red Hat guy, you might be interested in the sections I put in my .sig below. -- Compatibility and update matrix of Red Hat(R) distributions: http://www.vaporwarelabs.com/files/temp/RH-Distribution-FAQ-3.html http://www.vaporwarelabs.com/files/temp/RH-Distribution-FAQ-4.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ Bryan J. Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ lpi-examdev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://list.lpi.org/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
