Alessandro Selli - LNX wrote: > From an abstract POV it might be interesting to cover non-Intel platforms > (especially ARM) > IMO the interest in non-Intel architectures like ARM is more than > abstract. It has to do with two magic words: mobile and IoT. Like it or > not, they are the future.
??? Er, more like past and, now, present. But where is the sysadmin opportunity in this space? That's the larger question. The answer of which ... is ... MicroServers. I.e., we can debate "end-user" devices, and we'll get lots of different answers. It's not that they aren't important. They just aren't as impacting. But servers very much drive the need for sysadmins knowledge ... even in the cloud generation. Unless, of course, we want LPIC to change away from "baremetal" entirely, which is another consideration. > I am a little perplexed because, as far as I know, mobile non Intel > hardware today is more abundant, widespread and used compared to classic > Intel desktops: > http://www.displaydaily.com/paid-news/349-ldm-mdm/ldm-mdm-market-news/28636-mobile-continues-to-surpass-desktop-in-workstation-market Which the SIA was predicting in the '00s. Semiconductor is a strange beast. Because fabs of the tens of billions of dollars require investments made years in advance ... so ... the market is extremely supply-side driven. Demand for these devices then tend to be based on supply-side microeconomics. Microservers will drive a similar result, especially if some standards are laid out, which AMD is attempting to lead, with ARM Holdings trying to corral most. > Aww, com'on, it's been many years that every laptop sold had a WiFi unit > built-in, and even some Dell desktops are marketed with a WiFi card > built-in. USB WiFi dongles cost close to nothing. And that's leaving out > all mobile units. And what about the many single-board computers that > regularly come with WiFi either built-in or available as an add-on module, > and cheap WiFi-enabled DSL modems and routers, many if not most running some > custom embedded Linux firmware? You can have a brand new OpenWRT compatible > wireless device for as little as 15€. I think LPI is dangerously lagging > behind the latest evolutions of the IT and Linux in these areas that are > chewing up a significant and ever larger slice of the general-purpose > computing devices market. LPI will _always_ lag. Even Red Hat has trouble keeping up, and other than the base EX200 (RHCSA) and EX300 (RHCE), they cannot revision things fast enough. And that's in a far more well funded organization than LPI. Heck, Red Hat has gone to the "light" 200-level "specialty" courses because the "heavy" 400-level "architect" courses have become too long of a development cycle. This finally came to a head when Red Hat decided to implement, as of last October, the option to take almost _any_ five (5) exams for its RHCA (architect), and no longer just the 400-level (plus 333, now discontinued -- which was the first post-RHCE exam in the mid '00s). > If anything we will have to increase our coverage of UEFI because that is > something that people are actually likely to run into if they're not > embedded- system developers. uEFI is the future. Even the knowledge of what the CSMs (Compatibility Support Modules) provide in uEFI, that adds various 16-bit BIOS services, is key to know. Because many uEFI firmwares allow select CSMs to be turned on/off. The question is ... what does LPI cover? I've offered a standard ... "logical interfaces" and related standards. No longer SATA, PCIe, etc... or even HBA, etc... ... but AHCI, NVMe, SCSI. No longer what uEFI does specifically, but what efibootmgr and GRUB2-EFI require. Etc... In fact, one way to deal with this "shift" may be to write _new_ objective numbers. That way, we can "shift" to the new objectives, instead of just "replacing" the old. But that's more of a Matt detail, as he has to maintain this, and is far more understanding of the realities of the program than I, having run it for the past decade-plus. -- bjs _______________________________________________ lpi-examdev mailing list lpi-examdev@lpi.org http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
