Best Linux Distro(s) for Linux+ Exam

[dpodblood]

Hey Guys,

My employer has agreed to pay for my textbooks and certification exams. One of the first exams I plan on taking in Linux+ (LX0-101 and 102). What are the best Linux distro(s) out there for me to practice with for these exams?

Thanks!

 

[Praetor]

Do the textbooks say what distro they used in their examples?

 

[lxskllr]

I don't know anything about it, but if I were going in blind, I'd use CentOS. It's a debranded RHEL, and would be a safe bet for commercial-centric education.

 

[xSauronx]

I don't know anything about it, but if I were going in blind, I'd use CentOS. It's a debranded RHEL, and would be a safe bet for commercial-centric education.

seriously. this, or debian because of the huge amount of information available on it for just about any topic. i always used to use debian at home because of that...you could google damn near anything and find a solution

 

[mv2devnull]

That is very true. Searching for almost anything leads to pages about debian unless one limits to "(rhel OR centos)".

I'd vote CentOS though, unless those "certification exams" are clearly about something else.

 

[unokitty]

My employer has agreed to pay for my textbooks and certification exams. One of the first exams I plan on taking in Linux+ (LX0-101 and 102). What are the best Linux distro(s) out there for me to practice with for these exams?

Congratulations! Its great when an employer will pay for your certifications.

Which distro is best for Comptia Linux+?

Comptia presents Linux+ as a vendor neutral cert.

I have the CompTIA Linux+ Certification Powered by LPI Instructor's Guide by Axzo Press. It uses Debian for the labs.

On their site, Comptia used to publish the exam objectives. Now they want your info before they let you access them. If you're interested in doing that, you can do that here.

On the other hand, there is an ebook that has the 2009 objectives here.

I suspect that you can be successful with any number of distributions. Probably, more important that you have sufficient "hands on" experience and an appropriate level of confidence...

Best of luck,

Uno

In the interest of full disclosure, I have three Comptia Certs (Sec+, Net+, and Inet+). I do not have Linux+.

If you have the time, Linus has a Linux history video on youtube that you might find interesting.

 

[gruven]

I don't know anything about it, but if I were going in blind, I'd use CentOS. It's a debranded RHEL, and would be a safe bet for commercial-centric education.

This. The Linux+ test has a LOT of .rpm questions. I don't think I remember one .deb question.

I used Fedora to go through the book with, but CentOS would be better. They say it is vendor neutral, but what they really mean is: "we are going to ask you a lot of questions about RHEL packages and just a couple about general software".

Yes, I am Linux+ certified, but I took the test in 2007. They may have changed it by now.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah CentOS, though if it really does not mention I'd also play around with Debian. At least try to know where basic stuff like network configs go (it's completely different than RH). There could possibly be questions that cover both lines of distros.

 

[gruven]

Yeah CentOS, though if it really does not mention I'd also play around with Debian. At least try to know where basic stuff like network configs go (it's completely different than RH). There could possibly be questions that cover both lines of distros.

For the purpose of the Linux+ exam, you need to know where the network configs of RHEL are. They pretty much expect you to think that RHEL is standard Linux.

As a matter of fact, they didn't ask where they were stored, they wanted to know how to use the RHEL gui tools to set things.

 

[Piano Man]

I don't know anything about it, but if I were going in blind, I'd use CentOS. It's a debranded RHEL, and would be a safe bet for commercial-centric education.

+1 and do yourself a favor and stick to the terminal as much as you can. While some of the GUI apps are convenient, the sooner you can live with CLI, the better (I'm still a noobie, but have forced myself to boot to CLI, its the only way to learn).

For some 2ndary reading, I really found this book to be the most helpful in getting acquainted with the Linux command line. Unlike some books (I'm looking at you Unix Programming Environment) it knows that you are most likely coming from a Win/Mac GUI environment, and treats you as such. The language its presented in is very welcoming as well. Some of these books were meant for robots, I swear.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Linux-Comm...x+command+line

 

[Piano Man]

+1 and do yourself a favor and stick to the terminal as much as you can. While some of the GUI apps are convenient, the sooner you can live with CLI, the better (I'm still a noobie, but have forced myself to boot to CLI, its the only way to learn).

For some 2ndary reading, I really found this book to be the most helpful in getting acquainted with the Linux command line. Unlike some books (I'm looking at you Unix Programming Environment) it knows that you are most likely coming from a Win/Mac GUI environment, and treats you as such. The language its presented in is very welcoming as well. Some of these books were meant for robots, I swear.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Linux-Comm...x+command+line

PS. Another thing that most classes don't mention, but should. Its really, really helpful to memorize the keyboard shortcuts for the both the Bash Shell and VI/VIM. Having always used a mouse, everything took me so much longer with CLI until I sucked it up and taught myself a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. Now, there is no way I could be as fast with a mouse/keyboard combo (well, most of the time).

 

[mv2devnull]

As a matter of fact, they didn't ask where they were stored, they wanted to know how to use the RHEL gui tools to set things.

+1 and do yourself a favor and stick to the terminal as much as you can. While some of the GUI apps are convenient, the sooner you can live with CLI, the better.http://redirect.anandtech.com/r?url...eywords=the+linux+command+line&user=u00000687

While CLI is very powerful, gruven's point is strong too. A test can very well focus on the GUI configuration tools. If a distro has a tool for a task, one should know it. One can toss all tools out of the window and rule with vi -- if one knows the system -- but that is hardly the goal of exams.