General FAQ

1.1. What is the purpose of the Linux Professional Institute?

Our mission statement and vision are stated on this page as follows:

LPI Mission Statement:

LPI shall promote and certify essential skills on Linux and Open Source technologies through the global delivery of comprehensive, top quality, vendor-independent exams.

LPI Vision:

LPI seeks to become recognized as the global leader in the certification of Linux professionals while advancing the Linux and Open Source movement through strategic partners, sponsorships, innovative programs and community development activities.

1.2 Why is a certification program needed for Linux?

• Create industry recognition
• Provide an organizational path for students
• Provide an organizational mechanism for training centers
• Enhance marketing
• Counter the "no-support" argument
• Turn students into advocates
• Provide other means of employment for Linux skilled individuals
• Recruit new Linux users
• Assist in the hiring process

The easiest way to gain corporate, governmental, and institutional support and usage of Linux is to ensure that there is a recognized support system in place. This includes professionally accredited support services and an industry recognized skills standard. A widely-recognized Linux certification ensures that IT professionals have a means of demonstrating their Linux skills to potential employers while assuring customers that they are receiving support services from highly skilled and knowledgeable professionals.

Some of the earliest descriptions of the need for a Linux certification program can be found at this story within the Linux Gazette and in this story in the Linux Journal.

1.3. What are the benefits of Linux certification?

• Establishes your competence for well-defined Linux-related functions
• Easily demonstrates your competence to a potential contractor or employer
• Certification helps you set out and follow a career path
• LPI certification is developed from within the Linux community, by your peers, and gives you the opportunity to help develop the certification standards and exams.

1.4. What can I do to help?

There are many ways in which you can help with the activities of LPI. Here's a short list:

• Participate in Exam Development - If you are a writer, a subject matter expert, an editor, a programmer or other kind of Linux specialist, we have a use for you. Please contact Matthew Rice, Director of Product Development for further information..
• Volunteer at trade show booths- LPI participates in a number of trade shows and IT conferences where we need volunteers to assist us at our booth. Please contact our Operations office, if you are interested in helping out at these events.
• Help find financial sponsors – ongoing work on our existing certification program and new product development involves a lot of money and we're always seeking people to join our list of sponsors. Visit our sponsorship page to learn more.
• Write, speak or otherwise help in publicity - we always need more people to write about LPI and speak at conferences and events. Contact Scott Lamberton, Director of Communication if you are interested.
• Join and participate in our mailing lists - visit our page on getting involved for more information about how to join the lists or go directly to our: Mailing List Information page.

There are many more ways to become involved. Watch the news on our home page and join in our mailing lists to learn more.

1.5. I've worked with a lot of "certified" people and haven't been impressed with their competence. What do you say to this type of criticism?

First of all LPI does not believe that certification is a blanket solution for Linux (or any other operating system for that matter). In our considered opinion there is no substitute for experience! That said, people do have to start somewhere and that is the biggest fallacy in the overall perception of certificate programs. There is a profound difference between a certification holder or non-certificationholder with 5 years of Linux experience and a certification holder with 6 months of experience with Linux. Depending on the talents of the individuals in question that difference could be huge. However that is not necessarily a shortfall of the certificate program but rather hiring situations where non-experienced people are expected to perform at the same level as their more experienced colleagues. LPI believes that, as in all things, people's individual talent, skill and work ethic will ultimately determine their success in the IT field. Nevertheless, LPI certifications will provide potential employers with a standard to measure the technical quality and competence of a given candidate. The rest is up to the candidate..

1.6. How will the LPI program meet the requirements of existing hiring practices and local regulations (such as U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity laws)?

LPI intends to provide employers a certification standard which will enable them to assess Linux related skill levels of potential employees. To that end, LPI has attracted and assembled a diverse and talented group of people from the world-wide Linux community to help create our certification program. The diversity of this group will help us ensure that our program is free of gender, racial, or cultural bias. In fact, since most of LPI's work is conducted in a virtual setting over the Internet those individuals working on LPI's programs would be hard pressed to identify much more than the gender of a co-worker and given language differences perhaps not that either. Finally, LPI validates its certification program against the psychometric standards required by regulations in the US and other countries as applicable and has been endorsed by a Certification standards organization.

1.7. How does LPI compare to other Linux certification programs?

Since there is no central authority controlling the Linux operating system, anyone may start up a Linux certification program and several companies have. As mentioned previously, Red Hat has their own certification program which focuses exclusively on their distribution and Novell has its own Linux certification program which is based on the SUSE Linux distribution.

The most critical difference between LPI and the rest of these programs is that LPI is completely vendor independent and distribution neutral. We work with a huge list of companies which is a virtual who's who of the IT industry and our tests have been developed specifically to test competence with all versions of Linux. Finally, LPI is an independent, non-profit corporation which has evolved out of the Linux community focusing solely on setting certification standards. There are other differences in approach, support and research - if you are interested in more information, feel free to send questions to us. In truth, we welcome all of these programs because, in the end, they will all help grow the pool of Linux support professionals which drives deeper corporate adoption of Linux!