Linux Essentials 2.0: Start with Linux Essentials. Go anywhere.

Linux Essentials is one of LPI’s most popular exams. Every semester, it is the initial contact that students around the world have with Linux. Therefore it is important that the exam is relevant and up to date. However, Linux basics are very stable: Commands to navigate the file system, permissions on files and directories, the concepts of users and groups, process management – none of that changed since Linux was created. So what is there to update in an essential Linux exam?

Actually, a lot. The changes do not so much affect the core commands, but the management tools built on top of Linux. Since the release of Linux Essentials 1.6, a lot of things happened that affect the content of the exam:

• CentOS, a Linux distribution that used to be binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, transitioned into a rolling release distribution, and new projects, most prominently AlmaLinux and RockyLinux, took over the task of providing nearly RHEL compatible stable distributions.
• systemd and journald became widely adopted to manage the startup services as well as collecting and analyzing the log messages of these services.
• The ip command became the de facto standard to manage network interfaces, IP addresses and routes. Commands like ifconfig and route are nowadays no longer installed by default in most Linux distributions.
• The list of open source applications that we expect candidates to be aware of deserved an update since numerous projects were created, deprecated, forked or became more or less popular.

And there was another big change: When the first version of Linux Essentials was planned, candidates were expected to run Linux locally on their own computer. While this is still an important use case, the majority of Linux installations today run in the cloud. That implies that working on a remote Linux system became an essential task for anyone dealing with Linux. We have therefore included the use of SSH to log into remote systems in Linux Essentials 2.0.

An important side effect of this change is that it makes preparing for the exam even easier. Instead of modifying their own computer, students can leverage cloud providers who allow the use of Linux on their cloud infrastructure. Some cloud providers even offer free access to small instances, which are still good enough for learning Linux, while others charge very little money per hour for a small virtual Linux server. There is no easier way to try Linux, to explore various Linux distributions and to just revert to a fresh install in case anything goes wrong.

While this is a lot of change in Linux Essentials, it is still specific to individual parts of the exam. The majority of the objectives only received editorial changes and no significant updates.

One important aspect of the new version is that we did not change the architecture of the exam. The outline of the exam objectives remains unchanged. This allows the majority of existing learning materials to be continuously used. Even though we renamed most objectives and clarified the descriptions, the overall structure remains the same. For example, exam objective 013.3 in version 2.0 still covers shell scripting, just like exam objective 3.3 did in version 1.6. Details were improved and clarified, but the majority of existing and practice-proofed materials remains valid for version 2.0.

For those who are interested in the details, we have collected a list of all changes to the new version in the LPI Wiki at https://wiki.lpi.org/wiki/Linux_Essentials_Summary_Version_1.6_To_2.0. The new version of the objectives is also available in the wiki at https://wiki.lpi.org/wiki/Linux_Essentials_Objectives_V2.0. Our Learning Materials are available at https://learning.lpi.org/en/learning-materials/010-200/.

Linux is a core component of almost all technology stacks today. With Linux Essentials, we have created a comprehensive program to get started with Linux. Linux Essentials directly targets the needs of individual learners as well as teachers who support their students to lay a foundation for stepping into the giant Linux ecosystem. Start with Linux Essentials. Go anywhere.