"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

On Tuesday, January 11, 2000, the culmination of hard work by a dedicated group of volunteers worldwide has produced the first in a series of certification tests for the Linux* community. The Linux Professional Institute(LPI; http://www.lpi.org )which was incorporated (nonprofit) in Ontario, Canada in October, 1999; has released its T1A Exam

( http://www.lpi.org/t1alaunch.html ) to the world through the Virtual University Enterprises' (VUE) 1700 plus testing centers. The exam qualifies the participant towards certification at Level 1 (Junior-Level/ Linux system administrator). This first exam is just one in a series which will be available for the individual looking to add credentials to their Linux knowledge and experience.

In October 1998, the concept of Linux certification was launched with the leadership of Evan Leibovitch(current LPI Executive Director) and Dan York(current Board Chairman)who were introduced to each other by Jon "maddog" Hall of Linux International. After many months of hard work and thousands of volunteers, Evan Leibovitch proclaims, "This is what we've been working towards since the day we started." "We've tried to make our program challenging, vendor-neutral and accessible, and I believe we've succeeded on all fronts" according to Evan. Scott Murray(Director of Exam Development) adds "Our volunteers are a crucial part of LPI, and the delivery of quality exams reflects the hard work and care they have contributed to the program." "We want to provide a certification that is supported and respected by it's community" he says. And further acknowledgment comes from Dan York; "We've learned an amazing amount...and truly demonstrated the power of a group of people working together to accomplish a common goal!" "All that we can say is THANK YOU for helping to make this dream a reality" he says.

We would like to thank the many people who have worked on the technical aspects of the tests(submitting and reviewing test questions), those who have staffed our booths at the shows around the globe, those who have responded through our different channels of communication(web site, e-mails, etc.), our participants in the Advisory Council, and most importantly our financial sponsors; both individual, and corporate(listed alphabetically) ; Caldera Systems, IBM, Linuxcare, SGI, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Wave Technologies. Our association with Wave Technologies and ProsoftTraining.com have helped us greatly. We have an extensive listing of our volunteers at http://www.lpi.org/thanks99.html .

Those interested in taking the first exam(T1A) will need to register with VUE; http://www.vue.com/linux/ and pay a fee of $100. The test will take approximately 1-2 hours. To find the location nearest you go to http://www.vue.com/testing/index.html .

A call for help is still being echoed for the submission of questions for the T2series of exams. If you can help write questions for these tests, please visit our "TIPS system". We could also use help reviewing all of the questions for these advanced tests. Plus, volunteers would be greatly appreciated to help staff upcoming events. For a schedule of events which we will be participating in, please see http://www.lpi.org/i-events.html. Some events include the Linux World Expos, Linux Business Expos, Atlanta Linux Showcase, and the following:

On February 2-4, we will be at Linux World in New York City and Linux World Paris(contact tom@lpi.org ), February 24-March 3 in Hannover, Germany for the CeBIT show( tom@lpi.org ), March 7-10 in Sydney, Australia for the Open Source Expo and Conference(contact Jonathan Coombs), and the Linux Business Expo(with Comdex) in Chicago on April 17-20, 2000. Please contact the above persons or Dan York dan@lpi.org) if you can staff any of the booths for these shows.

Stay tuned to the Linux Gazette and Linux Professional Institute, as we move forward to making these dreams a reality within the Linux community.

*Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds; Linux Professional Institute is a trademark of the Linux Professional Institute Inc.

Copyright © 2000, Ray Ferrari
Published in Issue 50 of Linux Gazette, February 2000