Studying for the LPIC1 Certification 📖

Intro 👋

I am intent on becoming a Linux Professional Institute Certified Administrator. It has been a goal of mine for a little while now. However goals are just aspirational, reaching a goal such as this requires a structured, systematic approach. As a life-long learner, I am always improving my study methods by being more efficient with my time and energy. As we all know life can get in the way of our goals, so we must find methods that work when conditions are not ideal for studying. For instance, I brake up my study sessions into smaller, more bite sized chunks that I can do when time permits. I take much more comprehensive notes than I did in the past and I work on wrought memorization through the use of flash cards; something that I really wasn’t into before.

Creating a Work Breakdown Structure

The first thing I do when starting to study a new topic is creating a simple structure from a high level view. A handful of bullet points can simply outline the structure of the knowledge. In regards to the LPIC, most of this had already been done as the curriculum for the exam is open source.

Hands on practice

For each item that the course cover, I set up a lab and run through all of the commands by actually typing them in and seeing what kind of errors or typos I may run into. The LPIC has a huge list of commands that we must remember which makes it very difficult for me.

Taking comprehensive notes

I recently started using LogSeq, a markdown ++ notetaking applicaton that allows for interlinking of notes. This has really upped my game when it comes to keeping track of notes and refering back to them. In the past, I would just take notes for the task at hand, not really refering back to them often. I was just taking notes as a memory retention aid.

Flash Cards

Another recent addition to my study arsenal is Anki, a smart flashcard application that I use for wrought memorization. The application and many flash card decks are open source, so I was up and running in a short period of time with a large deck of LPIC flashcards.

Udemy / Youtube

Though video courses are pretty low bandwidth information sources, I still like to follow chapterized courses, especially on Udemy. On a sale day I can grab a comprehensive chapterised video course for less than 20 Dollars, a steal in comparison to a college course.