Customer Reviews

LPIC-1 In Depth

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I passed the LPIC-1 101 exam October 15th, 2009 using this book as my study guide. I used VMWare 6.5 Workstation to create my lab environment. BTW, you have to have a lab environment, seriously. Some of the other reviewers cited typos. Yes, there are a few and yes the publisher should have an errata page, however, I still give the book five stars as it is the best LPIC-1 guide I've found. You can read it quickly, perform the exercises quickly, and test yourself quickly.

I hope to pass the LPIC-1 102 exam in a few weeks. So far the 102 exam sections are right on target.

Update 12/30/2009

I passed the 102 exam today. The 102 exam section of the book is also very good. However, make sure you know the cited configuration files and their content very well.

Good Luck!

I like the structure of this book and the writing style. The author seems to have put effort into it.

I have to agree with some other reviews that there are errors. More importantly, there is no errata for the book on the publisher's web site. All technical books have some errors, and publishing errata is a long-established common practice in the technical book community. Doing so requires very little effort, so there is no excuse. Not providing errata is an obvious indicator of a publishing company that is less than professional.

I'm not sure how Michael Jang selected CEngage/Course Technology for publishing the book, but he clearly could have done better.

This book, overall, is pretty good. Michael Jang knows the material, but like other Michael Jang books, he gets repetitive, going over the same data on more than one occasion, which seems like page padding. In other areas, his descriptions seem to be confusing. Reading the book as a primer, and then using Man Pages to clear things up seems like a must, but this is one of the few books out there for the new 2009 LPIC 1 test. I have not completed this book, but as I have said, the potential for improvement is definitely there.

I have since moved on to Chapter 5 and I must say this book feels rushed, though the info is pretty good. The amount of typos should have been caught. There is no excuse for the ones on the chapter exams.

I am adding more. This should NOT have been a 3 star book. The errors were not flukes, they were all over the place and Frankly, I wonder why somebody would give it 5 stars for something so inaccurate, so to make it nearly unusable for test prep. If you know your material and want a book to help you go over some objectives then this will work, but it seems like the book had multiple versions that were stitched together without remark for the answers being accurate and lots of copy/paste of the same material, nearly word for word, to get the page count up.

I just got this book since I am going to take the combined Linux+/LPI exam being offered by Comptia. I read most of the LPIC-1 book by Roderick Smith and his PDF Linux+ book. I found that he presented things well but I wanted another book to supplement my preparation for the exam.

The good thing is that I am finding myself understanding things much clearer and the two LPIC books complement each other but there are some caveats to this book that I am not so sure about either the usefulness about the guide (I read 6 chapters so far). They are as follows...

1) Some of his comments are not necessary and either are his opinion or incorrect.

2) There have been some typos as noted and that worries me that I am getting the wrong information (so I double check many of the command syntax). Some of his comments lead to misunderstanding and a few of his answers to his questions are wrong or can have another answer since some of the chapter questions are written in a vague fashion.

3) The topics are somewhat brief and the reader may miss an important phrase (some extra bold fonts would help).

4) He talks about things somewhat in more detail compared to Roderick Smith's book including more options for commands but there is some overkill where he talks about things that are relatively obscure and I do not believe on the exam (extra vi commands, and other things) but I may be wrong.

5) His chapter questions are mostly multiple choice but some are long answers. He also does this on the sample tests as well. I believe the LPIC test is all multiple choice so why does he do this... The other book is all multiple choice answers...

Update:

I will be taking this exam soon... The more I read of this book, the more that I am finding errors which are significant (that need to be fixed) for example some options are capitols when they should be lower case (for example the passwd command options -U and -L, unlocking and locking, should be -u and -l respectively) which I verified with a few sources so beware and check things while reading this book.

Have not gone through the books content yet but the cd has some info on it and exe files. Really? I would have to run windows in a virt to use the cd. Come on guys it's a linux book and your cd is windows

This book presents material in a good, in depth fashion. I took and read through the book beginning to end, dedicating one night per chapter. I took and passed the LPI-102 exam and now am going to take the LPI-101 exam.

The only problem I had was that the binding didn't hold up very well on this book. Within a day of beginning serious study with this book the binding started to fall apart and pages began coming out of the book. I don't know if it was a problem with my copy or if there's a larger problem. I wound up taking all the pages out of the book and putting them in a three ring binder.

I had several problems with this book, to start with there are many syntax errors in this book. So if you aren't experimenting with the commands while you are reading the book and discovering which ones don't work, you will be taking the test using incorrect syntax. Secondly not only are some of his definitions incorrect but also there are instances in the glossary that the terms and definitions are mismatched. Finally there is very little emphasis on topics that you find out during the test should have been elaborated on more. I did pass the first test but only after spending a lot of time revising my notes from online sources and man pages. My advice, go with the book that is currently recommended for self study on the CompTIA web site.

Does it's job of preparing you for the exam well enough. However, it's shallow on certain objectives and there are a slew of errors throughout the book including some within the assessment questions - the last place you would want errors. I ended up purchasing the Sybex LPIC-1 Study Guide 2nd Ed and it's much more comprehensive. The questions are also more difficult and better prepare you for the exam. Get both books if you have the money or just bypass this one and get the Sybex book if you don't.

I think a second edition with expanded content, harder review questions, and errata corrections would bump this to four or more stars.

I thought this was an excellent book for not only preparing for the test, but a great desktop reference book. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone looking to pass the exam or just looking to become a better Linux user.

Michael Jang's LPIC-1 IN DEPTH explores the LPIC-1 exams and offers nearly 500 practice questions to provide the latest test prep guide available for both Linux Professional Institute Level 1 exams 101 and 102. It's a 'must' for any taking the exams, with chapter summaries, key terms, review questions and more offering multiple learning paths. Very highly recommended.