Customer Reviews

Linux+ Study Guide, 3rd Edition (XKO-002)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been a casual Linux user for about three years, and a serious student of Linux networking and programming for about a year, so I figured that all I would need to pass the Linux+ exam is a little time with study guide. So I studied this book for two weeks, then went and took the test, and failed. That was my own fault, I didn't apply myself. So I went back, worked through every step of every example in the book, memorized everything I could, and got to the point where I could correctly answer every end of chapter question and scored 89% the first time I took the sample exam included on the CD-ROM. I took the test again and failed again. There were many, many questions on the test that were nowhere to be found in this book, relating to both hardware and software.
I'm definitely not saying this is a bad book, because I learned a lot by studying it, and the style is clear and interesting. Mr. Smith's coverage of printing via lpr and CUPS is excellent and made those areas clear to me for the first time, and his coverage of package management was first rate. I'm just saying that if you are looking for a sure-fire way to pass the Linux+ exam you need a lot more than just this book. CompTIA recommends that you take the A+ and Network+ exams before taking Linux+, and based on my experience that seems like a good idea.

Or maybe I'm just stupid. But I thought I'd let everyone know.

I found this book to be, overall, very good preparation material. It did manage to cover material on all levels and went into sufficient detail for most areas. Smith's writing was pretty clear in most areas, although I found some explanations to be a little too terse though (they lacked the needed detail). While it covered a vast majority of the subject relatively well, there were areas where it did not adequately prepare for the test. That being said, I read about 7 books relating to Linux/Unix over the past year (not all pertaining to this exam), and none of them covered EVERYTHING in the Linux+ exam to a satisfactory degree. In fact, even if I were to pick any two books, I doubt I'd find a combination that covered absolutely everything in the exam objectives to the fullest extent.

I also happened to read Robb Tracy's Linux+ book in addition to this one. I'd say that this Sybex book is less geared to novices than Robb Tracy's book. I think it is assumed that you already know a bit more about the operating system. Even so, this is still at heart only a slightly more advanced "intro to Linux" book. It spends a lot of time with background explanations and conceptual understanding - something I don't really feel you need for this test. You need to know how to operate commands and tools. Not to mention, you should already have some knowledge of the how and why before even starting to study. Either way, it still does a reasonably good job of giving you the information you need to know for the exam.

While I didn't read any more Linux+ books, I did happen to find a much better alternative than the books previously mentioned. The LPIC Exam Cram book from Ross Brunson is hands down the best preparation for this test (assuming you do have some experience with Linux). Let's face it, the test is almost all command line knowledge, and doesn't test your conceptual understanding much at all. The exam cram format fit perfectly, and Brunson's writing was both concise and extremely lucid. In a very simple pattern, the book went over all the commands, what they do and how to manipulate them. It did a great job as not reading like a bunch of rehashed man pages, and did an amazing job of clarifying everything in very little page space. This is just what you need for the Linux+ exam. The scope of this book also came the closest to covering the entire objectives, although it was lacking in a few parts here and there. IF YOU ARE GOING TO BUY ONE BOOK, GO WITH THE BRUNSON LPIC EXAM CRAM. I think if you were to pair the exam cram book with Smith's Sybex book it would give you an excellent chance of passing.

Other honorable mentions included "the Linux Administration Handbook", and the Testout Linux+ computer based training CD's. The Linux Administration handbook is a great reference to have and takes a more practical approach (not exam oriented). The Testout cbt courses do not actually cover a lot, but they are the best instructional video's I've seen (CBT nuggets was way too short and not in depth). The Testout material is more geared to learning linux than passing the test though.

ABOUT THE TEST:

Without violating the NDA, I'll try to do my best to describe the experience and what you need to do to pass. I scored an 855 out of 900, but I have close to 2 years hands on experience and have done extensive reading on the topic (part of the reason is I just wanted to become more Linux proficient, most of it wasn't for the exam or even within the objectives).

First let me say, the test is very straight forward (not necessarily easy though). It maps to the objectives perfectly, and almost all of the questions I received were clearly written (unlike the Server+ test). One gripe I had with the test is that if you DO NOT use the BASH shell and you use the Csh or equivalent, you will be picking the wrong answers. I think in the objectives it states that you are to know the BASH shell, and the questions are written with this assumption. However, if you use a csh and they ask a question that has a valid response for the csh, you may be instinctively picking the wrong answer (even though it may be right for the csh).

My biggest gripe with the test though was that the suggested experience is severely misleading. I don't think 6 to 12 months experience is nearly enough to know what is needed for this test. I think if we were to say 6-12 months, we'd have to assume that you are actively using the OS 8 hours a day for a whole 6 months. From my experience however, Linux is often used in a server environment where its configuration is changed infrequently. I know a lot of Apache, MySql administrators who don't really do much until there is a problem or they need to make changes (which may not be often).

A lot of people who are bonafide administrators with a good amount of experience who don't intensively study for this test may be disappointed with the results. The material covered doesn't go far enough to test real proficiency in areas that some administrators work in (if you're an Apache, DNS or NIS expert, you really won't get extra points). The test is also likely to go beyond what some are normally used to. It's a very "old school" type test. If you look at the objectives, there is no material about getting wireless networking to work, running Wine, or what GUI tool does what. The test is complete command line system's administration, which goes deeper than many of us newcomers are used to (let's face it, we can use GUI tools for a lot of stuff nowadays). Do not underestimate it.

That being said, here are some helpful tips to pass:

Learn the following things, in order of importance
1) Know the location and purpose of every major config file.
2) Know all the major command-line tools and what they do (you may need to reference a few books to get full coverage here).
3) Know the more common switches for command line operations (don't beat yourself up about knowing the more obscure ones)
4) Know the major settings in the listed config files. You won't have to build a config file from scratch (remember, its multiple choice), but you should know what does what inside that config file.

If you are just learning Linux, and/or do not have any other IT experience or certifications... take a step back. Knowing your hardware and networking is a must and covers about 15% of the objectives. This is one of the more difficult tests to "fudge" your way through. Its simply too much to memorize, so you are going to have to actually spend time doing some of the things in the XK0-002 objectives. As mentioned, Testout is a great video instructional tool if you don't learn well from reading.

Use more than one source!!!! Reading a single book will not allow you to pass the test like with some other certifications. In fact, reading alone won't do it. You are probably going to have to set up VMware and do quite a bit of practicing on an actual command line. (I recommend using fedora core or SuSe).

Remember to actually READ the objectives (free download from comptia.org). You won't know what you haven't covered and how important each topic is without the objectives. Knowing what you need to know and how heavily weighted the area is makes a BIG difference.

Invest in practice test questions, or testing simulators. This is where you will find out what you really know and what you don't know. The questions at the end of the chapter's in your books help, but they are very poor preparation. After a practice test or so I realized I simply didn't understand the X windows configuration (I thought I did before hand though). Testing your knowledge is the best way to find out what you are weak in, and you don't want to find this out when you take the actual exam.

Good luck, I hope this helps!

Currently I'm on the sixth chapter of this book and so far so good. For those who are pursuing CompTIA's Linux+ certification I believe, according to CompTIA, that this book will provide all the help and resources that you need to pass the exam. One qualm though, grammatical errors and a few incorrect verbage.It would have been best that they were omitted. The author uses,"however," and, "though," so much and incorrectly that it makes reading difficult and not very enjoyable. So far I believe his, "however," means, "for example," you can try that and see if it helps, I have not figured out, "though" as yet. "However," if you can get around these quirks, then you'll be rewarded to know that this book is complete for the Linux+ certification and very informative, "though."

Last April I bought this book along with Linux+ 2005 by Jason Eckert to pass the Linux+ exam. I read both books twice over a 4 month period and passed the exam the first time. I am an MCSE and CCNA with minimal Unix/Linux experience, and I was pleased with the background the books provided for the test questions. For me, both books were worth the money and I keep them handy as reference material.

I've been a Linux user since Slackware 3.0 was new. I'm looking at Linux+ because I'm going back to school for computer science in the fall and I want to brush up on my skills, fill in a few gaps in my knowledge, and maybe get that knowledge recognized for college credit or at least a merit badge.

This book is a bit out of date at best, though some of that may have more to do with the fact that CompTIA's exam objectives are probably due for an update. As an example, Ubuntu, with something like 25% of the Linux market, isn't even mentioned as existing in the "rundown of Linux distributions" in chapter 1. On the up side, things like vi and bash haven't changed their interfaces much, so this is less of a problem than you might think.

It's also a bit light in some important areas. As an example, a total of 15 pages are devoted to making X11 work. (If you could fix a broken X server with just a text editor and a the man pages would you really need this book?)

One particularly galling thing is that the eBook on the CD-ROM uses Adobe DRM, and thus is useless on a Linux based machine, despite the claim on the back cover about "software that runs on both Linux and Windows." This is a bit of a problem for me, because I use Linux enough that I've purchased a book about it. I don't really use Windows. But I use eBooks. So it would be nice to, you know, have an eBook about Linux that works on Linux. (Otherwise I would probably have given this book 3 of 5 stars. . .)

All in all, not bad if you've got some experience with other OS's and want to learn how to use the Linux command line, or if you've got some pretty solid Linux knowledge and want to pass the Linux+ exam. Probably not what you want if you're a Linux newcomer or somebody who actually wants to do something with Linux other than take a test about how it works.

This book was the main focus of my studies... I have been doing administration for 4 years now, so it was mostly just to fill in blanks. It did well with that respect to things. 1 night of study of this book and one other, and I was good to go. After browsing through the chapter content a bit, I would suggest having a second book available to contrast this book. If you can't really afford it though, go through the book, and take time to actually perform the various functions and examples throughout the book. That should get you ready for the test.
Please note that the Linux + is a low-mid level linux test, but does require some amount of time in order to pass it. If you still use Windows or even X for things, you may want to hold off on this test until you are able to gain some experience with a *nix system command line and perform some base administration on that system.
Either way, good luck to you!

I just finished the 4th chapter and took the review test. Like all the other chapters, I missed 50%. I might as well be studying klingon. I barely have a clue what they are talking about. I'm A+, Network+ certified, using study guides from Que publishing. These study guides were a walk in the park compared to Linux+ from Sybex. I'll go ahead and finish the book because I paid good money for it, but I can see now, I'll never pass the exam with this study guide. This guide was written for people who already know Linux, not for someone trying to figure it out. If you already know Linux, this guide would be great reference material, as it has hundreds of commands and switchs, but very vague explanations of what these commands and switchs do. I'm also using CBT Nuggets Linux+ video training and have Red Hat 9 installed on a box I built from scratch. Even with all this, I'm still only obtaining about 50% of what I'm studying. I'll still need more and better explanation of linux to ever pass the exam.

I bought this book because I had such good luck with Sybex. I got my A+ and Network+ with the Sybex books. But this one fell short....WAY short. I took the test after reading the book and taking the practice exams; and I also took 2 Linux classes (which is a year of Linux) at my school...and FAILED! I got a 570 (you need a 675 to pass). So I studied again for 3 more weeks and took the test for the second time...FAILED AGAIN! None of the questions on the test were covered in this book; this book is a great starter book. But, if you want to pass I recommend that you buy at LEAST one more book. Also I recommend that you download a Linux distrobution and use it everyday for at least 6 months. I'm going to buy another book, and possibly another one after that. Don't underestimate this test...It's WAY harder than the A+ and Network+ put together. Good Luck!

The book lacks clearly defined 'practice sections' where you can test some of the commands and features explained in the book.

This is a good book that helps you prepare for the Linux+ exam. Very useful.