>> Well, that's the thing. In the Real World, it's trivial to look up what
>> some specific obscure option does.
>
> Removing a package is, arguably, not an obscure option one would use
> occasionally.

Sure. But usually you wouldn't use rpm -e, you would use one of several 
far more user-friendly tools such as Yum or Zypper or whatever.

> There are some things that, while you *can* look them up, if
> you're competent, you should never *need* to look up.
>
> Remember that a certification exam is a measure of a minimally qualified
> candidate to do a particular job or task.  A minimally qualified
> candidate on Linux *should* be able to install/remove packages without
> having to look the command up every time they do it.

The problem being that the exam requires you to know how to use every 
possible package manager of every possible distro, not just the one you 
actually use every single day.

If you ask me how to use Zypper, I can answer that. I use it all the 
time. But if you ask me how to work, oh, ANY OTHER SYSTEM, I'm probably 
not going to know the answer. But if some day I need to use one, I can 
easily look this stuff up, and if I end up using it a lot I'll quickly 
stop needing to look this stuff up.

I understand that it's important to know how to use different package 
managers. I just disagree it's necessary to know every single one of 
them to the level of detail where you've memorised every single option 
and flag available. You're only going to do that for the one particular 
system you use regularly.

Then again, I guess I should just be thankful there weren't more 
questions about Vi. Do you know, the other day I had 3 LPIC-1 certified 
staff crowding around my monitor, and between the four of us we couldn't 
work out how to copy and paste a chunk of text using Vi...

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