On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:19:25 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> 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.

Except those tools aren't common across multiple distributions.  'rpm' is.

And if you're trying to manage it in a distro-agnostic way, then you'd 
use the more common tool.

>> 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.

It's a generic Linux exam - so yes, it's going to ask about things 
relating to different distros.

If you want a certification that's for a specific distro, you get that 
from the maker of the distro (a CLP from SUSE, a RHCE from RedHat, etc.)

> 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.

The point of the exam is to measure a minimum set of necessary skills, 
though, and for LPI, that's a cross-distro certification, so it's - by 
its very nature - going to look for things that are broader than "on 
openSUSE, what command would you use to remove a package".  That kind of 
question doesn't meet the goal of being about general Linux knowledge.

"What general command do you use to remove an RPM?" does meet that 
objective.

It's important to learn according to the learning objectives for an exam 
when preparing to take the exam.  There is, in fact, an entire ISO 
standard devoted to creating learning objectives so an exam can be 
created independently from the content - both derive from the same 
learning objectives.  (ISO/IEC 17024 in case anyone's interested.)

> 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.

It's not "every single option", though, it's one of the more common 
options one would use.

> 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...

Or indeed on how to exit it when you've finished. <scnr> ;)

BTW, well done on the exam score. :)

Jim

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