Okay... as it says on our web site at http://www.lpi.org/c-process.html, the target for Level 2 must be able to do the following tasks:

• Administers a small to medium-sized site: can plan, implement, maintain, keep consistent, secure, and troubleshoot a small mixed (MS, Linux) network.
• LAN server (samba)
• Internet Gateway (firewall, proxy, mail, news)
• Internet Server (webserver, simple CGI)
• Supervises 0 to some assistants
• Advises management on automation and purchases
  

Don't take this as the "end all be all" for the target specification though. The serious student will want to make an examination of our Level 2 objectives: http://www.lpi.org/p-L2-obj-pre.html. I know that page says it's a draft but the only thing that might change now is the numbering, the content is pretty well set, at this point.

Will LPI offer specialist certifications in future, e.g. Linux security etc.?

That's been our plan from the beginning... our intent for Level 3 has always been that it would consist of areas of specialization and I think what we've done and what we're planning, mirrors the career path of a typical Linux admin. Start out green and junior (LPIC1) while you learn from the older heads, advance into the middle of your career (LPIC2) as your skills mature and then later, whether you like it or not you become a bit of a gray beard (LPIC3) with specialized skills.

We have some possible examples of what LPIC 3 may be like listed at http://www.lpi.org/c-process.html so I'm not going to quote them, they're only examples but it's a safe bet that LPIC 3 will be a pair of very specialized exams.

CompTIA is going to start offering Linux+ exam. Is this going to overlap with LPI level 1 exam?

Now *that's* an interesting question! :-) I'm happy to answer it... We worked with Comptia for a long time to ensure that Linux+ did not overlap substantively with LPIC1 and I'm quite pleased to report that that's the way that it turned out. What we have in Linux+ is an excellent "beginning Linux" test and it also tracks perfectly as a feeder into LPIC1.

To give you a clearer picture of how long that effort took and how serious we were about making sure that Linux+ benefited the community, you have to understand that board members of LPI were having discussions with Comptia (and internal wrestling matches between LPI board members :-) all the way back in the spring and summer of 1999 so it's been a long haul for us. But... now that it's done I couldn't be happier about the way it's turned out!

I think so. Economic reality has slowed financial sponsorships down to a trickle, but our supporters are still there for us and they've not wavered. We've done really well internationally and are continuing to grow around the world. We have a very active LPI organization in Japan (LPI Japan, Inc.) which is headed up by Gen Narui (Gen is also on the LPI, Inc. board) and it looks like we're about to have the same thing happening in China and Korea (ROK). There has been so much interest that it's really difficult to keep track of all the developments in real time. We have an international mailing list headed up by Greg Wright of Australia and he's been doing a great job promoting LPI and assisting all the people trying to build LPI organizations internationally. One place I'd like to see us do a better job of getting our message out is in Europe. At one time we seemed to have quite a bit of momentum there but over the last year or so things have slowed a bit. Any one from Europe interested in discussing how to promote LPI and/or how to develop an organization similar to LPI Japan should contact me at csm@lpi.org or Greg Wright at greg@lpi.org.

One of the most difficult things for us is the regular care and feeding of our communication lines. We know LPI isn't always the top priority in people's days so we've been trying to come up with new ways to keep our community updated on our progress. We have a newsletter which we send out monthly (those wanting to subscribe should go here: http://www.lpi.org/listar/lsg2

and subscribe to the lpi-announce mailing list) and we've recently set up a couple of sub-domains to try and help us do a better job of staying in touch... one of them is for our Alumni (LPIC1 or above; at http://alumni.lpi.org) and the other is of more general interest (http://news.lpi.org).

Uhm... yeah... study hard, because if you're just starting out with Linux these tests are very difficult. Oh... and they're not easy for the experienced hand either...

Oh... also... one of my pet peeves... there are people out there who take tests really well and might try to challenge our tests after doing some reading but never having any hands on experience...

Please... LPI is a non-profit for a reason... we didn't want to have to make money that badly... don't do it! A case in point was an email exchange I read yesterday where a person preparing to take our exams made it clear by their questions that they had never even installed Linux, much less tried to administer it. The respondent made it clear what they thought about that and so will I... it's silly. If you're a newbie and you want to take our tests, at least run Linux on a home system so you can get your hands on it! If you don't want to buy a boxed set you can download just about every version available from here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/