David Clinton wrote: > Are my impressions about the relevance of most of Topic 106 correct? Is > this something that is undergoing revision?
There are probably few areas in current Linux where there is more churn than graphics. Until a few years ago, there wasn't really a lot going on, but that has changed radically, and – as usual – the LPI exams are somewhat slow in catching on. > Also, is it just because I personally haven't come across it, or is X > font server really an anachronism? The X11 font server was basically an anachronism already even when LPI was new. It was a reasonable idea in the early 1990s, around the time that X terminals were a commercially viable proposition. It turns out that during the 1990s people figured out they could use el-cheapo PCs with Linux instead of X terminals from big-name workstation manufacturers that were a lot more expensive even though they had really sucky graphics hardware (think »pick 256 colours out of 16 million«), and those el-cheapo PCs came with hard disks that could actually store all the fonts an X server could ever require, and/or supported NFS so they could obtain fonts without involving a font server. Essentially the ascent of Linux mirrors (and catalysed) the decline of the X terminal. The other observation is that font management has changed drastically during the reboot of X11 rendering in the last decade or so, and again left the font server behind. Currently there is no conceivable use for an X font server on Linux, and when we do the next revision of LPIC-1 content I personally would suggest to stick that particular part of Topic 106 where the sun never shines. > Here's a partial list of files that no longer seem to exist on either > Ubuntu or Fedora (in case of xorg.conf, it hasn't existed by default > since version 9.10): The thing with xorg.conf is that the X developers have done wonders in order to ensure that basic setups work without actually having to write an xorg.conf file, but you may still need the file if you want to do fancier things. So the fact that Ubuntu doesn't provide an xorg.conf file by default doesn't really mean a lot since for most cases the X server can figure out the system by itself, but the principle of xorg.conf is by no means obsolete. The problem with looking at current versions of Ubuntu and Fedora and comparing what these distributions do with the LPIC exams is that both of them are bleeding-edge distributions which – by design – aggressively take on stuff that is fairly new. Hence, for example, Fedora uses systemd, which has earned a mention in the latest version of LPIC-1 but still does not play a big part in the actual exam (this is likely to change in the future). It makes more sense to evaluate the content of the LPIC objectives with regard to »enterprise« distributions such as RHEL, SLES, CentOS, or Debian, which move a lot more slowly and whose make-up is usually closer to what the LPIC exams talk about than techno-geek distributions like Fedora would be. It also turns out that these distributions, rather than Ubuntu or Fedora, are the ones that are most popular in the »professional« circles that LPI targets. Anselm (This is my personal opinion and not that of either Linup Front GmbH or LPI.) -- Anselm Lingnau ... Linup Front GmbH ... Linux-, Open-Source- & Netz-Schulungen [email protected], +49(0)6151-9067-103, Fax -299, www.linupfront.de Linup Front GmbH, Postfach 100121, 64201 Darmstadt, Germany Sitz: Weiterstadt (AG Darmstadt, HRB7705), Geschäftsführer: Oliver Michel _______________________________________________ lpi-examdev mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
