LPI Linux Certification/Plan

V1.0

Introduction

I am not sure all will agree, but looking through the pages of the book it all appeared a little to dry to me. Some topics i felt need expanding and the structure of each page could do with some useful Tips boxes, Revision Boxes etc. the layout needs a little overhaul. Personally looking through the wiki books already in place i liked the Introduction/Audience/TOC on the front page keep it is clean and easy to navigate. The LPI books Covers a serious amount of ground in Linux as it is a very comprehensive set of exams so we are going to tread on toes or look to possible mergers.

Audience

LPI Candidates - we need to make the book to mostly capture this audience and the structure should be a cover to cover read with links to deeper articles explaining concepts, links to further revising points. I like the "for dummy's" Idea of a splatering of "Top Tips" "Know This" " Be Carefull Here" "workshops" etc.
The i need to find something out brigade - Although we need to stick strictly too the LPI, This book will contain valuable snippets of "how-to" type documents especially as we move on to such topics as bash scripting, kernel compiles, Samba, NFS, etc. So we need to make this information easy to find and each article not Section should stand on it's own merits. We can make this format easily fit in with the cover to cover version. And the front page TOC should help a lot with the navigation.

Overall layout Suggested front Page

Stop!! Don't Create these pages yet this is a suggested way forward :)

LPI Linux Certification/Junior Level Linux Professional <---- Exam Page
- Hardware & Architecture <---- Section Header
  - LPI Linux Certification/Configuring The BIOS <---- Module Page
  - LPI Linux Certification/Configuring Modem & Sound Cards<---- Module Page
  - LPI Linux Certification/Setup SCSI Devices<---- Module Page
  - LPI Linux Certification/Setup Different PC Expansion Cards<---- Module Page
  - LPI Linux Certification/Configure Communications Devices<---- Module Pages
  - LPI Linux Certification/Configuring USB Devices<---- Module Page
- Linux Installation & Package Management <---- Section Header

So the reader will be presented with this obviously

Junior Level Linux Professional
- Hardware & Architecture
- Linux Installation & Package Management

The above will kind of form our front page TOC with perhaps a external root link to the LPI web site as a resource.

A little More detail on Layout

Front Page

Introduction should include target Audience, What to expect, Explanation of Section and page layout, TOC.

Section Pages

Should contain Objectives of each module, List what you should know before you start each module and links to further reading to help prepare the reader in that regard. Caveats may go here?

Module Pages

Should contain an Introduction of the subject, An example of the subject, Further reading, The course has related components such as hardware relates to /proc and /dev pseudo file systems these should also be listed with links for further reading. Note Warnings should be given where tools or the student may be led to try things out on there computer that might make it inoperable Such as hdparm, fdisk, BIOS settings etc. (I know they should know better but we are not at work and that old "Your the new guy!! emmm here is the boss's laptop he has been complaining that the boot process is too slow can you change some stuff in the BIOS to speed it up?" Routine may not go down well :).

Moving Forward

Here's where i would like some advice. How do we go about this do we work in tandem with the original site ie create the new pages and change the front page as new content comes online? Do we create a new front page with a link to the old section and work alongside. There is a lot of original content that effectively gives us the objectives etc that all looks reasonable and accurate which will save us some work. If i don't hear or see any input i will just work away on it.
As has been suggested in the discussion page, we will also need to keep in mind that the administration of the book be as simple as possible. An idea put forward is a flatter structure to the book. Further, to this we may want to avoid using links where possible, try to keep the content generic and on topic. We will need to work at a balance I am well aware for instance that wikipedia has an excellent article on the definition and role of a computer BIOS. We should not need to write that all out here clearly maintaining that link is preferable, rather i see us complementing that article with a run down of the menu system within the BIOS. How various options within the BIOS work?

Consistency

For reasons only my mother would understand i took it upon myself whilst writing out the front page TOC to use ampersands through out. Further i used uppercase letters at the beginning of each word!! When it came to merge the contents from the original book that i realised what a pain this was. It had one good side effect it has caused me to go through all the original menus and make sure they tally both with the current LPI spec as well as my own menus. I guess it now makes sense to maintain this format, obviously not crucial but may make sense? Darklama has suggested the use - instead / in all links. which i have to admit beats my slash idea.
Please post all comments on the discussion page, if the ideas are good then we will move them into here.

completed thus far

I have now completed the up to date detailed objectives for LPI101
I have also completed the full TOC and ratified with LPI for LPI101
I have also completed all merge of data from old book to new book into each new sections for LPI101
left to do is the cleanup for data merge for this has now been completed LPI101
LPI102 - add detailed Objectives completed
LPI102 Ratify the TOC with LPI completed
Merge of old book to new now completed

Now merge has been completed we move on

I have formated the front page so that it looks a lot better and reads better too.
currently i am now working on the junior level exam page