A.P. Lawrence's Linux Skills Test
These tests are all badly in need of update. Some questions are incorrect because of changing technology and others just make no sense in today's IT world. I do intend to update these, but it's a big project..
Copyright 2002,2003,2004 A.P. Lawrence
These questions are intended to test your knowledge, but they are also intended to help you learn more about Linux by examples and just by making you aware of things you might not have known about.
I've had various complaints about my tests. Things like "that's RedHat 9 specific" or "that's a hardware issue". Yes - some of the questions are OS version specific and some are hardware related. The PURPOSE of these tests is so a qualified person can DISCUSS answers with a job applicant. The tests are FREE: you can pay hundreds of dollars for tests that have similar defects. Some of those are listed farther down the page.
There are 880 questions here. Each question is rated as E Easy M Moderate or T Tough.
The qualification of Easy, Moderate or Tough, is completely arbitrary and highly subject to my own prejudices. Roughly, the Easy questions are those I would expect even a beginner to know, while the Moderate are what I expect an average administrator should know. Tough are things many administrators can handle, but I don't really expect them to.
I originally developed these for testing tech job applicants - I'd sit down with the person and have them verbally answer a few dozen questions like this.. it gave me a real good idea of how broad their skills were (tech and admin folk need broad skills).. anyway, it might help show you where your weak areas are. Some of the questions are very basic, some aren't, but if you find yourself really thrown by a lot of them, you need a lot of work. Most of the people who answer questions at help forums or newsgroups would likely waltz through them and quit out of boredom rather soon - if that's your experience, you are probably well prepared to be an admin. And if not.. well, learning just takes time and effort, right?
If you are using these questions to help study for certification exams, they may be useful, but you will need other resources and there is no substitute for actual experience.
There's no scoring; you can tell yourself if you are doing well or not.
I want to particularly thank Wade Altman who has pointed out numerous errors and has significantly contributed toward improving the quality of these tests.
Got something to add? Send me email!
More Articles by Tony Lawrence
Find me on Google+
© 2008-10-23 Tony Lawrence
Printer Friendly Version
Linux Skills Tests Copyright © December 2002 Tony Lawrence
Have you tried Searching this site?
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X support by phone, email or on-site: Support Rates
This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more.
Contact us
Printer Friendly Version