I did it, I finally did it. I just purchased the Linux Essentials exam voucher and took the exam: I passed.

To be fair, I barely passed and barely studied the material. My chain of thought was that because I took some courses in college (back in 2013-14) and took a online course during September, 2020, I just needed a "refresher"and I studied for 4 weeks. Consequently the score I received was like 570 out of 800. Passing was above 500 points. Not a great score, but it was a passing score. Let me say this, this is a certificate, not a certification. Its almost like CompTIA ITF+; therefore, it's an introduction.

So let me explain what I did in four weeks and what study material I used to pass this exam and got the certificate.

I like Jason Dion's videos, so I went to his website on April 2, and purchased a voucher, just because I wanted to support him. The price was cheaper than the Linux Professional Institute's (LPI) site and I used an online coupon code. The price was like $95 and I saved $25!

Speaking about Dion...

Jason Dion has Linux Essential at LinkedIn Learning and if you are a premium user, then the videos are free to watch. However, the second cheapest place to watch is at Udemy and using a coupon code can bring the price to $10-15. However, LinkedIn has no practice exams, while Udemy has 1 included or you can purchase more if you want to.

Dion's Linux video course was like 8 hours and I believe I started watching these videos in the second week and I only watched 30-45 minutes a day.

Below are are the only two websites that I used for reading material:

https://learning.lpi.org/en/learning-materials/010-160/

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-linux

LPI had online reading and some quizzes at the end of each lesson. However, I can't concentrate reading them online, so I had to print some lessons or force myself to read it online. Also, I believe some lessons were too short. I doubt that everything was covered for the exam. Anyway moving on.

Edx.org, another online education that offers some, and I mean few, low cost education. I took the Introduction to Linux by LinuxFoundationX and Edx and I paid zero dollars. I could have bought the course for $169 that included some quizzes and a certificate, but I did not want to spend any money.

By week 3-4, I only read like 50 to 60% of the material from both websites. And boy, the score I received was low because I did not have time to read all the material. When I received the score, the subjects that I needed to improve were the Power of the Command Line (55%) and the Security and File Permissions (57%).

Anyway, I was happy that I took this exam, because I was curious and there were days that I regret not taking this exam right after college.

Honorable mentions:

https://www.netdevgroup.com/online/courses/open-source/linux-essentials

Okay, I took this free online course back in August-September, 2021. I like it and Netacad is still the best value for online learning.

https://itsfoss.com/learn-linux-for-free/

I regret not finding this website sooner. It offers 25 online websites that offer free legal ebooks. If I have known better, I would print some eBooks and read them at lunch time. I would recommend Linux-training.be Paul Cobbaut's ebook and http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php William Shotts' ebook because they were easy to read.

So what's next? I don't know. However, I am thinking of taking CompTIA Linux+ or LPIC-1 101-500 next. Only time will tell.

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