You should be able to earn your LPI Level 1 certification as early as this summer.

CNN: Community efforts in Linux certification

For one thing, members have rethought how LPI would handle the problem of testing for distribution-specific knowledge.

CNN: Community efforts in Linux certification

The result was a merger of the lists and the formation of LPI.

CNN: Community efforts in Linux certification

Originally, LPI planned to offer two tests, one general and one distribution specific.

CNN: Community efforts in Linux certification

The current LPI organization is blended from two separate mailing lists and a third Linux community certification project, Digital Metrics.

CNN: Community efforts in Linux certification

Instead, the people at LPI have designed one section of the second exam to deal with differences between dpkg and RPM package management.

CNN: Community efforts in Linux certification

He helped to found CLUE, the Canadian Linux Users Exchange, and it was from CLUE's general mailing list that the first roots of the LPI appeared.

CNN: Community efforts in Linux certification

According to the ETF Finder at ETF Channel, LPI makes up 1.27% of the First Trust Energy AlphaDEX Fund ETF ( AMEX: FXN )which is trading up by about 0.6% on the day Thursday.

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Among the largest underlying components of XOP, in trading today Rex Energy Corp ( NASD: REXX) is up about 0.2%, Comstock Resources, Inc. ( NYSE: CRK) is down about 0.9%, and Laredo Petroleum Holdings Inc ( NYSE: LPI) is lower by about 0.3%.

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But as LPI members looked more closely at the feedback received from the community about the types of things that a junior, intermediate, and advanced Linux admin should know, they discovered that the places where the distributions were different -- primarily their installation and selection of GUI -- weren't areas that needed to be tested that deeply.

CNN: Community efforts in Linux certification