Road to Linux+
First of all, what is CompTIA Linux+ and why take it?
Here's the description from CompTIA:
"CompTIA Linux+ validates the skills of IT professionals with hands-on experience configuring, monitoring, and supporting servers running the Linux operating system. The new exam has an increased focus on the following topics: security, kernel modules, storage & visualization, device management at an enterprise level, git & automation, networking & firewalls, server side & command line, server (vs. client-based) coverage, troubleshooting and SELinux."
Not sure if Linux+ is for you? Find out more here.
So how did I do it? Here is my 6-week journey to Linux+ certified.
What was my starting knowledge?
Before starting studying for the Linux+ exam, my knowledge would be around 10% — 15 % of what’s needed. Transitioning from B.S. Business Administration, my IT knowledge is quite limited. However, so far, I have finished the first year of M.S. Computer Science, that means I know how to program, setting up environments, using software, used to reading terminal messages and errors, able to partition disks for OS installations, using GitHub for basic collaboration and individual projects, worked with Amazon AWS services times to times, that's pretty much it! Sounds like a lot but definitely not enough to just show up at the Linux+ exam and pass.
I had the learning materials since September 2019, but never really made any progress. Everyone who passed the exam before advised me to read all the book, so I tried, but the number of 700+ pages just wasn’t pleasant to me, I kept opening the book once in a while, and hardly finish one chapter, if you are not a big reader, you can understand my struggle.
Make it happen!
Knowing myself as a learner by practice and an animal of procrastination, I decided to change my study method and schedule the test 3 weeks out, so that I can force myself to focus.
Now the test is booked, I'm motivated, told myself no rescheduling, let's just do it.
Strategies — Stage 1
With 3 weeks, I have to be smart about my strategies. At this stage, my study routine consists of CompTIA Exam Preps, CompTIA Performance Based Questions, CompTIA book, IT Pro TV, flash cards and self-made documentations, cheatsheets. Here's the break down of each components:
CompTIA Exam Preps:
CompTIA Exam Preps helps prepare your knowledge based on the exam objectives, you can find the objectives here or below:
I decided to divide my focus based on the percentages of the objectives, meaning more time on objectives with higher percentage and vice versa. CompTIA Exam Preps provides you multiple choice questions and explanation of the answers, you can go over the questions and answers as many times as you want. I learned quite a lot just by going through all those questions. However, at some point, I noticed I chose certain answers based on my memory, not my understanding, and sometimes, reading the explanation feels like some information was missing. Thus, I decided to include other resources: CompTIA book and IT Pro TV.
Start-the-day routine:
First thing first, I choose a module/topic from the CompTIA Exam Preps that I want to learn, then go to IT Pro TV, look for that topic, listen to the video and type along all the commands into my CentOS virtual machine, making sure I understand what each command does, how the output looks like, this is very important, as in the actual exam, there are questions that provide you with commands' outputs, and ask you to find the correct commands which can produce such outputs. After that, I go back to CompTIA Exam Preps, do the questions, mark down the ones I got wrong, to then go to the CompTIA book to read about that topic. Finally, I go back to CompTIA Exam Preps, review and redo the questions I got wrong earlier. Basically, below is how my routine looks like:
During each step described above, I kept noting down useful commands into a command cheatsheet:
For the questions that I have difficulty remembering, I noted them into Trello board to use as flash cards:
For the concepts I struggled to understand, I tried to visualize them by drawing out or putting into diagrams, below are some examples:
Time for a test drive!
After 2 weeks, I finished 55% of CompTIA Exam Preps modules, I was pretty confident, so I took the practice test (included in the Exam Preps purchase), and got only 60% of the correct answers. After trying 3 times, I still got the same result. So, I didn't want to risk it, I rescheduled my actual test and modified my learning strategies.
Something was missing!
I slowed down and gave some thoughts over what I've been doing in the past 2 weeks. I felt like me flash-carding myself was not helpful, either I still kept forgetting things or I knew in advance which topic the flash card question will be in, so there were no surprise factor for my brain to analyze the questions.
Besides, based on my practice test results, I had the feeling I need to read the book more carefully.
Thus, I decided to invite another person who's also studying for Linux+ certificate — Spencer, so that I can explain each chapter of the book to him, while he ask me questions if anything was unclear. On top of that, he flash-carded me based on his preference, so when I hear the question, I had to work it out which topic and sub-topic the question was referring to, and it worked!
Game Changer! — Stage 2
By having to explain the concepts to another person, I had to dive really deep, making my understandings much more solid. Of course, a lot more notes and diagrams were produced:
Then, I asked my study-mate to explain some chapters of the book for me as well, so that I can grasp his different perspectives and understandings, adding all up to my knowledge bank.
A shared drive was created for us to exchange our materials, in case you are interested, here's a really cool Linux mind map created by Spencer : https://github.com/YuCheLiu/Comptia_Linux_mindMap/blob/master/Linux_mindmap_pdf.pdf
Besides, I still kept doing the CompTIA Exam Preps. However, this time, realizing new concepts will keep showing up all the time, I can never know all the answers, so, instead of trying to know all the options, I tried to guess the options, educatedly! That means, if I run into a question I don't know the answer, I tried to analyze all the options I know, with the hope to be able to eliminate all the wrong answers, whatever is left, should be the answer, this worked like a charm!
Moving on, we did the practice test again. First, we did individually, then we did it together, see if 2 people brainstorming would make a difference, and we could also discuss the questions, to learn from each other's thought process. On average, I got about 80% correct answers. Progress, progress!!!
Let's do it!
During stage 2, I did reschedule my exam twice. With that, I worried that the more I postpone, the higher chance my test will never happen. So, I decided to go for it, let's just take the test, no more rescheduling, if I failed, at least I know how the actual test looks like!
Before the exam
First, relax your mind and don't study a day before the exam. Second, if you are taking the online exam like me, make sure you are familiar with the UI of the online test center, read the policies carefully, know what needs to be prepared. Test your network connection prior to the exam, clear out the desk where you will be taking the exam, be sure no learning materials or cell phone are in reach. If you care, clean your room up, you will have to show your testing area to the Proctor ! :) The day before the test, I rebooted my wifi and device, bringing them to their best performance, one can never be too careful!
During the exam
The first five questions were quite hard for me, they were performance-based style questions, meaning you need to look at the outputs and traceback the commands. I didn't want to spend more than 1 minute per question, so even if I didn't complete the question, I kept moving on to the next ones. Although, I did mark them for review later (this feature is available on the test).
Once I'm done with the last question, I came back up to the questions I did not complete. At this point, by doing other questions, some knowledge came back to my mind and some similar options showed up for different questions, so elimination game is on ! I did what I practiced: eliminate the wrong options, if one option I'm very sure is correct for this question, I'm confident it's not correct for the other one, if they are talking about the different topics.
After completed all the questions, I had about 30 minutes left, so I went through all the questions I wasn't very confident about, I changed my answers on about 10–20% of them. If you have enough time, try to review all the questions.
And the result? I passed! Woop Woop !!!
Recap
Ok, let's sum it up!
What worked ?
CompTIA Prep Exam: was very close to the book's contents, plus, it provides you a chance to practice questions and answers that have similar format to the actual test.
CompTIA book: is a must, all the information you need is in there!
IT Pro TV: Super helpful, concepts made easier and visualized by experts. Totally worth it!
Practice the commands! create your own scenarios to use the learned commands and practice trouble shooting. Pay attention to commands' outputs!
Active learning/Learning by teaching: try teaming up with someone who's also studying Linux+, if not, anyone who's eager to learn will do. How about try being able to explain the concepts for non-tech background people?
Take notes, draw things out, use flash cards, anything else that you can come up with that's helpful for you :)
Keep in mind:
Pay attention to the time during the exam.
Don't spend too much time on one question.
Mark down questions you are not sure about to review later.
Try to guess and rationalize your answers if you don't know the answers.