I've taken a little pause from some of the courses because lately I'm concentrating on the mainframe. However I still think there is much valuable information there. I do feel a little conflicted sometimes trying to prove I understand a topic by getting a Certificate of Completion . For example concerning the LPI Linux Essentials Certification . All of the info provided is useful and as of today I've completed 92% of the exercises. However I have to ask myself "Would I do good on the test?". I assume I would need to memorize commands that I, in my current situation would rarely use. However I've somehow managed to use Linux, exclusively for many years without getting certified. Now many of these obscure commands, are only obscure because I don't often use them. I memorize things better when used in context of a real problem.
For example recently I've had Manjaro install/update sometimes , but not always, screw up my grub boot screen, which caused me to be unable to boot my Linux Mint distro. In the beginning I didn't even realize it was grub, I thought perhaps Manjaro had stomped over my Mint's home directory.
For the sake of brevity, it was a grub issue . But technically it was another program (that I covered in other posts) that the grub process, used to build the grub configuration file.
The whole grub process is far from something a beginner would be getting into. And while figuring it out, it bit me more than a few times. Well during the month or so I became very familiar with much (but not all) of what grub was doing. And by sheer repetition of dealing with something that was important to me at the time...I learned more about grub than is typically necessary to remember. Quite frankly I learned more about grub than I wanted to know. In hindsight it was interesting, but in 6-12 months I'll probably forget most of it.
I assume if anything similar happened in the distant future, I'd probably have to look everything up again. However my brain would probably shift into the "I don't know how to fix this...but I seem to remember dealing with something like this in the past" mode. And I assume I'd figure it out quicker...the next time!
My whole point is that I learn things that I typically need in my day to day use of Linux...or anything! I don't have a great desire to learn something merely for the sake of getting certified.