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LPI 010-160 Multiple choice 40 questions 1 hour

Linux Essentials

The entry-level Linux certificate from the Linux Professional Institute: open source and its licences, finding your way on the command line, archives, text processing and simple scripts, the parts of a Linux system, and users, groups and file permissions. 40 questions in 60 minutes, as on the real exam.

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The blueprint

A mock exam here has 40 questions in 1 hour, split across the domains in the same proportions as the official exam guide. The official pass mark is 500 on a scale of 200 to 800. FixOps scores practice against a target of 70%.

  1. 01

    The Linux Community and a Career in Open Source

    17%

  2. 02

    Finding Your Way on a Linux System

    23%

  3. 03

    The Power of the Command Line

    23%

  4. 04

    The Linux Operating System

    20%

  5. 05

    Security and File Permissions

    17%

Sample questions

Three of the 10 questions in the free diagnostic. Open one to see the answer and why.

Which distribution is Ubuntu based on?
  • Debian
  • Fedora
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • openSUSE

Answer: Debian. Ubuntu was created by Mark Shuttleworth's team in 2004 from a snapshot of Debian, so it shares Debian's package format and tools such as dpkg and apt.

What does freedom 0 of the Free Software Foundation's four freedoms grant?
  • The freedom to get the program free of charge
  • The freedom to hide changes you make
  • The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose
  • The freedom to sell the program without ever sharing its source

Answer: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. The four freedoms are to run the program for any purpose, study and change it, redistribute copies and distribute modified versions. Free refers to liberty, not price.

In the command ls -l /etc, which part is the argument?
  • -l
  • /etc
  • The space between them
  • ls

Answer: /etc. A command line has the command (ls), options that change its behaviour (-l) and arguments it works on (/etc), separated by spaces.

Revision notes: The Linux Community and a Career in Open Source

The notes for one domain, free to read here and in the app. FixOps Pro has them for all 5 domains.

Linux distributions and where Linux runs, the major open source applications and package tools, free and open source licensing, and the everyday ICT skills of working safely on a Linux desktop.

Distributions and where Linux runs

  • Debian is a community distribution; Ubuntu, founded in 2004, is based on it and offers Long Term Support releases.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux is commercial; Fedora is its community relative and CentOS was a free rebuild of RHEL sources.
  • SUSE Linux and openSUSE are known for the YaST configuration tool.
  • Android runs on a modified Linux kernel, and the Raspberry Pi boots Raspberry Pi OS from an SD card on ARM processors.
  • Embedded systems are hardware and software built for one function inside a larger device.
  • Clouds offer Linux images for Infrastructure as a Service virtual machines.

Applications and package tools

  • LibreOffice is the office suite, Thunderbird reads email, Firefox browses and GIMP edits images.
  • Apache HTTPD and NGINX serve web pages; MariaDB and MySQL are databases; Nextcloud and ownCloud share files.
  • NFS shares files between Unix systems; Samba shares files and printers with Windows.
  • C is compiled; Python, Perl, PHP, JavaScript and shell scripts are interpreted.
  • Debian systems use dpkg and apt-get with .deb packages; Red Hat systems use rpm and yum or dnf with .rpm packages.
  • Repositories provide signed packages, and package managers resolve their dependencies.

Licensing

  • The four freedoms: run the program for any purpose, study and change it, redistribute it and share changes.
  • Free software means freedom, not price; FOSS and FLOSS cover both free and open source software.
  • Copyleft licences such as the GPL require distributed derived works to keep the same licence.
  • Permissive licences such as BSD allow reuse in proprietary software.
  • The LGPL lets non-free programs use a library without the whole program becoming GPL.
  • The FSF, founded by Richard Stallman, promotes free software; the OSI approves licences against the Open Source Definition.
  • Creative Commons licences cover creative works: BY needs credit, SA the same licence, NC non-commercial use.
  • Open source businesses sell support and services or use dual licensing.

ICT skills

  • A terminal emulator runs a shell in a window; the console is the machine's own text screen.
  • Use a unique strong password for every account, kept in a password manager.
  • Private browsing only discards local history and cookies; it does not hide traffic from the network.
  • GnuPG encrypts and signs files and email with public key cryptography.

Easy to mix up

  • Free as in freedom, not free of charge.
  • Copyleft passes the licence on; permissive licences do not require it.
  • NFS is for Unix clients; Samba is for Windows clients.
  • dpkg and apt for Debian, rpm and yum for Red Hat.

Practice questions written by FixOps from the public 010-160 objectives (version 1.6) and LPI's Learning Materials. They are not real exam questions. FixOps is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Linux Professional Institute.

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