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Learning GNU/Linux: The Survey Course Continues
This week's edition takes a look at three very different books. We have tutorials, theory and techniques, and thick juicy slabs of opts. Step through instructions and stay on the sidewalk, get your hands dirty on your own if you're the trailblazing type, or read up on what you always thought someone should code, if you're stuck at your desk.
Title (Author) Using Linux (Jack Tackett, Jr / Steven Burnett) Publisher, ISBN QUE, 0789717468 Included Stuff none Intended Audience RedHat users. Scope Installation and basic introduction to Linux. Technical Correctness Occasional weird advice. (In one spot, the authors describe a very insecure PATH setting without explaining that it's dangerous.) Writing style Varies with chapter author. Other Two-thirds of the way through the book, there are a number of mildly annoying typesetting errors. Unfortunately, they tend to appear near literal command-lines. Hopefully this will be corrected in a second edition.
Using Linux is a cross between a reference-book and a tutorial. Each chapter takes a different subject (Networking, Working with Hard Drives) and breaks it up into common tasks -- each listed in the copious table of contents and the large index. For example, if you're interested in setting up a file system, you can flip right to page 495 and choose between the RedHat tool or editing /etc/fstab yourself. Though RedHat tools receive a lot of attention, they're not presented as the only way to get things done. In a pinch, you'll find command line equivalents for common tasks given near the graphical description.
Accompanying the chapter text are occasional sidebars. These label figures, give a bit of historical perspective, and dish out useful tidbits of information that don't fit into the normal flow. This is less distracting than the usual approach of goofy icons and inset boxes often found in other books.
What's nice about this book is that it covers more subjects than most of the others. It's thick, but not unreasonably so. It's easy to read, but packed with details. Instead of covering only the handful of things every (home) user will need, the authors add information about removable drives, fax configuration, and file system cleanup, to name a few topics. Also nice is a brief chapter on building installations from source code (both make and Imake style systems) -- there's another world out there beyond RPM.
The task-oriented approach doesn't spend much time on theory, preferring a gentle overview and usage specifics. Obviously, there's more to learn than what's presented, but people more interested in results will prefer this decision. The system administration section really stands out, for an introductory book, and the appendix listing common Linux commands and glossary of terms will come in handy.
All things considered, this is a solid book. The breadth of information is good, and the flow of topics means it's readable from start to finish. Occasional flaws detract slightly, but they're not fatal.
[You can purchase this book at FatBrain.]
Title (Author) Linux Configuration & Installation (Patrick Volkerding, Kevin Reichard, Eric Foster-Johnson) Publisher, ISBN M&T Press, 0764570056 Included Stuff Slackware 3.5 CD-ROM, with extra disk full of additional programs. Intended Audience The do-it-yourself type. No prior Unix knowledge is necessary, though some experience with the command line will come in handy. Scope Installation and introduction to Slackware. Very good overview of the general Linux way to do things. Technical Correctness Quite good. Writing style Easy to read, though still technical. Other The version reviewed is the 4th edition -- somewhat dated (1998), but not out of touch. If there's a newer edition, get it! If not, you won't go astray with this one.
With help from Patrick Volkerding (Slackware creator) himself, this book teaches the do-it-yourself distribution. Expect a tremendous amount of detail -- in the first chapter alone, there are dozens of links to a Web site for more information about Linux and particular hardware. Fully half the book falls under installation and initial configuration issues, though this includes tinkering with your window manager, setting up networking, and recompiling your kernel (topics usually saved for later in other books). The fourth edition added a section on Slackware and portable computing, with pages of links to information on particular laptop models and information on synchronizing your Palm Pilot.
Chapter seven introduces the command line (though people following along will have used it -- with gentle prodding). It's a whirlwind, 50-page tour that explains a bevy of tools and tricks both concisely and thoroughly enough for day to day work. Following that are applications -- text editors, text formatters, graphics viewers, and the like. A short section on system administration covers scheduling, managing accounts, checking performance, but relatively little about security. Finally, chapter ten delves in to Linux programming -- toolkits, languages, tools, and scripts. Maybe the hors d'ouvres will whet your appetite to learn more, or at least help you with the magic "./configure; make; make install;" incantations.
The appendices list additional sources of information and the contents of the CD-ROM. Don't overlook the supplemental information, either -- including 30 pages of extra package description. (If you're going to install Slackware yourself, you ought to know what you need and what additional options there are.)
The only reason to overlook this book is its age, which is a shame. Things haven't changed so much that the knowlege presented is obsolete -- considering that the hands-on Slackware approach often leads to true and deep understanding. Unless you're too intimidated to experiment, you can learn a great deal, even from a two-year-old text.
This book is eminently readable. Readers with some technical background will appreciate the slightly geeky, no nonsense approach, while users new to Unix in general will benefit from the quality explanations. When the publishers see fit to release a 5th edition of this book, it deserves very serious consideration.
[You can purchase this book at FatBrain.]
Title (Author) Linux Essential Reference (Ed Petron) Publisher, ISBN New Riders, Included Stuff none Intended Audience Users and administrators already comfortable with the command line. Scope Common and uncommon commands and switches. If you can imagine a task, it's likely listed here in glorious detail. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Reference style -- very concise, little prose. Not something you'd read straight through. Trust me. Other The organization by topic here is nice. I've used it a few times already, just to look up something I knew had a command option somewhere.
For the user already familiar with shell basics, running programs, and using 'shutdown' instead of flipping the switch, a reference of commands and options might come in handy. That's the idea behind Linux Essential Reference. If you already know what you want to do but not how to do it, flip to the appropriate section and discover all of the little timesavers and niceties you've always wanted but never knew existed.
What sets this book apart from other works, including the man and info pages, is the excellent organization. Not only are commands grouped by category, the sections are (roughly) arranged according to complexity. (Although if you're not familiar with cd, mv, cp, and at least pico before looking something up, get thee to a tutorial!) For example, the Kernel chapter subsections are, in order, 'Installing New Kernels', 'Using Modules', 'Device Files', 'The /proc Filesystem', and 'Kernel Message Logs.'
Rather than reformatting man pages, the author has gone to quite a bit of work, rewriting often terse descriptions into longer examples. This is helpful with the lesser-known options (ls -T 4). The amount of detail, more than in any other work, makes this a good reference. (If you do read it all the way through, you'll have something to put on your technical reviewing resume.)
As seems to be usual, this book is divided into a user section and an administrator section. Administration gets a stronger treatment here, with information on LAN-specific tools. It's not limited to the home user's point of view, which makes it more useful to system administrator-types. The security chapter, including tcpwrappers and ipchains configuration, stands out as informative, though brief.
This book answers the question, "Okay, now what?" If you're feeling experimentative after polishing off one of the others, but you want a little more direction than the command prompt usually provides, having this book on your desk will prove valuable.
Best Linux book I ever bought was "Running Linux" published by O'Reilly. Really good book, and even if it's getting old and sorta outdated (it's pre-KDE) it's still useful for knowing what all the entires in all the little config files mean.
-Ross
Is there room in the Slashdot Cruiser to carry all these books?
Will the additional weight of the books overstress the engine? Will I have to turn off the air conditioner when I'm driving uphill?
Got a full tank of hot grits and a penis bird in the glove box.
Now be it I'm not the most alert person, but why did I see that two of those include Slackware? I thought they'd kinda fallen in the market, and usually going with the best of the market will make you the best of the market in books...
Although, it is nice to see something other than RedHat.. (yes, I run RedHat.. go ahead and flame me, you would either way I had it..)
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
I am glad to see people suporting the Penguin
If we refuse to be flexible, we are in effect opting out of the game of life. The world moves on without us.
My favourite (by miles) was and is "Running Debian GNU/Linux" by Bill McCarty (published by O'Reilly). Not only is this a great introduction to the GNU OS which comes with Debian GNU/Linux (oh well I guess slink is finally out of date...a bit better than all those RedHat 5.2 and 6.0 books out there though) but it is also published under the Open Publication License. Not a for dummies book, I'd be far happier to give this to a dummy than any for dummies book I have ever seen. It Rocks
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
The most enjoyable Linux book I've glommed thus far has got to be Nicholas Wells' "Linux: I didn't know you could do that...". It's got some fifty or so tips and tricks for Linux, plus RPMs and .tgzs for the examples in the book. Lots of useful info, like undeleting files, playing music, etc. While not "dumbed down" by any means, it would still be a good read for the clueful Win9x user wanting to play around with Linux.
The best book I found for people just starting out is Mark Sobell's "A Practical Guide to Linux." His book assumes that you have a working system and teaches you how to use it. It emphasises the command prompt, so it doesn't have much on X, but I found it invaluable for helping me get the basics down - chron, vi, ls, less, cat, grep, tar, etc. A lot of the HowTo documents and man pages made a lot more sense to me after I read this book.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
I've personally never found Linux books (or any computer books for that matter) to be terribly helpful. It's probably the way I learn, but I find it much easier either getting a geek friend to teach you, going on a course (if you can find one that isn't too much BS) or just learning by experimentation. Asking around in newsgroups also helps, as long as the question isn't tooo dumb :)
They were just giving it a category; none of the books reviewed were entitled either "Learning GNU/Linux" or "Learning Linux".
I had a rather unhappy experience with (and haven't resolved, yet, just pretty much threw in the towel) RedHat changes from 4.* to 5.*, I believe regarding tio or termio (I forget and don't have it in front of me) which was going toward BSD compliance. I had to pick up a few O'Reilly books which detailed this matter in greater depth. Albeit it's rather late for something of this nature to be published, were there any books published on these differences?
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Although Linux is all english, or at least most of it, there are lots of people I know of who want to try it but are scared away, because they fear not understanding the manuals. SuSE (though not being my favourite distro) is still translating the kernel-config, glibc and the man-pages. They really have done a good job up to now (judging the translations).
There also are numerous books in german over a wide range. Books for beginners and for the more experiences Penguinista.
My first book was "Linux" written by Marc-André Selig (Markt & Technik Verlag). It talks about installation of Slackware, Debian, SuSE and Red Hat and it gives the newbie a crashcourse in using the bash. Quite sufficient for a start.
The next book was "Linux Intern" (Data Becker Verlag). This book comes with a Slackware on CD but also talks about installing other distributions. I don't recommend this book for the total clueless newbie because beside installation topics it also discusses the internal structure of I-Nodes or devicedrivers and the like. I have yet read it twice but still do not understand everything written in it. =:-)
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
On another topic, (I know I'm off topic here), most Linux systems are pretty good at initial installation and almost always I get a working system without any major problems. Wouldn't it be a good idea if the system remembered what kernel options were used, so that when I'm about to build a new kernel (because I want to add a new feature or for some other reason), I shouldn't have to start from scratch. Am I missing something? What ends up happening is that I go from an initially installed working system to trying to recompile a kernel which I can't find the right options for to get a working system. Can anything be done to make that part easier for newbies (myself included)?
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
The No BS Guide to Linux - This book is a great introduction to the commandline interface. Nothing much on X, but everything you need to find your way around a shell.
Idiot's Guide to Linux My favorite book. Manuel Ricart wrote this excellent guide to running X on linux with emphasis on KDE. Good tips on backing up, security, and other basics that many books take for granted.
Teach Yourself KDE 1.1 Simply a good guide to learning how to fully use KDE. Each lesson is simple and focused, allowing those that need to learn in short amounts of time a concise lesson.
Apache Server for Dummies A straightforward book on configuring Apache. It's not meant as a handbook for a business, more as a way for someone to understand and configure Apache for the first time to understand the concepts behind the software. It allowed me to get a server up and running and even running CGI scripts for intranet use.
If you are already a GNUGod, you won't need these books. But if you are like me and trying to learn these things without the benefit of live human tutor, these books are handy.
Also, the two of the books deal mainly with KDE. If you like Gnome, bewarned that Idiot's Guide to Linux deals mainly with KDE and not Gnome.
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Using Linux by Bill Ball and Que publishers is a great book for refrence. Its not much in the way of a read from begining to end or for the new user, but in the refrence dept, I love it. I find my myself going between this and Linux little black book of configuration quite a bit. Direct to the point and chock full of good information. If you get a chance, check either one of them out.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Anyway, I knew Linux had entered pop culture when I saw the book entitled: Linux! I Didn't Know You Could Do That... . As if the title wasn't bad enough, have a look at the cover. I don't care what the cliche says -- I still want nothing to do with this book. It may have an animal on the front, but it ain't an O'Reilly...
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I just bought (er...2 or 3 weeks ago, that is..) The Idiots Guide To linux. It seems...limited in scope. I understand, it is after all an idiots guide, but I thought there would be a little more meat to it. I'm a first time user, and I'm a little lost as to which is the best guide for a newbie like myself. Ay suggestions?
I've used unix in my job for years. So I don't need a "Dummies" book which holds your hand through the command line. I'm comfortable with command lines, makefiles, shells etc... I've even hacked Makefiles from distributions to get them to compile on my system.
/etc/fstab, init.rc? Can someone explain what BSD vs SYS5 is and why folks are so argumentative about it...
But, for sysadmin type stuff, I'm lost. I've always relied on someone else. I just type:
log_problem, wait an hour or so, and POOF magic, the phone rings and someone tells me the thing is fixed.
So, now I'm dabbling in linux at home, and find I'm quite lost in the sysadmin type stuff. NIS? NFS?
I can read man pages no problem. But if one can't remember the command or really has problems remember where a config files is kept, you're in trouble.
Can someone recommend a book that fits this hole?
Linux Essential Reference above looks like it might be close. Looking for other inputs though...
there weren't more responses to this post... Lotsa people 'round these parts are always griping about how not enough people run linux... too many people still on the dark side, etc... Well, now here's your chance to give those undecideds some advice...
-heidiporn
heidi
"Running Linux" may be a good book, but I think there ought to be yet another book that lead people AWAY from M$-Windows.
If I have the time, I would write that book, but (looking around the mess, and check the schedule) I am afraid I won't have that kind of free time until 2003 at the earliest.
But anyway, this is my proposal for the title for that new book :
Running AWAY from M$-Windows
If anyone is interested in writing such a book, they are FREE (as in freedom) to use that title.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
For info on creating Linux from scratch (or at least another distro to start out with, try going to Linux From Scratch
Arun