Solaris 9 For Dummies

Spencerian writes with a review combining two things you might not expect in one volume: the "For Dummies" label and Sun Solaris. (Raise your hand if you've never, ever looked through a "For Dummies" book.) Read on for Spencerian's summary of Solaris 9 For Dummies, which he says is a good book for the Solaris newbies, but not for everyone. Solaris 9 For Dummies author Dave Taylor pages 354 publisher Wiley Publishing rating 8 reviewer Kevin Spencer ISBN 0764539698 summary A" ...For Dummies" book like Solaris 9 For Dummies will never make you popular with other geeks. However, if you are a Solaris admin, perhaps giving this book to your users might stop them from asking you the same questions over and over.

I'm pretty intimate with the ...For Dummies book formula. I worked at the company a few years ago. The ownership of the book series has changed a bit, as has its cover art, but the basic setup remains.

Solaris 9 For Dummies is, as with many ...For Dummies books, a starter guide and reference. This isn't a book for administrators, and says so. Solaris 9 For Dummies maintains the book series' reputation as strong general references for users who are thrust (sometimes unwillingly) into new or different technology and need the basics in getting around, fast.

Author Dave Taylor is no stranger to UNIX, having written several notable UNIX beginner, intermediate and advanced references on UNIX in general, including books on Red Hat Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X. Solaris 9 For Dummies works for SPARC hardware as well as Intel-based hardware. More about Dave Taylor's work can be found at his web site, Intuitive.com.

The ...For Dummies series books are pure references. They aren't meant to be read from cover to cover, which gives the author an advantage by writing topics and chapters without a lot of preamble. The information is just shallow enough to understand but never trivial, giving readers typically only what they require. The typical cross-references and tips are available to guide you along. Chapters delve into topics you expect from discussing a UNIX such as Solaris, such as moving about the new GNOME interface (which will replace the old CDE interface over time), running the basic applications and utilities, and the like. In the traditional format of these books, Solaris 9 For Dummies comes with a tear-out cheat sheet. This cheat sheet gives readers a basic CDE and GNOME interface menu command tree to make it easily to find, say, the Empty Trash command.

The book's topics include details on:

• File management
• Making a decent password
• Shells
• Text editors
• Using Writer and StarOffice
• Internet, Web, and Mail access
• Essential system administration

The author knows that UNIX isn't UNIX without a certain level of geekspeak, and so provides readers with a well-crafted introduction in the use of command lines and how they can be a Good Thing when using Solaris often for particular tasks. Many UNIX writers (especially developers) wrongly assume that anyone who uses a UNIX knows where and how to find or do what most might consider a routine task. In a ...For Dummies book, this thinking is not allowed, so the author adds enough background for you to get the gist, guides you on the essentials, and provides information that points you to find more complex answers elsewhere.

Solaris 9 For Dummies will not make your whites brighter, increase your personal intimate pleasure, or bring peace to the Middle East, and it's certainly not flashy. It's just a good book for the Solaris newbies, plain and simple. If you hack your kernel just for pleasure (gotta shave your palms regularly, I'm sure), you can be reasonably guaranteed this isn't the book for you. However, if you are an Solaris administrator and get plagued with user questions about basic tasks, maybe you should have your boss buy a few copies of Solaris 9 For Dummies for your users so you can continue your Quake3 fragfest uninterrupted.

You can purchase Solaris 9 For Dummies from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Oximoron

[Archangel Michael]

or Redundant?

Re:Oximoron

[thomas.galvin]

Either way, this book should contain nothing but the words "Back the hell away from the machine, and call your sys admin."

Well of course

[The Bungi]

which he says is a good book for the Solaris newbies, but not for everyone

That's why it's called "Solaris 9 For Dummies"

Re:Well of course

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it proves anyone who buys a Dummies book really is a complete idiot...and you're their king.

Re:Well of course

[tomhudson]

the article says:

for users who are thrust (sometimes unwillingly) into new or different technology and need the basics in getting around, fast.

the poster wrote

That's why it's called "Solaris 9 For Dummies"

I kind of think that any company that puts somebody into such a position deserves what they get.

List of other titles we're gonna see soon, and who's going to buy them

1. "GNU GPL for Dummies": SCO
2. "Children's First Names for Dummies": Darl McBride's mother, anyone who names their kid after their fav. soap opera character.
3. "Flipping Burgers for Dummies": SCO shareholders, employees
4. "malloc() for Dummies": Microsoft employees
5. "Flying Jumbo Jets for Dummies": Terrorists
6. "Nuclear Power Station Maintenance for Dummies": Homer Simpson
7. "Accounting for Dummies": Enron, Bush
8. "How Not To Drop Your Bar Of Soap In the Shower for Dummies": Enron executives
9. "Sex For Dummies": Slashdot trolls
10. "Fair Use for Dummies", "Privacy Rights for Dummies", "How To Keep a Web Server Running More Than 1 Day for Dummies": RIAA, MPAA
11. "Spelling for Dummies": h4x0rz

Re:Well of course

[Goo.cc]

"No, it proves anyone who buys a Dummies book really is a complete idiot"

No, there is another line of books for Complete Idiots!

Re:Well of course

[Lxy]

Dude, Sex for Dummies has been out for awhile.

Re:Well of course

[Anonymous Coward]

How about

"free() for malloc() dummy users for dummies" - Microsoft Software Engineers

Re:Well of course

[hike2]

I think somebody beat you to it with the Sex For Dummies book.
I seem to remember seeing that in a bookstore a few years back. The one you should have mentioned is more along the lines of Pron for Dummies.

Re:Well of course

[tomhudson]

Oops, I should have written "Goatse.cx for Dummies" for Anonymous Cowards & Trolls.

Thanks

Re:Well of course

[tomhudson]

Poster wrote:

How about "free() for malloc() dummy users for dummies" - Microsoft Software Engineers

Actually, I don't think they ever use free(), or if they do, it's been redefined as:

#define free(x) /* nothing going on here */

Their figuring? Well, if you never free anything, you'll never have to worry about dangling pointers. And those memory leaks? Just an encouragement for people to reboot and free up memory.

Re:Well of course

[whereiswaldo]

"Running code on the stack for dummies" - Microsoft security team

First intro book to Solaris

[kevin_conaway]

Hmm.. when I first started to learn how to use Solaris, Im sure I would have like a book like this. I could never find (and still probably cannot) find an introductory book to Solaris.

SCO for dummies

[Virtex]

SCO for dummies: No, not the name of a book. Just making a statement

Re:SCO for dummies

[hesiod]

> "Legality and morality are not synonymous"
> Sez who?

IHBT, but sez anyone who has a fucking brain (and uses it).

Re:SCO for dummies

[Doomdark]

Sez either common sense or Webster.

Ethics 101. Laws are often initially created based on majority moral views, and thus legality in general tries to approximate morality. There are other concerns when creating laws (practicality, need to stabilize society, in case of most societies) which may and do further deviate laws from moral values.

Alternatively; check out your favourite dictionary and see if its definition for the words are identical (or even similar). If they are, you have synonyms.

Amazon has it almost 15% cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon has it $2.50 (almost 15%) cheaper

Re:Amazon has it almost 15% cheaper

[Shivaji Maharaj]

Its 20% cheaper at bookpool - http://www.bookpool.com/.x/sarimkohjr/ss/1?qs=Sola ris+9+for+dummies&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go

Re:Amazon has it almost 15% cheaper

[vasqzr]

BookPool has it for $1.50 less than that.

Re:Amazon has it almost 15% cheaper

[colonwq]

And Books a Million is between these (amazon and bookpool) prices.

:wq

Real Dummies Pay Too Much For Books

[Anonymous Coward]

Get it from Amazon instead for 30% off instead of 20% off at bn.com

The burning question...

[Nick of NSTime]

Why? Is there really a need for a Dummies book about Solaris? It's not like you can just walk into CompUSA and pick up Solaris 9. How does Wiley market a book like this?

We have some Solaris users where I work, but all they do is run their applications. They're not power users, and they don't want to be power users. I guess I'm just having a hard time understanding the intended audience for this book.

Re:The burning question...

[Cyclopedian]

Agreed.

Additionally, the office where I work still runs with Solaris 5.8 and they see no reason to upgrade (I don't know enough about the benefits of upgrading Solaris). One of the reasons they cited was cost, so they're staying with 5.8 for the time being.

At this point, a Solaris 9 book would cater only to those few that actually upgraded to that version (Few? Maybe there's many but I'm just guessing), and it's likely that they are power users/administrators and not some "dummy".

-Cyc

Re:The burning question...

[leerpm]

I think a reasonable candidate for reading this book might be someone who is fairly technically advanced in Windows, but has yet to be exposed to much of Unix/Linux. While it is true that they could just as easily go the route of learning Linux via Red Hat, Mandrake or some other distro, some users might prefer to go with a more 'truer' Unix distro.

A good example, might be a developer at a software company that makes enterprise software, but only runs on Windows so far. The company might want to try porting their software to multiple platforms, but get their developers familiar with the environments beforehand.

Re:The burning question...

[no soup for you]

Why? Is there really a need for a Dummies book about Solaris? It's not like you can just walk into CompUSA and pick up Solaris 9. How does Wiley market a book like this?

I'm a perfect audience for this book. I installed our linux servers here, and am in charge of having a plan in case of the worst possible scenario -- SCO forces "the man" to have me remove gnu/linux from our company

All of our services claim they will run on Solaris for x86, which is free on 1 processor machines... So, my exit strategy involves migrating to Solaris.

So, I think this would be a good book to tell me what are the glaring differences. It won't be the best, or last book I'd buy, but it would probably be the first.

Re:The burning question...

[Lord Kano]

I installed our linux servers here, and am in charge of having a plan in case of the worst possible scenario -- SCO forces "the man" to have me remove gnu/linux from our company

What I don't get is how does SCO think that they even have a chance of forcing anyone to change their server software. If you change your issue.net to indicate that you're running *BSD or somesuch, SCO wouldn't even look twice at your machine.

LK

Re:The burning question...

[kfg]

"We have some Solaris users where I work, but all they do is run their applications. They're not power users, and they don't want to be power users"

This would be the market for such a book.

KFG

Re:The burning question...

[cide1]

Solaris 8, you young kids and your fancy tools, the development environment I spend my day in is 2.6, and my company has no plans of changing. Its more of a stability issue than anything. With new versions come new compatibility problems, and the question of supporting old program under a new OS. Upgrading a large commercial Unix system with 3rd party compilers and tools can be quite expensive. The biggest expense isn't the software so much, as the time lost due to tools not being available. The current machine Im working on has been running the same OS for 6 years now, and frankly I'd be scared if our admins tried to upgrade it to even 8, not to mention 9.

Re:The burning question...

[no soup for you]

What I don't get is how does SCO think that they even have a chance of forcing anyone to change their server software. If you change your issue.net to indicate that you're running *BSD or somesuch, SCO wouldn't even look twice at your machine.

I totally agree, and would never change my machines at home. But the business needed a contingency, so I had to oblige. *BSD might be a better choice, but the management really liked the name Sun better than open source. sigh.

Re:The burning question...

[__aamkky7574]

I would definitely consider buying it; as a technical writer, I have to occasionally document products that must be installed, configured and run on Solaris, so having more than a rudimentary knowledge of the system would be handy (it's quite a while since my college UNIX classes).

P.

Re:The burning question...

[deKernel]

Here is a bit of information that you need to keep in mind when it comes to the courts. What is rignt and wrong is not important, but what can be proven.
With that, SCO could pull of the impossible under the right circumstances.

Re:The burning question...

[ideut]

the office where I work still runs with Solaris 5.8

Actually, there's no such thing as Solaris 5.8.

SunOS 5.8 == Solaris 2.8 == Solaris 8.

Re:The burning question...

[Goo.cc]

"some users might prefer to go with a more 'truer' Unix distro."

That's what the BSDs are for!

Re:The burning question...

[hesiod]

> frankly I'd be scared if our admins tried to upgrade it to even 8

Well, when I was a Solaris admin, it was my first serious UNIX work (work as in job, not as in "playing with Linux") and I had to upgrade from 2.6 to 8 and I had almost no troubles at all -- it's easy as pie. Assuming you know what all the software does, where to download it, how to reinstall it, and how to reconfigure every damn conf file that no longer works because of version incompatibility. But really, most of it was smooth except for Apache, BIND, sendmail, and a few little programs.

Talk about a crash course in UNIX... At least I was "smart enough" to try it on an old server first.

Re:The burning question...

[siphoncolder]

The answer is simple: you have a captive audience, since all Solaris users will need this book. Hence:

1) Write the book
2) Publish it
3) Profit!

The joke is in the name.

Re:The burning question...

[Angry Pixie]

CompUSA won't likely have it, but there are several Barnes & Nobles booksellers in major markets that would carry it. That's where you'll find the consumers like me who aren't techies, but still have specialized computing needs. I'm a Windows power user myself, but I used to use Solaris for work.

Does anyone know much about Solaris 9? Years ago when I wanted to take my work home with me, I picked up the free Solaris 7 release for Intel that SUN mailed out. It couldn't handle my hardware then. Does 9 even support typical PC hardware found today?

Re:The burning question...

[chrisbw]

the development environment I spend my day in is 2.6, and my company has no plans of changing

...which is great, as long as your customers don't mind running a "Vintage Stage II" operating system, that no longer receives patch support from Sun!

Re:The burning question...

[Angry Pixie]

Ah, scratch that. I found the new HCL, and my hardware is still not supported.

Re:The burning question...

[KshGoddess]

A little over a year ago, I dealt with a shop that was running SunOS 2.5.1, and had it not been a total mess (thanks to the previous admin), they'd probably still be running it.

Imagine not doing all of the administrative tasks to a machine. Now imagine not doing them, doing them wrong and backwards, then deciding you were half-right, and doing it sideways from there, and you've pretty much got the "environment".

I will agree that it's the compatability and the tools lost that are most expensive. People want their stuff to 'look like' what they're used to. That's why windows users use Windows 95 still, in many shops. That's why users freak out when an upgrade comes around.

Solaris has its faults, but it's almost trivial to install on sparc hardware, and it's very GNU-friendly, out of the box, with no expensive add-ons. As opposed to, say, HP-UX ($$ for their compiler) or IRIX ($$ for their headers, $$ for their compiler).

Re:The burning question...

[Ed Avis]

So what you're saying is that Dummies == Linux users?

Re:The burning question...

[RighteousFunby]

Would-be dummies might be intersted in free Solaris ISO downloads for personal use.

Before anybody asks, no there is no goddamn Bittorrent.

Re:The burning question...

[grigori]

It probably works anyway. The HCL is much smaller than the number of machines the OS actually runs on and somebody actually bothered running Sun's test suite and sending the results in (send 'em those cards and letters)

Re:The burning question...

[carsont]

Solaris 9 is only free on single CPU machines for educational, development, or evaluation purposes. The SPARC version is a free download, the x86 version can be downloaded for $20 or so. This was the last time I looked at their page, anyway.

You'd probably be better off switching to *BSD from Linux, unless you use a lot of Java stuff, for example.

At any rate, the reviewer also said the book was for end users, not sysadmins. There are tons of books available on administering Solaris; my advice, though, would be just to download a copy of it for evaluation purposes, install it on a spare machine, and experiment with creating setups similar to your production servers, referring to the online documentation for guidance when necessary. This probably would be more effective than reading a book and wouldn't take much more time, but of course YMMV.

Re:The burning question...

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to learn a bit more about Sun. If there are a couple things they absolutely excel at it is supporting their shit and backwards compatibility. Solaris 2.6 is still supported and they are still writing patches for it. Hell I think 2.5 has just be de supported.

Re:The burning question...

[goatbar]

What a painful exit strategy... I usedta be a professional sysadmin and it takes me two days to get solaris 8 from CDs to taking at least some thought on how to hack in. When with Linux, I showed a postdoc windows user how to do a more secure install plus have him install the system in under an hour.

You should do one of the BSD's for an exit strategy! At least they have the ports collection that someone with a brain maintains. If solaris 9 is anything like solaris 8, good luck!

Re:The burning question...

[lfd]

Indeed. Officially unsupported hardware that still
works with Solaris 9 x86 may be found here.

Re:The burning question...

[Angry Pixie]

Yep. I can always give it a try. I glanced at the product website again and noticed a small price listed by the Intel release. There was no such price listed by the SPARC version. Hmmm.

Eh, it's all probably moot anyway as I no longer *need* to use Solaris. I can always go Linux if I find myself yearning for UNIX again... which probably suggests that SUN's future on Intel might be limited to just a small niche unless there's big interest in running Solaris on Intel hardware.

Re:The burning question...

[Alex]

Solaris 2.6 was EOSL July 26th 2003, they won't patch new issues. Only old ones - unless you have a special support contract.

Alex

Re:The burning question...

[jdeking1]

Where I work, we have a single Solaris admin; we have a raft of WinXX admins. I'm the only user (of both systems) who has a clue about the underpinnings of Solaris. It's a piece of cake if you're capable in a *nix environment. *nix is *nix. Big freakin' deal.

The "raft of WinXX admins" are running their collective asses off all the time, screwing up everybodys' boxen all the while. The Solaris guy is busy but nothing like the Win guys. No surprise to anybody here ;-) Of course, there aren't even 5x the number of Win users compared to the Solaris users.

What drives me nuts is that I'm stuck with user-level privileges on both systems. Can't even get them to grant me power-user status on Win2k.

I guess they're scared of the competition. So, I'm stuck compiling my code at home and toting it in to work on floppies or CDs.

Oh, back to the subject at hand: our upgrade to Solaris 8 was almost painless. Fortunately I had already set my box up to run CDE instead of OpenWindows - that spurred our Solaris guy to do the same to all of the other lusers; it made the upgrade to Solaris 8 that much easier. Except for the whining from the other lusers, of course.

Solaris 9

[sstory]

I would love to try Solaris on x86, but I don't know if a couple essential programs are available. Are there many companies which offer their products for x86 solaris? Mathematica, for instance, is essential. Though I've tried everything from BeOS to Mandrake to Win2k (my fave), I can't use an operating system which has a weak selection of apps.

Re:Solaris 9

[grendel_x86]

The best part of Solaris 9 is that it will run all progs for Linux natively w/o recompile. So if you run Solaris x86, you can take progs for x86 Linux distros, and run them.

Many people don't like Solaris because of it not being free, and they don't understand it. Remember, it is probably the most developed *nix. It is far more stable than Linux.

The reason they switched to GNOME is because they wanted to have a common look and feel to the *nix family, and now that they are using it, will probably help develop it to a point where it is as easy to configure as some of the other ones.

I agree with you about M$ windows being good w/ app availability, but you have to consider its purpose, hard-core data processing, and the web. I personally run winXP pro (striped down) and Mandrake 9. I have played w/ Solaris quite a bit, and when I get money, will get a Blade 150 or Blade 2k.

Re:Solaris 9

[Troll the Bones]

Though I've tried everything from BeOS to Mandrake to Win2k (my fave), I can't use an operating system which has a weak selection of apps.

Nice troll.
Very well done.
*applause*

Re:Solaris 9

[sys$manager]

I'm surprised someone on /. is willing to realize and admit that Solaris is more stable than Linux. It's faster too. I've done side-by-side benchmarks of single-cpu Sun boxes vs. dual-cpu Dell boxes running Linux and the Sun boxes won every time.

Re:Solaris 9

[sstory]

didn't know that about the ability to run linux apps. That's really cool. Most everything I need is availible for linux.

Re:Solaris 9

[geekoid]

next time, use similiar suystems, sheesh. Dual procs can slow a system and.or and app down.

Re:Solaris 9

[mungtor]

I've been mentioning things like that in a bunch of Sun related threads lately because I just don't understand the animosity towards Solaris. It's fast, stable, well documented and Sun provides great support (but you do pay for it). The only reasons that I read are because it't not free or open source. If it works, who cares? Business decisions shouldn't be made based on ideaology, but rather on what can get the job done.

I have nothing against Linux at all, and have it on several x86 systems. It's great to play with and decent for engineering workstations. But none of them can touch Solaris on Sparc for overall stability IMHO. (Solaris x86 is a PITA with drivers when you're dealing with very new or proprietary hardware tho.)

Re:Solaris 9

[Jungle guy]

Have you checked your Mathematica CD? It has a directory called "Unix", and under that you can find subdirectory called Linux, Solaris, Irix and others.

Re:Solaris 9

[pmz]

I've done side-by-side benchmarks of single-cpu Sun boxes vs. dual-cpu Dell boxes running Linux and the Sun boxes won every time.

I'm a Sun fan, but I am also skeptical of your claim. For very small and CPU-intensive applications, the Dell boxes might win. Any program that taxes I/O should probably do better on the Suns, however (just keep slapping in more PCI SCSI or network controllers into the Suns). Any highly-parallelizable program would probably do better on Suns in SMP mode (if you can afford 106 CPUs, that is).

For modest workstation loads, I think the coming Sun Blade 1500 and Sun Blade 2500 won't quite catch up to the Power Mac G5 and the AMD Opteron systems. Regardless, I think I would still buy the Sun over a Dell but would take a hard look at the G5 (Sun and Apple do things Dell and Microsoft can only dream of: work as I expect them to and work consistently).

Re:Solaris 9

[Wiz]

More stable, yes, as long as the hardware is ok.

As for faster? No, I don't believe it. What is it actually faster at?

I've done a lot of tests with various x86 and SPARC CPUs on lots of various EDA tools run real-world EDA data and the x86 wins easily currently.

SPARC/Solaris may have many things going for it, but out-right speed isn't one of them.

Re:Solaris 9

[ameoba]

Faster at what? What kinda boxes are we talking? Can you at least make up some numbers?

Re:Solaris 9

[gblues]

Um, how about doing a valid comparison? Like getting 2 dual-proc Dell machines that are identically configured, and putting (say) Gentoo linux on one and Solaris 9 on the other.

Then let them race.

Nathan

Re:Solaris 9

[sys$manager]

Because Solaris was built to run on a SPARC, not x86. Likewise, Linux was built to run on x86.

Re:Solaris 9

[sys$manager]

Primarily qmail and BIND. Especially qmail. We could push WAY more messages through on the Sun box than on the Linux box. Our outgoing SMTP server processed hundreds of thousands of outgoing messages per day.

Re:Solaris 9

[ImpTech]

Solaris is neat and all, and I don't think I ever crashed it... but IMO its really nothing special either (barring when its used by crazy people who need 50 processors and 1000% uptime). At least on x86 its obnoxious to configure and use for anything, and hardware support is marginal at best. Don't even get me started on Sun's asinine default partitions, UFS filesystem, and their commandline utilities which are just dying to be replaced with GNU tools or similar. Sure you COULD take x86 Linux programs and run them, but really why would you want to? I've played with Solaris a few times, and while its neat to say you did it, and I do kind of like their firewall software, virtually every Linux distro or BSD I've used is easier to deal with. And at least for me, I'm going through all this aggravation just to do something I could do already on my Linux or OpenBSD machines.

Now, about SPARC machines, I don't know about the Blade2k's, but we had a lab at school that had 30 or so Blade 150's, all tricked out with 21" monitors and 1.5GB of RAM, and they SUCKED! I've talked to people using them in industry who have agreed with my impression. 500-somewhad-MHz Sparc chips are sloooowww, and their graphics capabilities were none too impressive either. Performancewise, my home PC running Solaris 9 x86 was a hell of a lot more responsive (though I didn't get to have luxuries like sound, so its a tradeoff), and its only a P3-850 with 512MB RAM. Granted, my PC doesn't do fancy 64-bit things, but still... CDE's not that intensive, you'd think any old sparc would be able to handle it without missing a beat.

Re:Solaris 9

[EvilAlien]

There are ports for each OS on each architecture.

If you can't even attempt to make conditions the same for each so you are only testing the OS, then you can't claim the tests on different architectures are valid. It is rediculous to claim that the tests of different architectures is valid, but tests of the two OSes on the same architecture is not valid.

Please go back to science 101.

Re:Solaris 9

[sys$manager]

I never said I was testing only the OS. I was testing Sun's OS on Sun's hardware against Linux on the prevailing Linux architecture, x86. I wasn't benchmarking from a scientific standpoint, I was benchmarking from a "how will our money best serve our business" standpoint in which case the low-end Sun hardware prevailed in my specific applications.

That "Please go back to science 101" comment was certainly scathing though.

Re:Solaris 9

[sstory]

There's nothing troll about it. I wanted to know about the apps. I didn't want snarky comments about my choice of OS. I think it was perfectly fine to mention that my favorite of all the OSes was Win2k because it's relevant to my problem--finding the necessary apps to do my job (physics research). I didn't say it was better than the others, or that they were bad, I said it was my fave, and I think it's obvious from my situation why. Other people's responses were useful, and that's what I wanted.

Rethink the title

[cK-Gunslinger]

I mean, "... for Dummies" may be ok for:

Win95
Losing weight
Yoga
etc...

But releasing books under that title will *not* attract the type of people this book is aimed at. (As mentioned in the summary, how many of you read "Dummies" books) They are working purely on brand recognition, but in this case, I think that's a bad idea. How about "Beginner's Guide to Solaris" instead?

Re:Rethink the title

[leerpm]

I wonder how many people will pick up this book thinking it has something to do with the similarly titled movie.

Re:Rethink the title

[KillerHamster]

Up next on Slashdot Book Reviews:

z/OS for Dummies
Plan9 for Dummies
CP/M for Dummies
ASM for Dummies
Distributed Computing for Dummies
Nuclear Engineering for Dummies

and the other extreme:

Hello World for Advanced Kernel Hackers

Re:Rethink the title

[cK-Gunslinger]

Why is it okay for those titles but not for solaris? you're an elitist asshole.

*sigh*

It's "okay" for those titles because the target audience can feel comfortable reading a "Dummies" book. My mother would have no objections to reading/buying a "Windows98 for Dummies" book. On the other hand, your typical techno-wannabe has a very fragile ego and would generally not be secure enough to even be seen flipping through one at the bookstore. It's a classic scenario, typically seen in gender issues (asking for directions, watching "chick flicks," etc.)

Asshole? Probably.
Elitist? No.

Re:Rethink the title

[John_Booty]

On the other hand, your typical techno-wannabe has a very fragile ego and would generally not be secure enough to even be seen flipping through one at the bookstore. It's a classic scenario, typically seen in gender issues (asking for directions, watching "chick flicks," etc.)

I'm a professional programmer and have been for 6-7 years, but I think the "* For Dummies" guides are pretty good for what they are. I'm not embarassed to read them. In fact, they suit my learning style really well... I like to be shown the basics and get a good overall understanding of how something works. Then, on my own, I'll dig into the nitty-gritty details where necessary.

If you think about it, even if you don't buy "Dummies" books, you probably learn this way anyway. You buy some big 1,200-page tome about Solaris (or whatever). You read the first few intro chapters to get a nice overview of things, and then use the rest of the book as a reference on an as-needed basis. All told, from the time of purchase to the time when you throw the book out, you probably read 300-400 pages, max. It's not a whole heck of a lot different than buying the Dummies book for the overview and looking up the rest of the crap as you need it.

And for the record- I'm a guy, I hate chick flicks, and I hate asking for directions.

Re:Rethink the title

[Lemmy Caution]

That book isn't aimed at us. It's aimed at a non-computer-oriented user in a Solaris environment.

Everyone is a "Dummy" (in a light, humorously self-deprecating sense of the term) in some field or other. People who recognize that are often more successful than people who can't admit their own limitations. Few things are as irritating as "male answer syndrome," as they describe it on Car Talk.

I think the "... for Dummies" book series success speaks for itself.

Re:Rethink the title

[cK-Gunslinger]

That book isn't aimed at us. It's aimed at a non-computer-oriented user in a Solaris environment.

Exactly. And can you describe the details of that typical scenario? I'm pretty sure it's not "Jane Doe wants to do some work on her husband's computer, but he's running Solaris 9. So she buys a Dummies book to learn her way around." More than likely, this takes place in a corporate environment, where some users are thrust into Solaris. If so, why not change the title of the book to something a little less inflamatory? If I were a SW Project Manager and walked into a staff meeting only to see all my programmers reading "How to Program in C++ for Dummies," I'd probably freak out. If the *same* book was titled "How to Increase Productivity, Quality, and Profits using C++," I'd feel a little better. But maybe that's why I'm not a manager...

Re:Rethink the title

[Utoxin]

Actually, I'd have to disagree. I /love/ the Dummies series because of how they're written. They're very useful quick references for the basics. My copy of Perl For Dummies is very well used, and is a great help if I need to jog my memory on Regular Expressions. It's got nice simple examples, and explains things in plain language.

Flame me if you want, but For Dummies is a great series of books, and can be very helpful even to experienced computer users.

Re:Rethink the title

[joeykiller]

But releasing books under that title will *not* attract the type of people this book is aimed at. [snip] They are working purely on brand recognition, but in this case, I think that's a bad idea. How about "Beginner's Guide to Solaris" instead?

I think you're too hard on the Dummies series. Remember that you shall not judge a book by it's cover (a cheap pun, I know, but it was intended). Maybe the title will, as you say, alienate some potential readers, but my personal experience with the book series is that even though they're meant for dummies, the books themselves aren't always dumb.

My best Dummies book is "Java programming for Dummies". I learnt enough from it to understand object orientation and threading basics, and quickly got me up to speed on programming applets with the (at that time small and manageable version 1.0.2) JDK API.

It did by no means make the best Java programmer in the world - I'm probably not even a "good" Java programmer today, six or seven years later - but then the book never pretended that it *could* make me that. But it gave me a useful start on a subject and enough knowledge to continue more serious studies of the subject.

Not many introductory books can say that about themselves... the Teach yourself X in 24 hours, for instance, have titles that indicates that you actually can teach yourself a subject in a short time, even though the title probably should be "Give yourself a taste of X in 24 hours".

The Dummies... books are at least honest about what they're pretending to be and help you achieve.

Re:Rethink the title

[Strange Ranger]

> On the other hand, your typical techno-wannabe has a very fragile ego and would generally not be secure enough to even be seen flipping through one at the bookstore.

No kidding! I'll be getting my copy from Amazon.com thankyouverymuch.

Re:Rethink the title

[Lemmy Caution]

There are thousands of possible situations where this is likely. Want me to list a few?

Software localizers. Graphical artists. Technical writers/documenters. Editors and layout specialists. Architects working in large firms. Chemical engineers.

There are sooooooo many more job titles in the world than "programmer" and "manager," despite the incredible, mind-boggling myopia you see on Slashdot. All these people probably know a couple applications with incredible fluency, but may well not know how to get around a UNIX environment.

Re:Rethink the title

[FueledByRamen]

I wonder how many people went to see that movie expecting to learn about SUN hardware and the people who administer it? I know that I almost did.

Re:Rethink the title

[cK-Gunslinger]

So you are arguing that these people *want* a book entitled "... for Dummies" and are more likely to purchase it, as opposed to something more tactful? Cause that's really what my original post was all about. Nothing more.

Re:Rethink the title

[chrisbw]

It's "okay" for those titles because the target audience can feel comfortable reading a "Dummies" book. My mother would have no objections to reading/buying a "Windows98 for Dummies" book. On the other hand, your typical techno-wannabe has a very fragile ego and would generally not be secure enough to even be seen flipping through one at the bookstore.

While I agree that many "techno-weenies" wouldn't want to go pick this book up and be seen with it on their shelves, I work in a heavy (3000+ server) Solaris environment, and we have a lot of project managers and other management types who don't want to get deep in the muck with technical details, but would like to at least know enough terminology to follow what's going on.

That very well be the market that they're targeting with this book.

Re:Rethink the title

[Lemmy Caution]

Like I said, the series seems to be doing well. I know a neuroscientist who has a couple "for Dummies" books for computers (I think it's a Windows 2000 Server for dummies and something else). She's secure enough in her intelligence that she's willing to "reserve" it for what matters, and doesn't mind a bit of hand-holding for things that don't matter if it means she can get going more quickly.

Re:Rethink the title

[chrisbw]

Exactly. And if that's the case, why not change the title to better reflect that? "Solaris Basics"

Because "...For Dummies" is their brand. That, and their yellow/black covers are their brand identity, consistant across all of their products. A lot of people on /. seem to suffer ego-bruise at the thought of buying a "...For Dummies" book, but obviously that's not the case across their market, otherwise they wouldn't sell, and they'd change the name.

If you read /., you are probably not the person they're marketing this book to.

Just how big is the market for this book?

[binaryDigit]

It's hard to imagine that there are that many people that are going to need a book like this. Perhaps a Windoze IT person whose shop is getting some Solaris box's? Sounds like anyone who is coming from a Unix IT background already would find this book useless, and the number of "average" joes who know very little about *nix but are getting Solaris boxen has to be pretty small. Definitely a niche product. I guess this is just an outcome of the fact that the "For Dummies" publisher is trying to cover every topic known to man.

Re:Just how big is the market for this book?

[grendel_x86]

Sun is also trying to get into the corperate market w/ their thin clients.

This book might be good for a user of those.

One of Suns big things, like ours, is kill M$, which this does aid.

Re:Just how big is the market for this book?

[larien]

Yup, we're trialling them where I work, probably using Tarantella as a hook into Terminal Server for Legacy (i.e. Windows) apps.

Re:Just how big is the market for this book?

[mick29]

There is a market IMHO.
When I was still young and new to Linux, I installed FreeBSD on my box just for fun, and I was totally at loss to get this system work. Or getting myself working with the system.
With a little more unix background in the meantime (driver programming and other stuff you do at a university) I think I could cope.
Now, in the case of having Slowaris thrown at me, I would definitely appreciate every bit of help.

Re:Just how big is the market for this book?

[grendel_x86]

I heard in general it runs pretty smoothly, makes everyones life much easier.

Kinda funny that 30 years later we are returning to a terminal / timeshare systems.

Scary sitting on a shelf

[petronivs]

I've got to say, if I walk into a server room and see a 'For Dummies' book sitting on a shelf, I'll be scared.

Very scared.

Re:Scary sitting on a shelf

[sys$manager]

I'm the Unix administrator and I have a "for Dummies" book sitting on my shelf.

It's there because I wrote it.

Re:Scary sitting on a shelf

[Space Coyote]

Had a very similar experience when doing some programming for a local database shop. Big server meltdown, possible data loss, and I hear the head software architect going through the halls asking for his Oracle for Dummies book. To this day I hope he was just fucking with everybody, but I was too scared to ask.

Re:Scary sitting on a shelf

[FJ]

I walked into my former IT Director's office once and saw "Windows95 for Dummies" sitting on her desk. Quite disturbing considering she was responsible for the technological direction of a Fortune 100 company.

A few days later she made the decision that we would "standardize" on Windows. All other platforms would be eliminated.

The book stayed on her desk for several weeks until I moved on to another job. If the company hadn't been bought there would probably be a "Windows XP for Dummies" on her desk right now.

Re:Scary sitting on a shelf

[lostchicken]

Yeah. God forbid we find out the Network Administrators are people who often want an introduction to something rather than jumping headlong into it.

I don't have enough time to fully understand the details of database programming, so you aren't going to find books and books on the topic on my shelf. But, if I'm running an SQL server for the database guys, wouldn't it make you happy to see "SQL for Dummies" on my bookshelf? It's a quick, basic introduction. You have to start somewhere.

Even if you don't plan to deploy Solaris, some people might buy and read this book, because unlike Sun docs, you can pretty much just read them and have a general clue about things without having a machine to hack on. That keeps options open. Always a good thing.

While I wouldn't want a Network Administrator to buy this book while running a large cluster of Enterprise whatever-thousand servers, it would be nice to read before we buy.

Re:Scary sitting on a shelf

[Tyler Durden]

Which one?

UNIX for Dummies

[ih8apple]

If it's really so basic, as the reviewer says, and covers simple *nix topics, then what is the difference between this book and Unix for Dummies? I'm guessing the answer is nothing.

Look at the basic topics: File management; Making a decent password; Shells; Text editors; Using Writer and StarOffice; Internet, Web, and Mail access; and Essential system administration. Are any of these *really* solaris specific or different for any other *nix?

Re:UNIX for Dummies

[thebagel]

Actually, many aspects of Solaris *are* pretty different. I have a copy of Solaris 8 x86 sitting here that I installed once and could never get the hang of. I would've loved that book.

It's, for one, a...different process to access a console locally, and I don't mean a "This Host" ("This Host":Solaris::XTerm:Linux) window, I mean, no GUI. Quite a few system tasks that seemed basic I couldn't quite figure out...I can't remember specifics but it was complicated.

Also, people (computer-illiterate or otherwise) feel better knowing that the book was written for *their OS*, not a generic category, myself included.

OpenWindows is a whole-other world compared to Gnome :)...is it still included?

I wouldnt exactly.....

[Creepy Crawler]

Say that an enterprise OS would be "dummy compliant". After all, if you can afford some real sun hardware, you can easily afford classes.

It's just like Linux (structure and ideas) but using a bit different commands and flags.

Really, I'd prefer a books like that which has more meat (command list, common flags) along with SUN only stuff. How to use a GUI or text editor is about the same on all platforms.

Re:I wouldnt exactly.....

[lostchicken]

I sure as hell can't afford classes. I could barely afford that Ultra 1 I bought at the 1st Saturday swap meet downtown (Dallas, TX, USA). (75$) Some printed documentation could be nice.

Coming next in the "dummies" series...

[Honorbound]

Linux Kernel Hacking for Dummies!

Really, if you use/need Solaris, you're probably not a "dummy".

for Dummies

[Jason1729]

Why do people buy books that claim to be aimed at dummies? Just because you're a novice doesn't mean you're a dummy. The computer books are also very condescending, the tone of them is talking down to the reader. The Sams TY series are much better for new users.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:for Dummies

[MyHair]

Why do people buy books that claim to be aimed at dummies?

One of my theories is that it appeals to non geeks, because they often feel stupid when dealing with computers, and I'm fairly sure the "for Dummies" series began with computer topics.

It was a bit hard to get used to buying ... for Dummies books, but I got over the stigma. However I never could bring myself to buy a "Complete Idiot" book. Sorry, I can't go that far. Then there would be "effing dumbass" books, and we just can't have that.

Way back when I got Corel Draw 3 new the included docs weren't helping me much. I browsed through several at the booksore and found _Corel Draw for Dummies_ book to be the best, so I bought it. I really really liked it; it was way more helpful than the included manual and videotape.

After that I always checked the Dummies series when I was looking for a book, and early on they were great, and it was helpful that if you knew how one was laid out you knew how the others were laid out. Also, while they were mostly beginner information they often had some fairly techie stuff in the sidebar articles.

At some point either I outgrew the series (the computer topic ones, at least) or they dropped in quality. I think it was a bit of both.

My big disappointment was _Java for Dummies_. God I hated that book. First of all, I thought I was getting a programming book, but no, this one was just by some hyperactive cheerleader-like guy who thought Java was taking over the world. And the book just told you how to include pre-existing applets into web pages. There was a whole separate _Java Programming for Dummies_ book.

Actually I think I quit buying computer Dummies books after that and stuck almost exclusively with O'Reilly books. Those are awesome, and I don't recall being disappointed with one yet. Wrox books seem really good and technical, too.

I have bought some non-computer Dummies books fairly recently, like Managing Your Career fD, Personal Finance fD, Wine fD (as in fermented grapes) and such. Their formula seems to be to find an established and respected author and have him/her write a book in their format, and for the most part I like it; it's a good starting point. But they are all about publishing new books under the same old beaten horse like the Chicken Soup series, so sometimes I think the quality suffers.

By the way, there is a satire book Complete Idoit's Guide for Dumies that I found on the shelf once. It wasn't very funny inside, but it took me several minutes to figure out how they got away with publishing that. ("Idiot" and "Dummies" are misspelled.)

Re:for Dummies

[geekoid]

because, unlike you, some people have a sence of humor?

Re:for Dummies

[leviramsey]

It was a bit hard to get used to buying ... for Dummies books, but I got over the stigma. However I never could bring myself to buy a "Complete Idiot" book. Sorry, I can't go that far. Then there would be "effing dumbass" books, and we just can't have that.

I'm waiting for the "...for the Subhuman" series myself...

I love these titles!

[Dahamma]

My favorite new game - guess which one is NOT a Dummies title:

1. Retired Racing Greyhounds For Dummies
2. Beekeeping For Dummies
3. U.S. Citizenship For Dummies
4. AOL For Dummies
5. Business Plans For Dummies

Re:I love these titles!

[leerpm]

My Answer: 1. Retired Racing Greyhounds For Dummies

I cannot fathom them making this into a book. Beekeeping sounds somewhat legitimate, the US citizenship I can see. AOL for Dummies, seems a bit redundant. Business Plans for Dummies is pretty scary, but I can believe it.

Re:I love these titles!

[Jonsey]

AOL for Dummies.

That's the truth, and a statement, not a book.

Re:I love these titles!

[akbar pasha]

man you haven't seen the ultimate yet...

Re:I love these titles!

[WTFmonkey]

Ever planned a wedding yourself? I kinda doubt it. The spreadsheets the book ships with are actually pretty useful for handling guest lists, rsvp tracking, all of the piddly little shit that slips through cracks if you can't afford to have a pro do it. Not a bad book at all.

Re:I love these titles!

[bfischer]

Actually there are a few books along those lines. There are numerous groups that place retired racing greyhounds into homes (rather than let them be destroyed). Since greyhounds are raised at a track, even simple things like windows and stairs (which they have often never seen) can be quite problematic. I got a retired grey last year and he has been quite interesting to say the least.

Re:I love these titles!

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

1. Retired Racing Greyhounds For Dummies
2. Beekeeping For Dummies
3. U.S. Citizenship For Dummies
4. AOL For Dummies
5. Business Plans For Dummies
So, 6. None of the above

--

Re:I love these titles!

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Sex for dummies?
Too late

--

Re:I love these titles!

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

I'm waiting for "Chicken Soup for Dummies" to come out.
How about When Chicken Soup Books Go Bad

Slang?

[GoofyBoy]

>If you hack your kernel just for pleasure (gotta shave your palms regularly, I'm sure),

Shave your palms on a regular basis?!?!?

(The whole maturbation/growing hair on your palms just an urban myth, but I still don't get the slang.)

Re:Slang?

[GutBomb]

it WAS actually believed that masturbation would cause blindness and spontaneous GROWTH of hair. the reason the joke was made was that if you are a kernel hacker you most likely have no social life so no prospect of sex so masturbation is your only recourse for sexual gratification

That one and other recommended books

[edmz]

• Solarios for Dummies (around 15 USD)
• Solaris Operating Environment Boot Camp
• Inside Solaris 9

Other titles to boggle the mind

[D0wnsp0ut]

two things you might not expect in one volume: the "For Dummies" label and Sun Solaris.

Actually, book titles I thought I'd never see:

• Macs for Dummies
• The Complete Idiots Guide to Mac OS X

Re:Other titles to boggle the mind

[haggisman]

We used to theorize how books would go over in our University Bookstore if they had titles like: "VM/CMS control blocks for Drama majors" "Cobol compiler internals - a minor elective for Agriculture students"

Dummies are Good.

[RealisticWeb.com]

if you are an Solaris administrator and get plagued with user questions about basic tasks, maybe you should have your boss buy a few copies of Solaris 9 For Dummies for your users

Think about this sentance before you start flaming the dummies books. The author caught the main point right there. I would never buy this book for myself but it sounds like a great thing to buy for other users at my company. I am a UNIX sysadmin, but we don't have any Solaris boxen. If we ever did get one, I feel confident that some man pages, the dead tree manual and some message boards would be enough for me to hack my way through the Solaris caveats, but I would rather eat rocks then set up a training session when I would have to teach middle management how to use the system. If I was forced to do just that, I would probably have them each get a copy of this book as the take home material.

Don't discount the Dummies books, they are a good thing (tm), if not for everyone.

Re:Slashdot For Dummies

[mahdi13]

"Slashdot For Dummies... Well, that is redundant isn't it?"

No, it's expected

Simple Summary..

[terkozer]

begin sarcasm..

Solaris For Dummies.. one line summary.. drum roll please..

"Don't use it"

Thank you.. thank you.. I'll be here all week. Please make sure you tip the waitstaff on your way out.

end sarcasm...

*raises hand*

[dannycim]

I have too much self-respect to ever buy a "... for dummies" book.

Go ahead and call me conceited.

Re:*raises hand*

[geekoid]

don't confuse 'self-respect' with the inability to laugh at yourself.

in other words, you need to get "A sense of humor, for Dummies" book.

Quake?

[KillerHamster]

However, if you are an Solaris administrator and get plagued with user questions about basic tasks, maybe you should have your boss buy a few copies of Solaris 9 For Dummies for your users so you can continue your Quake3 fragfest uninterrupted.

I didn't know Quake 3 ran on Solaris!

Re:Quake?

[TheRaven64]

Well, Quake 3 runs under Linux, and Solaris (like the *BSDs) has a Linux binary compatibility layer, so it should work on Solaris x86. I doubt it would run on Solaris on SPARC hardware though (at least not at a playable speed).

Re:Quake?

[grendel_x86]

I wonder how it would run with the PC card?

When i do get a sun box, i will get one of these.

Solaris 9?

[vasqzr]

Is there really a need for a Dummies book about Solaris? It's not like you can just walk into CompUSA and pick up Solaris 9.

Better yet, you can just download it from Sun's website. Free. Then you can install it on a cheap Sparc from eBay.

Re:Solaris 9?

[thanasakis]

You can easily find the ISO's on eMule. And, unlike the RIAA, Sun won't ever sue you for doing this.

Re:Solaris 9?

[mungtor]

It still sounds like a bargain to me when Windows is $150+ per copy.

Just my $20 (apparently).

free solaris 9 book

[Triumph The Insult C]

http://www.teachmesun.com

probably just as good

Re:free solaris 9 book

[dhodell]

Additionally docs.sun.com has all the information you could possibly want about ANYTHING Sun (even REALLY old stuff).

I think this book has somewhat poor timing. Solaris 10 is already being released for piloting. And if I weren't writing for Wiley (*not* a Dummies book) I would say that I hated the Dummies name as well ;).

Insulting titles

[richmaine]

I refuse to buy any of the "for dummies" books. It doesn't matter whether they are good or not, I won't buy a book with an insulting title like that. I don't find it humorous to imply that anyone who isn't a geek is a dummy; I don't happen to think my mother is a dummy.

I speak with the only voice that matters on this - my wallet. It is clear that my voice isn't the same as that of a large fraction of the population, but then I knew that anyway.

Re:Insulting titles

[nukenerd]

Who said they think that non-geeks are dummies? In fact they think anyone who buys their books is a dummy, whether they are a geek or your mother.

I would not buy one either. They are confusing a dummy with a newby. I am not a dummy but I still might appreciate a book on Solaris for newbies.

Finally the 'Dummies' series ...

[Chromodromic]

... has found its core audience. Be sure to watch for another title coming up in the next few: OpenBSD for the Enormously Intelligent.

Re:Finally the 'Dummies' series ...

[ocelotbob]

OpenBSD for the Enormously Intelligent.

Uh, you misspelled "elitist asshole". Dude, you need to get off your high horse here and realise that sometimes a good general reference book like the "for dummies" series is what someone needs. They're not books for experts -- that's the job of the thousand page flyswatters -- but they're perfect for someone just getting their feet wet in a complex subject such as an operating environment they've never used before.

Dummies books quite good

[jdavidb]

I have actually learned recently that the for Dummies books seem to be quite good. The Personal Finance for Dummies book I bought is one of the most highly recommended books on the subject. Dummies books are apparently published by the people who do Cliff's Notes, and I always found those handy, too. (Of course, I was one of those weirdos who read the book and then read the Cliff's Notes...)

I haven't used many of the computer-related Dummies books (the C one I looked at years ago looked awful, but I'm sure it's been through six revisions by now) but for other subjects I know little about but need a good introduction, they seem very good. I'm planning on getting Automotive Repair for Dummies (or whatever they call it) sometime soon.

Some of the Idiot's guides also seem to be pretty good, but more of them seem to be misses.

Re:Dummies books quite good

[Al-Hala]

I Agree. I avoided these books like a communicable disease due to the "Dummy" in the title, but just as I (once) learned not to judge a book by its cover art, some of these are fairly well written and consise. I own the financial planning and home buying ones of the series.

I also agree with your statement on the "idiot" series; so far, not one has made its way on my shelf.

Re:Dummies books quite good

[jdavidb]

I just bought the Idiot's Guide to Getting Rich and the Idiot's Guide to Online Investing. Both seem reasonably competent, but I won't read them until after I finish the financial planning book. The Getting Rich book emphasizes starting your own business if you want to be what I would call "filthy rich," and I have no interest in doing that, but other than that the advice seems sound. I'm not sure I'm ever going to invest online (surprisingly, since I do everything else online), but I got both for $2 each and thought it couldn't hurt.

I've also been interested in the Ebay Businesses for Dummies books and other Ebay titles in the series. Not because I want to start a business but because I'm curious about people who do and how they do it.

Someday I'll probably have Hebrew for Dummies, too, as that's another of my interests.

For computer titles, though, I pretty much stick to O'Reilly.

Better Question

[Troll the Bones]

Is this for the dummies who run it or the dummies who buy it?

Why Me!

[lcsjk]

Why do they keep targeting me with all these books? Is it that obvious?
(Where are you? Are you watching me?)

Re:Damn

[DenOfEarth]

And I just kicked Solaris off my Ultra5 yesterday :D

hehe, you're a dummie, as now there's a book telling you how to use Solaris 9 ;)

Will we ever see:

[jpmahala]

SGI IRIX for Dummies?

Re:Will we ever see:

[JamesP]

FreeBSD for Dummies? Network Security for dummies

Oh great...

[IDigUNIX]

Now I'll have even more in-duh-viduals showing up to ask questions, all full of smugness because they've read this book....
in-duh-vidual: "Oh yes, I've been using UNIX for months now. But I've got a question about how I should launch this "Corn Shell" thing.
me:What about it?
in-duh-vidual: "Well, everytime I type in /bin/ksh all I get is a prompt, it never seems to run the GUI.
me:Hmm, let me check....
output of ps command:
luser 2597 2596 0 13:15:52 pts/10 0:00 ksh
luser 2599 2598 0 13:15:53 pts/10 0:00 ksh
luser 2596 2581 0 13:15:51 pts/10 0:00 ksh
luser 2600 2599 0 13:15:53 pts/10 0:00 ksh
luser 2598 2597 0 13:15:52 pts/10 0:00 ksh
luser 2601 2600 0 13:15:54 pts/10 0:00 ksh
luser 2602 2601 0 13:15:55 pts/10 0:00 ksh

Speaking of "dummies" and "solaris"

[nutznboltz]

McNealy: 'I'm thrilled to death SCO can't revoke our Unix licence'

Re:Damn

[sys$manager]

So you went from an operating system totally tuned and customized to your processor to a port of a general purpose OS originally designed for x86?

Off topic/getting carried away

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I realize the "For Dummies"/"Idiots Guide To" is very popular, but it's going too far, Solaris is hardly for dummies, but other topics come readily to mind as well:

For instance, I have seen:

WWII for Dummies (isn't that what grade school is for?)
Yoga for Dummies (hmmm...Paging Doctor Kildare!)
The Idiots Guide to Sex (perhaps populat on /.)
and my favorite one:

The Idiots Guide to the Mafia (as if you'd have to be anything else to be in the Mob)

Re:Off topic/getting carried away

[ocelotbob]

It depends. The "For Dummies" series is intended to be a primer, something you can flip through to see if you want/need to learn more about the subject. Something like World War 2, where you've got a lot of players, and a lot of intricate negotiations going on, a "For Dummies" book can be useful so you can skim through and get some idea of what's going on as you read the larger, dry history book you picked up. Many times, these books have suggestions on other books to read through to get a full understanding on what can be complex topics.

C++ for Dummies

[swtaarrs]

The most useful Dummies book I've read is C++ for dummies. I am an experienced C programmer, and I wanted to learn C++. The C++ for Dummies book was designed for people like me, and it was the perfect book for the job. It had very clear explanations of all the new features, especially classes. What I liked most about the book was that it managed to stay clear and very understandable without making me feel like the author assumed I was an idiot. In many cases dummies books are also perfect as quick reference manuals on a subject, and many advanced programmers I know use them often. For those of you who sneer at dummies books, you may want to rethink your attitude and take a serious look at a couple of them.

Re:Damn

[bazik]

Yes, because the filesystem (reiserfs) is faster, the applications run faster and software installation is easier aswell. Btw, using Gentoo on that Ultra5.

no dummies here

[akbar pasha]

linux/unix/*any*nix doesn't go well with "dummies" series. because, if you are using any *nix then you are by _default_ a 'smart' user.

All dummies books are for those who want MSN to remember their password and ring them when they get spam.....

Re:Slashdot For Dummies

[akbar pasha]

i think it would be a major HIT, if ONLY the author is our popular 'Anonymous Coward'....=]

Next From Wiley Publishing

[Lord_Slepnir]

Look out for thse up-and-coming titles from Wiley Publishing:

• Managing your multinational corporation for Dummies
• Nuclear Engineering for Dummies (available in Arabic and Korean)
• Assembly programing for Dummies
• Genetic Engineering for Dummies
• the Federal Budget for Dummies

Re:Next From Wiley Publishing

[Stephen Chadfield]

Well, this is not a joke. About three months ago my local PC World were trying to flog copies of "Mosaic for Dummies" in their "Bargain" section for a mere £9.99. They had about five copies, still shrink wrapped.

Re:Next From Wiley Publishing

[rowanxmas]

Well, If you think about how many biologists who have been in the wet lab, and would like to use new tools, like computers, since not everyone is CS/Biology person, it makes sense that there is an easy way for non-cs people to use the tools they need.

I don't get it ...

[pb9494]

I don't get it. What's the point in calling you a dummy if you're trying to sell a book. How did marketing people ever come up with that ? There's a For Dummies book for about every f**king aspect of life: beekeeping for dummies, prostate cancer for dummies, there's even a "Hypoglycemia for Dummies". Why do people buy books entitled "The Complete Idiot's Guide to ...". Stuff like Solaris, C++, ... are not for idiots. Such titles disgrace the art of programming. They'd better start showing some goddamn respect !

Re:I don't get it ...

[Graspee_Leemoor]

You missed one of the best ones.

Yes there really is a "Catholicism for Dummies".

http://cda.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/pro du ctCd-0764553917.html

graspee

Re:"For Dummies" is an Insulting Title

[stratjakt]

I agree with you, but it's a hell of a marketing strategy.

Theres some sort of deal with "kids today", it was true even when I was in school. Intelligence and hard work is shunned. It makes you a nerd, or a geek. Ask any 15 year old girl what the square root of four is and she'll giggle and go "i dont know math!". She probably knows, but it's not cool to know math, so the act is that they dont. This drives me nuts, the "im pretending to be dumb because it's not cool to be smart" act.

Such with the dummies and idiots and morons books. You wouldnt want to be caught walking out of a bookstore with a copy of "Advanced Solaris 9 Setup and Maintainance". You'd look like a geek, a nerd.

But a "for dummies" book under your arm broadcasts the message that you dont know, and dont care about the subject, because you're just too cool.

I really cant stand the way ignorance and stupidity is glorified in western cultures. It's not an american thing, since I'm canadian and have lived in the UK - it seems to be a white thing.

We make heroes out of the stupidest people alive and hold them up as role models for our kids. The guy from "Dude wheres my car" is just supposed to be what every teenager wants to be. A fucking idiot who's barely functional.

Oh well.

UNIX in a Nutshell

[Troll the Bones]

It incluces information on Solaris, even though it says Sys V (hint: look at the cover).

What, no Linux digs?

[gorzek]

I've got a few.

"strcat() for Dummies" - Linux developers
"POSIX for Dummies" - LSB architects
"Making Money for Dummies" - Any Linux co.

Don't hate me for my cynicism!

Re:What, no Linux digs?

[tomhudson]

I'll grant you the second and third, but if everyone read "malloc() for Dummies" and checked the size of their parameters, strcat() would be safe(r).

How about - "free() for dummies". I page, 1 line:

#define FREE(x) if(x!=NULL) free(x)

Re:What, no Linux digs?

[jaavaaguru]

Or even better:

#define FREE(x) if (x!=NULL) free(x);x=NULL;

That way you can't accidentally free the same memory twice, as might happen if you were being careless with memory in a loop.

Re:What, no Linux digs?

[MrBadbar]

You really outdid yourself writing free for dummies.

According to the man page for free, when you call free(ptr), "if ptr is NULL, no operation is performed." Seems kind silly now, huh? I'll grant you, though, that your macro is appropriate for a dummy (as many would argue all macros are). The dummies using your macro will also be happy that you left out setting x to NULL, so that they can happily free memory multiple times and get segfaults.

Re:What, no Linux digs?

[AlanS2002]

Kernel Hacking for Dummies - So sco can start writting their own code instead of stealing from Linux and BSD
World Domination for Dummies - George W might need this one.

Re:What, no Linux digs?

[Doctor Crocodile]

Why would he buy it? he writes a new chapter about once a week.....

Re:What, no Linux digs?

[tomhudson]

Hold on guy.

1. Not everyone is using GCC.
2. The man page for the newer version of GCC says this, and that's how it currently works. Unfortunately, I had problems with older versions not behaving consistently and adopted this macro as a work-around :-)
3. I hope you're not one of those who think macros are for dummies. Check out the header files for your fav. compiler - there are a LOT of macros there.
4. The behavior of the current implementation of gcc free() sets the ptr to null , so no setting of x to null is required. Compile the sample code I gave, and you'll see that you can call the macro multiple times to free the same memory, and it doesn't segfault :-)

Personally, I think macros are great. Wouldn't want to code w/o them.

Re:What, no Linux digs?

[jdeking1]

Ahhh, W doesn't read anything that isn't on a TelePrompTer anyway.

NUCULAR Power Station Maintenance for Dummies

[momus_radar]

"Nuclear Power Station Maintenance for Dummies": Homer Simpson

You mispronounce nucular? That's unpossible!

I'm sorry

[Znonymous Coward]

Ok, this book is the worst book in the world. I saw it at the public library last week. So, being an AIX and Linux person, I decided to skim through it. It should be called "How to make people think we know about Solaris and charge them $19.00 in the process".

You might learn a thing or two about CDE, and how to use the ls command, but thats about it.

My first UNIX(r) experience

[Anonymous Coward]

My first UNIX experience was Solaris 7 (paid only for S&H) on my k6-II (uber-ch33p parts from Egghead.com Auctions), and a decent introductive work called Introducing The UNIX System (ISBN: 0070450013) that i got at a local libary book sale for $1.50.

Though the book taught me the basics of logging in, how the file directory system had worked (yes, i had only encountered flat filesystems before), basic commands like ls cd cp rm mv and things.... It did nothing in the way of explaining X or any other aspect of the hardware. In fact, i had no idea that UNIX had a GUI until i told the System Configuration Assistant to "install everything".
I ended up in a configuration for it and was stoked. Unfortunately, my video card wasn't supported, however.

Though i was excited to actually have a real, live UNIX in front of me, i think that over time the gaps of knowledge that i didn't have about hardware and the somewhat crufty nature of Solaris (along with its pokiness on an x86 machine), essentially got me soured on Solaris and made the jump to (*gasp*) Caldera OpenLinux. (Thankfully i've discovered slackware, freebsd and debian since 1998)

I had a generic UNIX book, and i had the Solaris Manpages, and i read them both extensively. But starting from total Ground Zero it would have been nice to have a little hand-holding, or maybe something that was Solaris-specific. I just recently discovered Admintool.

Obviously i still turned out "okay" in the long run, but perhaps someone less tenacious than me would have just given up and bought Windows, or a Mac. Or maybe those people wouldn't have been UNIX people anyways.

Fwiw, there are a pile of "Solaris for beginners" and "introduction to Solaris" books out, btw.

-phaeton

Sun officially on endangered species list

[Ars-Fartsica]

Sun's latest revenues show a company cut off at the knees. The Sparc architecture is essentially dead in the eyes of the market. Solaris has little new adoption or new mindshare.

This company is in big trouble and trash-talking Scott McNealy's act is getting very old. Some advice:

1. Fire McNealy. Sun can never go forward while this dinosaur of the software wars is in the chair. Thanks for the memories Scott, but Sun lost the war.

2. Get out of the hardware business. Sun hardware is not coming back. Ever. Sell the maintainence business to IBM or HP.

3. Turn Sun into a software company focusing on Java. This means saying YES to Windows and Linux in a big way.

Re:Sun officially on endangered species list

[grendel_x86]

Stanford University Networks

Dummies book

[Last Warrior]

Dummies books definately have thier place. I have looked through and or used more than one in my lifetime.
I work in a software company that makes software for windows and various type of unix.. solaris being the most prominent.
During th ecourse of a regulr week, I get asked mant many question on how to perform simple tasks inunix.. either by people who never bothered to learn it or people who were working with our windows line and were tasked to work with our solaris product.
If only to alleviate the need for me to teach people how to use vi, im sure the book is useful in this environment.
As for the name "dummies", people shouldnt be so thin skinned. these books cna be of use to any number of experienced or non experienced people.

People who cannot laugh at themselves deserve to be laughed at.
S-

Re:Damn

[kableh]

And I just got my Ultra 5 yeaterday =D.

No seriously, got one from a friend. Nice little workstation. How does Xfree compare to Solaris' native X?

Re:Damn

[bazik]

I am a bit biased because I always like Linux more than Solaris :)

You can read abit about my installation here.

Re:"For Dummies" is an Insulting Title

[jo42]

Yep, the Yanks have been raising several generations of total idiots. Why? Can't have too many smart people running around. Those in power can't have people smarter than them figuring out how the rest of the world have been scammed all these years...

Can't have it both ways

[telbij]

Though labeling a book 'for dummies' will encourage a lot of people to purchase it who are scared of the other titles, you will inevitably get a backlash from people who are confident of their ability to understand and want a hardcore learning tool/reference. I don't think any self-respecting geek should be expected to give these books a chance, nor do I think they offer anything that can't be had elsewhere. Not that I think they're bad books per se, just that I would never buy one.

Re:Can't have it both ways

[lfd]

I beg to differ. I used to do Unix kernel development for a company that has become unbelievably unpopular these days, but I found that HTML for dummies was the quickstart style of books I needed to publish performance measurements to the team (perf and VM group). My point being you can think of yourself as being a hardcore geek and still have a use for a ... for Dummies book.

For people who dont like the title

[geekoid]

you need to get a sense of humor, really.
They manage to make ,what can be very boring subjects reasonably entertaining, or at least keep you busy.
For the person sitting down to a command prompt for the first time, a Dummies book can really get you going, and let you know the basics of how to get more information with man page examples.

Now I was at a company who hired a contractor to do some work, and he showed up with a new dummies book and spent a day going through the book. Now THAT pissed me off, but thats hardly IDG's fault.

Re:"For Dummies" is an Insulting Title

[jdavidb]

Ask any 15 year old girl what the square root of four is and she'll giggle and go "i dont know math!". She probably knows, but it's not cool to know math, so the act is that they dont.

I recently tutored my girlfriend for the math portion of the Texas state college test (TASP) which determines if you need to take remedial courses or not. She had zero confidence in her own abilities, but when we were done she beat the passing score by 65 points and the College Algebra level score by 30 points. I can't think of anything so rewarding as helping someone see that they can do math.

I really cant stand the way ignorance and stupidity is glorified in western cultures.

I enthusiastically agree.

Re:Because, for some reason..

[ratfynk]

// We can all appreciate the difficulties of real programming

#exclude (windowsusers.h)

#exclude (visualstudio.h)

// The interfaces that make people actually think they can program.

// of course after you

int main()

/* It is a different story all together, you had better know what the hell you are doing! Otherwise you will screw up real fast and not have a friggin' clue as to how*\

// So essentially good dummies books are a necessity for the majority

We have a winner!

[Dahamma]

I was trying to come up with a good fake title, but the real ones were all so good I couldn't resist ;)

Re:"For Dummies" is an Insulting Title

[cpeterso]

I really cant stand the way ignorance and stupidity is glorified in western cultures. It's not an american thing, since I'm canadian and have lived in the UK - it seems to be a white thing.


It's not a White Thing because it is also common in African American culture.

To bad

[QQ2]

You lose
Mac OS 9 for dummies

sorry I had to check if it existed.
But with titles like:
- Server+ Certification For Dummies
- Carpentry For Dummies
- Migraines For Dummies
I just had to check.

(ps for the humor impaired this is not a troll but a mere demonstration of the power of the for dummie books)

Hey UNIX for Dummies

[ellem]

was a pretty good book. I don't know which version I bought but it made me the UNIX man I am today....

hmmm, maybe that isn't the ringing endorsement I thought it would be.

Re:"For Dummies" (the author comments)

[d1taylor]

I dunno about that: the "for dummies" concept is one that I rebelled against for a long time until it dawned on me that it's not an insult to the reader, but a description of the approach taken. Contrast it with "for the complete expert", which would clearly be a different book (and series) entirely!

As the review says, Solaris 9 for Dummies is most definitely NOT a book about system administration (though it includes some basic sysadmin stuff) and it's also NOT the same book as John & Margy's Unix for Dummies. Solaris 9 for Dummies has considerable coverage of both the Common Desktop Environment and GNOME: it's the first Solaris book I know of that covers both the old and new school of GUI interfaces.

In addition, as a Unix and Linux book author too, I can tell you that Solaris is, um, a different beast, so it is most definitely useful to have a book focused specifically on the Solaris environment for neophytes and people seeking to get a quick head start on their Solaris knowledge.

Finally, another topic that's covered in some level of detail but isn't mentioned in the review is Open Office (aka Star Office): rather than focus on the sysadmin-y sort of things and have lots of geeky command line stuff, Solaris 9 for Dummies is just as much about the GUI and how to be a productive USER of Solaris: competing titles are all about how to be an admin, but there are plenty of Solaris folk who aren't admins, don't want to learn how to administer their system, and just want to be productive.

Learn more and read a sample chapter to see what's what:

http://www.intuitive.com/solaris/

Re:minor nit...

[jaavaaguru]

Oops. Yeah, that's better, although both ways work.

Ahem...

[Ayanami Rei]

Solaris ISN'T faster than Linux (on the same machine!), for the same reasons that Solaris is more stable than Linux. This distinction goes away with more than 8 CPU, there Solaris wins

And I also have to ask...What kind of single-cpu boxes and dual-dells?

Because I can tell you a E450 (480x4, 4GB) is about a full 4 times less throughput than a cheapo Altus 130 from Penguin (2GHzx2, 2GB) in Matlab (each running 4 jobs).
A Blade 2000 with one 1.1GHz CPU is about 35% slower than that same system (running 1 job)

So maybe it's because I'm running bandwidth/CPU intensive jobs... what are you guys doing?

Re:Ahem...

[sys$manager]

An E450 is what, 6 or 7 years old? How can you compare that with a brand new Intel box?

Re:Ahem...

[Ayanami Rei]

Which was exactly my question to you. What were you comparing?

The E450 is 5 years old, the Altus is 2 1/2 years old.

I performed another comparison: it's 35% faster than a Sun Blade 2000 (dual 900MHz). (load: 4 "matlab 6.5 bench" jobs each). I don't have an 880 I can test anytime soon, but I imagine (for this type of benchmark) the results will be the same.

This is all scientific computing type stuff. I'm not trying to gauge FC-AL/RAID/NFS performance here. I suspect the V880 is the best at that kind of job (or maybe one of the mid-level rackmounts)

Not anymore?

[Ayanami Rei]

I have a 4.1 CD and it doesn't have a Windows directory. Perhaps the Unix directory is absent from the Windows version?

in any case, this is a non issue; you'd call Wolfram and ask them to send you the Unix install kit (which is free, since you paid for the license, ... right? ^_^)

Also a "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Solaris 9"

[walterbyrd]

Idiots, dummies, what's the differnce.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/00 28 643569/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1/002-8888427-9908811?v=gl ance&s=books&st=*

My role model kicks ass, sorry about yours

[Nice2Cats]

We make heroes out of the stupidest people alive and hold them up as role models for our kids.

Speak for yourself, man -- my role model is Willow Rosenberg. Given that she is a fictional Jewish lesbian witch who almost ended the world, which doesn't really describe anything about me, that might be strange, but then again, she certainly ain't "stupid".

On a more serious note, the "Dudes" just get most of the attention. Films and series are full of role models that do the right thing, stand up for what they believe, and work their but off. Star Trek NG and DS9 come to mind; it is exactly after the TV producers left the intelligent, good-people format (Enterprise, anyone?) that the viewers left. "Dudes" are good for the press and the Republicans to rant about, but look at the ratings for what teens really like to see. "Neo" from The Matrix is "not too bright", as we are told in the first part, but is he a bad role model?

Re:My role model kicks ass, sorry about yours

[renoX]

>Speak for yourself, man -- my role model is Willow Rosenberg. Given that she is a fictional Jewish lesbian witch who almost ended the world, which
>doesn't really describe anything about me, that might be strange, but then again, she certainly ain't "stupid".

Yes, but Willow isn't the principal hero of the show: Buffy is!
And at first, Buffy wasn't very different of the "stupid blond" role model!

Re:Damn

[haggisman]

'rpm -i ' is easier than 'pkgadd -d ' ?? don't follow you :)

Re:"For Dummies" is an Insulting Title

[kurosawdust]

Your theory needs a lower bound - "Solaris 9 for Wholly Incompetent Fucktards" wouldn't sell that well.

Re:"For Dummies" (the author comments)

[d1taylor]

so email me and let's talk about this. I'm interested because, among other things, I'm tech editing the next edition of Linux for Dummies, as it happens. You can get to me through my contact page on my Web site.

A "for dummies" book

[strombrg]

I read a "for dummies book". It was "Meditation for Dummies". I hated the title, thought it made me sound dumb, but it was recommended to me, so I gave it a chance.

I knew little about meditation going in.

I haven't become an expert, but I was left with the feeling that the book provided a good overview and emphasized the fundamentals, unlike the two other meditation books I started and good annoyed with for being too advanced.

I still hate the title, but I have more respect for the series of books now.

rating: 8...problems with 1-10 scales

[JimBobJoe]

This is an observation, but I have to wonder what a rating of 8 means (for this book.)

The reason is, individuals have their own ideas of where their 1-10 scales are centered. There are some people who center truly center the scales at 5, meaning that an 8 is a relatively good score. Some center them much higher, like in the 7 range, meaning that they give high numbers to absolutely everything. For myself, I center my scale relatively lowly...meaning that I never given a 10 for anything, a 9 is damn hard to come by, and a 5 is a relatively good score coming from me (I've described 3 as "ok" which pretty much makes 3 the center of my 1-10 scale.) This of course would imply that the spacing along a scale not on 5 is not geometric...but may be logarithmic.

It's a random thought off the top of my head...but I guess I'm saying that I dont think that 1-10 scales are really a good way of expressing opinion without knowing how that individual uses that scale.

Re:rating: 8...problems with 1-10 scales

[jonesvery]

Not entirely related to your comment, but since your comment isn't entirely related to the posting I'm just going to go ahead anyway... :)

I've found that a scale of 1-7 often works better than 1-10. Granted, you lose 30% of the gradations, but as far as I'm concerned if you care about precise measurement you shouldn't be using a scale of 1-10 anyway.

It seems that having fewer options, and maybe having the benefit of 4 being *exactly* in the middle of the scale, makes people tend to think more about the ratings they're giving things.

Hmmmm...since I can't get the 45 seconds that I spent writing this back, I guess I'll just go ahead and post it... :)

... and the better answer is:

[EvilAlien]

Yes.

Re:The burning answer...

[brusstoc]

I think jen frickell. www.frickell.com

Yeah, that about covers everyone interested.

(for those who don't know or care Jen is/was a Solaris admin in California. She got a new job and no one really knows what she is doing other than NOT updating her webpage)

Re:does Solaris run as well as OS X?

[redwoodtree]

Solaris is primarily for servers and engineers and was designed before the time of "panache" as you say. No, it's not anything like OS X in its GUI charm and ease-of-use.

However you can slap on different OS environments that was mentioned in the book review, like GNOME, to add some charm. However, in my opinion none of the standard desktops come close to OS X, but then again, there's no accounting for tastes either.

Good luck.

If you hack your kernel just for pleasure...

[swordgeek]

...then you're almost definitely not using Solaris.

I live and breathe solaris 14 hours/day (professionally and personally) and man, I can't even remember the last time I had to build a kernel. Probably not since the Solaris 2.3 days.

Re:Sun's new slogan

[wonkyballs]

How much work, could a network work, if a network could net-work?

Re:Well of course (Saddam)

[lp_bugman]

Sorry but Saddam Hussein Dictatorship was fairly succesfull! He staid in power for many many years. And was over trown by USA. Only because of oil interests. NOTE: I don't say he was a nice guy becase he wasnt. I just think he was as good dictator as any other (gasp the irony here)

Re:true story

[Phil John]

hmmm...that's almost verbatim what happens in a BOFH article over on el reg...perhaps your mistaking your reality for what you've been reading. ;o)

Re:Damn

[sbszine]

And I just kicked Solaris off my Ultra5 yesterday :D

Hey, me too! I inherited one from work and am using it as a Perl / web development box. A dual boot Solaris / Linux machine also makes a very good practice box for sysadmin newbies.

Some useful links for anyone wanting to whack Linux on an Ultra:

• ultralinux.org - a site for the Sparc kernel port, including FAQs, supported distros etc
• Installing Linux on an Ultra 5 and setting up a dual boot with Solaris
• Configuring Linux audio on Sparc
• JDK for Linux on Sparc

Re:Because, for some reason..

[ratfynk]

That was the point. /\

o-: :-) Siamese twins one happy the other confused

My preferred quote

[lfd]

from the review:

I'm pretty intimate with the ...For Dummies book formula.

As a matter of fact, so am I, since my girlfriend brought me back "Sex for Dummies" from the bookstore. That was tacful!

Re:oh goodie! Might make money.

[ratfynk]

"but maybe I'll just buy this book and install that instead!"

If you install the contents of a dummies book as an OS on your computer then somebody will mistake it for a Windows computer and buy it.

For Dummies

[broots]

I was at Mr. Paperback one time and I saw "Windows 98 for Gummies". I thought to myself, "I can see someone needing that". I moved on down the isle and saw "Windows 2000 for Dummies", I thought the same as the first book. Then I saw "AOL 5.0 for Dummies" and I thought, "C'MON PEOPLE! HOW STUPID CAN YOU GET?!"

Re:Damn

[spauldo]

Well, one thing you'll notice is that sun's Xserver runs at the same resolution as the console framebuffer, while xfree86 changes it. I'm sure that could be changed, however. It is kinda cool to see the effect of writing to the console while you're in X.

Sun's X is older, generally - hell, how long did it take them to go to X11R6? If you're lookin' for all the nice, nifty extensions, forget it - some of them might be available, but with XFree being the reference implementation these days it tends to get the features first.

Re:EVERYONE FAILS IT

[Hognoxious]

The only thing he ever was was a smart-ass

Better that than a smarting? ass!

solaris patches.... argh!

[ollyg]

does the book warn users about how blindly applying official patch clusters will nuke their beautiful Exim in favour of a broken Sendmail daemon?!?

Or as the Computer Contradictionary says...

[babbage]

I love this:

low-self-esteem books, n. Also called books for the baddled.
Any book riding on the huge success of DOS for Dummies (Dan Gookin, IDG Books, San Mateo, Calif.).

My contest for rival titles (UNIX Review, October 1993) invoked: Visual BASIC for the Blind; MIDI for the Dead; Pacsal for the Dyxlesic; REXX for Ex-Monarchs; C++ for the Nonplussed; dBASE for the Debased; Quicken for the Dead; 1-2-3 for the Innumerate; CLU for the Clueless; and LISP for the Listless. In spite of this ridicule, the genre has grown to include The Complete Idiot's Guide to Brain Surgery.

-- from _The Computer Contradictionary_, Stan Kelly-Bootle, (c) 1995

...what a great book... :-)

libc for dummies

[jvalenzu]

You don't need to check for NULL. It's perfectly valid and safe to call free(NULL).

Re:libc for dummies

[tomhudson]

poster wrote:

You don't need to check for NULL. It's perfectly valid and safe to call free(NULL).

Not on all compilers and platforms, or even all versions of compilers that currently conform, unfortunately :-( - so I figure, better safe than sorry.