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Two Books On Red Hat 9
skogs' review of Red Hat Linux 9 Unleashed Red Hat Linux 9 Unleashed author Bill Ball and Hoyt Duff pages 1002 publisher Sams Publishing rating 9 reviewer Nathan Jay Skoglund ISBN 0672325888 summary A guide for intermediate to advanced users of Red Hat 9.
To begin my humble review, I think I need to explain my point of view a bit. I am very interested in Linux and the open source movement, hence the purchase of a 1000+ page Linux book. Nothing new here, just a book review, if you want some technical writing, buy the book.
The problem is that I have tried many distros (Slackware, RedHat7.2, Icepack 2.0, Mandrake 9.1, Knoppix[fun], DamnSmallLinux and now RedHat 9.0), and not really known what I was doing. I liked most of the install programs, and I liked the general office suites, but I couldn't fulfill my need to know what exactly was going on inside my machine.
I sat down inside Barnes & Noble for roughly an hour and a half and looked over the Unleashed Book and compared it to the 'Bible'. Having looked through them both extensively, and learning a few things along the way, I decided that I liked the book I am reviewing much better. The Red Hat Bible just didn't have the same smart feel to it. It did not have specific console commands written out in examples, and did not seem to give as much insight into exactly how my Linux system operated. The best way to describe it would be that it was just like the 'how-to' books for Microsoft products: they tell you how to change things, how to make such and such happen -- but more like "If I turn the wheel in my car to the right, I go right," instead of teaching the physics of the gears in the steering column and the forces being transfered to the wheels, and the wheel's friction turning the cars direction. I learned how to change things, but not how the things I changed specifically interacted.
After a short introduction, the book spends 20+ pages coaching the reader on how to prepare for his first Linux install. It also helps decide how to partition systems and drives, so that just about any foreseeable storage situation is addressed. The next chapter is dedicated to actually installing the OS on your computer(s) by any method you would like, be it CD-ROM, traditional ethernet, hard drive, or even through a parallel port or serial port. The book explains and tells you where to look up the autoinstall Kickstart system, and generally makes you feel like you could walk into any situation and feel comfortable with what you were doing. It even gives a two-page listing of exactly what things to expect during an office transition, and a great checklist for getting all hardware versions and compatibility issues checked out ahead of time. Hopefully before you put a dent in that professional image of yours.
After you are done reading about all the wonderfulness of post-install configuration, then you go through your 'first steps' with linux. Learning the directory tree a little better, shell commands to compress/decompress, directory permissions, various switches and adding users.
There follows in the 6th chapter the best explanation of X I have ever read. I must admit that I had no idea how versatile and powerful X was. This is the section of the book that started to make me feel like I was 11 years old again and playing with my first computer, and trying to understand how to program Basic. :)
Part II of the book then starts dealing with actual system administration, including all the services that run in the background, software and system resources, user management, filesystems, and backup/restore/recovery. I get kind of misty eyed when I think of all the user commands that I can now type in at a prompt. Group and user admin surely beats the competing win2k/win2k3 server editions (User manager, though wonderful, is not as powerful as these simple commands in Linux).
Part III of the book deals with System services, including Printing, Network, DNS, Apache management, MySQL, FTP, Email, and collaborative software. While I have always found network connectivity to be a strong suit of mine, I think I learned a bit in that chapter anyway. I have not had the opportunity yet to set up my own email servers or web servers, but I do anticipate doing so within the next 2 years, and with the excellent line-by-line examples in this book to lead me, I feel that I will be far less bewildered than your average Microsoft-only user.
Part IV deals with programming and productivity. I am not a programmer, so I skipped most of the sections on perl and C/C++. I did find shell scripting to be a worthwhile read, and implemented a few little tweak scripts on my own little machine. Multimedia is also covered in this section, which also describes why RedHat avoided allowing MP3 playback by default. No matter; I had long before reading this section updated xmms to allow MP3. (Gosh, I would never accomplish anything without my trusty MP3 collection.) There is also a very nice history of OpenOffice.org, and how to use it too. The book also offers help with PDAs, faxing and scanning.
This section also includes text examples of configuration and setup for emulation and cross-platform tools. While I am intrigued by the beautiful screenshot of Return to Castle Wolfenstein running perfectly in emulation mode, I cannot say that I have attempted to completely replace my gaming computer just yet -- sadly I still dual boot with win2k. However, after fully reading the chapters in the emulation section, I feel that I will have a much better chance than I did before. I know that newsgroups are great, but my general feeling after reading this book is much better than after reading bulletin board posts. :)
This book concludes with a large appendix section -- and best of all, somewhere around 20 pages of blank paper for me to write in my own notes and cheats. That way I won't lose them underneath a computer, because, damn, that is a big book.
I strongly recommend this book to just about anybody interested in starting into Linux. Assuming that you can indeed read, and don't get freaked out by an occasional command-line interface, you should be fine. I know most things have a GUI command interface available, it is nice to know exactly what that little GUI applet is doing. "It is editing this text file, that is linked to this one," and so on. I also strongly recommend it for the hardened Linux user/admin, as I believe it would be a worthwhile thing to have on the shelf. You probably will get a little bit more use out of it than you do that Windows NT4 server book you have up there. I find this book relevant, accurate, helpful, logical, and insightful. It has a few typos, grammatical mistakes and spelling errors(show me a programmer that can spell in English!), and sometimes I wish the authors had spent more time on the graphical tools rather than the text/console based tools, but on the whole, excellent.
Acemics' review of Red Hat Linux 9 Professional Secrets Red Hat Linux 9 Professional Secrets author Naba Barkakati pages 1038 publisher Wiley rating 9 reviewer Vince ISBN 0764541331 summary A great Linux guide for experienced users as well as newbies.
The task of learning Linux can be a burden that some people just do not want to take on. Trying to find the right book to learn more about Linux or to use as a reference can be a mind blowing task given all the choices that are available. Red Hat Linux 9 Professional Secrets by Naba Barkakati is an excellent option for the Linux newbie or the experienced Linux user who wants a useful reference guide.
Weighing in at over 1,000 pages, Red Hat 9 Professional Secrets provides many useful insights and behind the scenes tips on the inner workings of Red Hat Linux. I have used many different books on Linux and specifically the Red Hat distro, and over the past few weeks I found myself going back to this book as a reference and easily finding the solutions I was looking for.
Such a large book can sometimes be a "turn off" for someone looking for their first book to learn something new. The fear being that they will never be able to navigate through all the technical advanced jargon that one usually finds in a 1,000+ page book. However, I feel the author does a good job introducing Linux basics and fundamentals in Part I: Setting Up Red Hat Linux, and Part II: Exploring Red Hat Linux.
The first two parts of this book which compose chapters 1-12 are only the first 373 pages. Parts III, IV, and V discuss in detail Internetworking with Red Hat Linux, Managing Red Hat Linux and Programming Red Hat Linux. These sections of the book deal with more advanced subject matter such as setting up Red Hat Linux as a Mail Server, News Server, Web Server, FTP Server and Samba Server, and how to manage, secure and administer your Red Hat Linux system.
While some may consider the first two parts to be strictly for the Linux newbie and the second three parts for the more experienced Linux user, I believe that these areas mesh well with each other providing the experienced Linux user with install tips in the first two parts that are often overlooked and providing the newbie with the definitive Linux guide that will walk them through the simple tasks as well as provide them more in-depth detail to the more advanced concepts that are often only found in a separate Linux administration book.
I would highly recommend this book to the experienced Linux user and the Linux newbie who are looking for the ultimate guide on Red Hat 9.
You can purchase Red Hat Linux 9 Professional Secrets or Red Hat Linux 9 Unleashed from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
spelling errors(show me a programmer that can spell in English!)
Hi there, damn good to meet you.
Yeah, I make typos or grammatical mistakes every once in awhile, but neither I nor most of my coworkers (on the C++ side at least... the Java coders are another issue) have major spelling problems.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that we all hate writing docs.
Are there any recommended Linux books for people who do not have the root password?
I support several users where I have given them normal user accounts, but all of the books I've seen spend a significant part of the book on features requiring root access. I'd much rather save money on a book that did not have these sections, then these books would be slightly less scarey and more relevant to these users' needs.
Just in time for Red Hat 10 beta!
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
"The Red Hat Bible just didn't have the same smart feel to it."
Being a RHL Bible user (3 months), I stake my life on that book. Smart feel? It gives the user every file location, server information, and allows the user to understand by explaining the settings; allowing the user chance to play with them. It has assisted me through FTP, NFS, and Apache server setup and tweaking without a problem. Its security information for all things linux are excellent. I have not read or even looked through the books mentioned in this review, yet I did not find a book which was comprable when I was looking.
I guess if you want to have a smart feel, you should buy a book which is not intuitive. The bible is. It allows the user to figure out how the OS works by assisting the problem-solving process.
Dont buy a book because it explains all the information, buy a book because it gives you the tools to learn through action. the bible does.
"this is the gloaming"
radiohead
First, my disclaimer: I am a newbie to *ix. I am confident that I can handle any reasonable system administration task in Windows and/or DOS, as I have dealt with those OSes since 1990.
My experience with Linux has been one week of trying to make the GUI work with RH7.2 and my Radeon 8500. I believe that at that time XFree86 was just plain incompatible at that time, though I'd bet some uber dudes made it work. I couldn't, and if there is no GUI, then it is not the kind of OS I want to use at home. Later I tried RH7.3, and X worked, but with no hardware 3D acceleration. Tux Racer was a slide show. Since I will not pay Xi for drivers so I can game at home, and ATI's binaries didn't work well enough for me, I abandoned 7.3. I skipped RH8 entirely because by then I had sold the 8500 and installed a 9700 Pro (love that card!). So now I have RH9 up and running, ATI's catalyst 3.7 drivers working reasonably well, and RTCW:Enemy Territory and UT2003 working great, so I can say that I believe I now have an OS acceptable for my home use.
As for *ix, I know there exists a command line prompt, and the operator can do many things provided he knows what to do there. I am not one of these people. I am the guy who needs a HOW-TO page to use rpm. I want to know how to use bash and the like. I want to know how to make KDE and GNOME do exactly what I want. I want to know how to install drivers correctly and understand the steps. I want to be as proficient in Linux as I am in windows.
That said, I do have a Linux book--The Red Hat Linux Bible (for RH7.2) It is a comprehensive book, with enough information for a beginner to install RH Linux and not much else. I'd say that unless you are already familiar with Linux and similar OSes that 95% of the material in that book is going to be over your head. About the only useful newbie information I found was installing RH. I understand that not everyone is going to use the same procedure, but for me, it was pretty much insert disk 1 and follow the prompts.
Don't get me wrong-- while convering installation is a great idea-- maybe some easy to understand tips on configuring X would be nice. Would you believe that changing the desktop resolution is covered in an obscure paragraph some 300 pages into the book? How about changing the refresh rate? I'll bet I'll have to edit my config file, but perhaps someone made it possible through the GUI. You Linux uber coders did that, didn't you?
How about sound cards? I'd bet that millions of computers sold in the last 4 years are capable of 4- or more channel audio. I don't know how to activate the rear channels. (Disclaimer-- i accidentally got them to work in RH7.3)
Guess what else? I sure would like my logitech 3 button + wheel mouse to work correctly. When connected via PS2, the only selection that works is 2 button wheel mouse. Changing to the USB port, RH discovers it nicely (I was floored to see the mouse discovered when booting!), but I have no idea what the thumb button does nor do I know how to change it.
My guess is that those of you who have read this whole thing are saying RTFM. Well, sure, I'd love to RTFM. Just give me a manual I can understand! Man pages are not good reading for the beginner, and unless you have a laptop, hard to take with you when you need a break from getting the fvcking screen resolution fixed.
Ah, well... just venting. I'll probably have to take a class at the community college, as none of my friends use Linux. Me, I am bored with windows, and want to be ready for the time when it is not worth the effort to get an unliscensed wopy of windows to work. I'll see if I can find a copy of RH9 Unleashed... thanks for the review!
... when this hobby OS gets a real file-locking features. Instead of that "advisory locks" FUD that is poured onto us.
Linux does offer mandatory locking. It is not enabled by default, because it really does have major drawbacks. If you really want mandatory locking, you can choose on which filesystems and files to use it. The problem with mandatory locking is, that it is PITA and can in some cases even cause DoS attacks. Advisory locks is all you need. The purpose of locks is to prevent corruption in case of simultaneous updates, and inconsistent reads while data is being updated. As long as the programs reading and writing a file use locking and behaves correctly, it will work eventhough the locks are not mandatory. Mandatory locks does not prevent broken programs from corrupting the data, so what does it give you? First of all mandatory locks prevents you from reading the file while it is being updated, even if you really want to. Linux (and UNIX) does not prevent you from doing stupid things, because in doing so, it would also prevent you from doing clever things. Sure you can probably mess up some files by reading/writing while there is a mandatory lock. But you shouldn't be prevented, because often you know what you are doing, and really want to read the file. One of the most annoying things about Windows (the versions I have seen) is, that you cannot start reading a file before it has been completely written. I often want to start reading a file while I'm still not finished downloading it.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
How many gentoo users would buy Learn Gentoo in 24 hours ? Even if they all bought the book. Would that justify the expense of publishing it?
Redhat has the linux market share and mind share of the non-unix crowd to make it the right decision from a marketing point of view. This isn't a bad thing. New users will go with the name they know. After spending some time in the linux space, they will learn that there other choices and use what makes sense for them.
"Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated"
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
True with geeks, but with the aim to get Joe-average, or at least Joe-semi-average to switch to linux would this apply? My experience has been that getting such users to switch from anything they're used-to is like trying to pick up a hedgehog from the top (offtopic: although using a sponge can be amusing for this).
- as the author of Red Hat Linux 9 Unleashed, i like to say thanks for all the kind words regarding the book (and also any unkind words, as i have a thick skin and take constructive criticism to heart)...
/. as i'm aware that there are many of you out there who are far more talented and knowledgable about Linux and other software services than i... all i can say is that i hope that the information i present is technically accurate, helpful, and well-organized...
- i'm not sure about the blank pages you found in your copy of Red Hat Linux 9, as my copy doesn't have these blank pages, and i don't think Sams Publishing (Pearson) would allow a printing like that (of course worse things have happened, such as corrupt CD-ROMs)...
- i think the Linux Bible series is good too, and i have copies of many different books about Linux... i've met many other Linux authors, but have not had the pleasure to chat with authors of the Bible or 'Secrets'... this is something i look forward to (perhaps in NYC this winter?)...
- i also wrote Linux Unleashed, which covered Caldera, Red Hat, and Debian, and SuSE Linux Unleashed... and a book on using Linux on your Apple PowerPC... i would like to see more books on Debian and SuSE, but you know what? publishers won't do them because they don't sell! (or fit into the publisher's marketing scheme)
- i write about Linux because i believe in Linux... believe me when i say that writing technical books is no way to make a living - horrendous deadlines, sweating out revised content based on beta releases, and authoring contracts that turn your book efforts into a vanity press pursuit...
- i have been dreading a review of my book here on
content is another matter (the Unleashed series are *supposed* to be aimed at intermediate to advanced users, but it seems that newbies, God bless 'em, buy the book anyway - i'd much rather write books for the total newbie than the astute user, because i remember the excitement i felt when i first started using Linux and realized just how powerful it is...
anyway, thanks for not scorching my shorts on this one...
bb
p.s. i'm sure hd would chime in here, but he's trapped on a cruise liner with a number of Linux madmen at the moment (the Geek Cruise)...
I own and have read Bill Ball's Learn Linux in 24 hours re: Redhat 5.x. I also own and have read his Linux unleashed for Redhat 6.2 or so...
I must say that even for a guy who's been using Linux for more than 5 years, these books are not a very good read. Not due to the subject matter, but due to Author style.
Learn Linux in 24 is obviously Linux Unleashed in a very very pared down format. If this book were a driving instructor, the teacher would give you the keys and then say "Put this in the ignition and turn, when you fill your tank, don't light any matches, and turn your wipers on when it rains."
Linux Unleashed was the same, except there really isn't much middle ground. The aformentioned driving instructor would then pop the hood, point out the timing belt, and tell you how to adjust the carbeurator for maximum fuel efficiency.
Example, the C programming chapter as I remember starts talking about overloading operators within a few pages of finishing "Hello, world." The fact that there is a C programming chapter in Linux unleashed seems a little strange to me, period.
I found Bill's writing to be the most confusing hair raising epic for learning linux. Fear instilled by the writing prevented me from compiling my own kernel for a very long time. My recommendation for Learning Linux in a straightforward manner is the LPI certification in a nutshell book. Every chapter is laid out very neatly with command descriptions. Not only that, it is written in a generic format which applies to most sane distros. Great reference material, period.
It's obvious Bill knows what he's talking about. If the new Unleashed reads at all like the old ones, I think his editors could use some help with technical materials.
Always try O'Reilly first. Just my 2 pennies.
-non sig- Man with hole in pocket feel cocky all day long.