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Linux for Dummies, 5th Edition
Not everyone can Read The Fine Manual Wiley's "For Dummies" series tends to provoke polarized reactions, so here's fair warning: I love them more than I loathe them -- partly out of contrarianism, partly because I often fall well within their target demographic. If the folksy, self-deprecating tone of these books infuriates you as it does many people, most likely it's because you aren't part of the target audience. No one likes being talked down to. On the other hand, for many people who might otherwise be interested in switching to Linux (or at least playing with it more), being told to look at man pages is like being told to drive up a brick wall, and books like Linux for Dummies are a welcome resource both to learn from and to point out to others. (For more technically oriented novices and intermediate users, I might rather point out Jon Lasser's Think Unix! )
A series of bracketed command-line options (followed by terse explanations of what each one does) works perfectly, to those familiar enough to use them. Man pages are a great memory aid, reminder, and basis for experimentation ("Hmm, can I combine the -a and -v switches?"). What man pages aren't is consistently friendly and approachable; this book is. This is not a knock on man pages: the thing is, they're written by and for "computer people," which is not the same as everyone who wants to use a computer. Not everyone is a power-user, or wants to be, and on areas outside their usual domains, even power users can sometimes use a bit more hand-holding.
Promises, promises Linux for Dummies' back cover says it will teach the reader how to work with popular Linux distributions (specifically, Fedora, SUSE and Mandrake), choose an ISP and configure dialup access, understand bash syntax, install and use OpenOffice.org, and manage the Linux file system. It does all of these things, to a reasonable depth, but don't expect a heavy tutorial on any one of them: the whole point is naming and defusing common newbie problems. A DVD included with the book contains Red Hat's Fedora Core 1 and source code, making it a reasonable way to obtain that distro as well.LeBlanc is a good instructor; since she does computer training professionally, it's not surprising this book is organized well for self-directed learning, albeit at a pace that readers installing Gentoo on obscure hardware would likely find boring -- Chapter 6, 82 pages in, is titled "Dip in those toes." To be fair, by that point the book has zipped right through readying a system for and then installing a Linux distribution, and booting up for the first time. Not bad, really.
The early chapters leading up to that toe-dipping fulfill parts of the back cover's promises, by going through a graphical Fedora installation step-by-step (showing the user how to fill in each blank and go on to the next stage), then adding in the next chapter Mandrake- and SUSE-specific differences, emphasizing the similarities more than the idiosyncrasies.
The book's later chapters cover connecting to the Internet (via ethernet or modem), using a number of commonly included programs for email, web-browsing, word-processing and other workaday tasks, manipulating several types of files (for plaintext, this book leans understandably toward vi over emacs, but where are pine or joe?), navigating and lightly tweaking both GNOME and KDE, playing music and video files, and securing and updating one's system. Since there's clearly no way one book can address all of these things to the satisfaction of an advanced reader in 360 pages of text, don't look at the book that way: instead, the text provides a chatty overview of big issues (a few hundred words on why to avoid unnecessarily running as root, say), links to websites around the net for longer explanations, and skips completely religious wars about text editors, licenses, and proper window management.
When it comes to applications, this book is oriented toward desktop use; Apache doesn't even make the index. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 cover connecting to and using the Internet. Chapter 7 is all about the technical side of this -- setting up a working connection (with a friendly, necessary warning that not all modems, and not all ISPs, are equally adept at handling anything other than Windows), assigning IP numbers (or using DHCP) and using tools like traceroute to verify that things are working right. 8 and 9 cover various Internet tools, leaning toward Mozilla and Evolution for web-browsing and email, respectively. (Konqueror gets a one-line mention as a web-browser here, which is a bit short considering its strong KDE integration and dual life as a file browser.)
Working with file permissions and directories (both with and without a GUI) occupies Chapter 10, while 11 goes strictly into working from the command line. It's no In the Beginning Was the Command Line , but it does an admirable job of introducing the most necessary command line tools without straying into esoterica: things like ls, cd, pwd, man, clear and kill, in other words, the ones without which it would be hard to get around a system.
Chapter 14 is solely about using OpenOffice.org; it covers the drawing, presentation, spreadsheet, math and word-processing modules well enough to get started with each one. While there's a lot to be said for Abiword (clean, quick) and KOffice (frame orientation is very useful), OO.org is probably the most sensible office software to focus on in a book aimed at a non-expert audience. (And for the moment, anyhow, I find it the most compatible with Microsoft's office suite, which lends it considerable power in the form of network effects.) The chapter provided does as much justice to the suite, with lucid first steps outlined for common tasks like writing a text document and doing simple calculations with the Math module, as roughly 30 pages can be expected to.
By contrast, Chapter 18, devoted to securing one's system by way of passwords, network management and use of SSH, is only 13 pages long. (For the moment, that may be enough for this book, but I suspect by the next edition it won't be.) Still, quick but workable explanations of connecting from the Linux desktop to remote machines via ssh, and connecting Windows clients via ssh to your new Linux box, at least close some of the most obvious security holes, as does the advice to close down unneeded ports and daemons.
Screenshots throughout (cleanly printed greyscale) are well-chosen; this is one of the improvements that this edition has over the 1st edition I gave to my father a few years ago. Most of the screenshots reflect the author's choice of GUI programs over terminals, including graphical utilities for things like setting security options. By choosing Fedora's, LeBlanc sidesteps arguments about KDE vs. GNOME aesthetics -- since the images use the default Bluecurve theme (which looks just about identical under both of the most common windowing environments), I'm not even sure which environment was used to create most of them.
Two appendices close the book: the shorter (second) one lists the contents of the included DVD and system requirements; the longer one which precedes it provides a listing of common commands from alias to xxd (about which more below).
Along for the ride The included DVD is a compromise between audience (self-diagnosed computer dummies) and practicality (fitting six CDs' worth of Fedora into a book jacket with minimal fuss). The machine I set aside to play with Fedora doesn't have a DVD drive, so I used a standard download from Red Hat to play along with the examples. (I didn't bump into any contradictions between screen and page, but that's Situation Normal, since I used the same distribution.)
(Aside: though for various reasons Fedora does make a wise choice in a book like this, I hope future editions, or competing books in the non-expert-user niche, will use Live CDs such as Knoppix instead. That would open them up to users who want to mess around with Linux more before crossing their fingers and wiping a hard drive.)
There's one more freebie -- a single-sheet tear-out reference sheet listing common commands and a few of their options, including a list of the right commands to mount CDs under the Red Hat and Mandrake (identical) and SUSE (just slightly different enough to confuse). It only has to get used a few times to be worthwhile.
The gloss ceiling The same brief-and-breezy approach that makes the book worthwhile for some purposes (like not abandoning the audience) sometimes just makes it confusing; in several places the compromises necessary in boiling down a complex subject for a beginner audience made me itch to pencil in suggestions.
A few more pages worth of one-line summaries would have made the Appendix A, (the one on common Linux commands), far more valuable. As it is, LeBlanc lists a number of general categories (Printing, System Control, Communication, etc), summaries each category, and lists several built-in commands relevant to each.
Under the heading of 'Communication,' for example, she points out that sysadmins find the listed utilities "useful for providing information about users and communicating with them," then provides a handful of commands: finger, wall, write, and who. And while the section starts out with the advice to look up each command's man page if curious, this section strikes me as filler in its current configuration -- it could be struck to make more room discussing Live CDs, or vector drawing apps, or Mozilla's mail client as an alternative to Evolution.
Many applications are given short shrift simply because an adequate treatment of more window managers, graphics programs (two and a half pages dedicated to the GIMP is more than most programs get), music players and all the rest would have meant a far thicker book. I wish a few pages had been spared for at least capsule descriptions of pico and nano (my favorite text editors for Dummies -- err, "future experts" -- including me), Xchat, and gaim. Also on the wishlist: Wiley would commission LeBlanc to write a similar book aimed squarely at schools, in which applications like Scribus and some of the many Edutainment packages could be emphasized instead.
Since I've been dealing (arguing) with a wireless network in the time I've had this book, there's one other thing I wish this text didn't skip, which is a tutorial on connecting Linux systems via 802.11. The typical distro's autodetection abilities and set-up tools have improved to the point where this would be no more complicated to explain (and probably more useful) than the provided explanation of connecting through a modem.
The Upshot for Dummies Linux for Dummies isn't for everyone; it leaves out far more than it includes, leading to what would for advanced users be egregious omissions. However, for new, intermediate and merely rusty users, this book easily justifies its $30 pricetag -- as a confidence boost to the absolute beginner, and a refresher to everyone else. Linux, for various reasons of various worth, can certainly be cryptic (the same can be said of Windows and probably every OS under the sun), but a little bit of executive summarizing can inspire a would-be user, so he can actually enjoy and understand using it. Kudos to LeBlanc for providing that kind of catalyst.
You can purchase Linux for Dummies, 5th Edition from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Linux for Dummies. Jumbo Shrimp. Military Intelligence. It just goes on and on.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Short, Concise Book Reviewing for Dummies (tm)
One of the words in the title is a trademark of Darl McBride. No, not the "Linux"...
Than what is this for, geniuses?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Is it Unixes? Unixii? Unices?
I'll stick with Menuet thankyou.
What man pages aren't is consistently friendly and approachable
;)
so we need woman pages, right? just don't try reading the man page for woman.
# woman woman
works as expected though, with added imagery
oh brother.. this is bad. i'm just gonna have to post AC.
2. At the command prompt, type "rm -rf /". This will help you access all the nitty gritty system manuals and stuff to help you learn lunix and show off your masterly skills to your windoze using dummy phreinds.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The author thought it important to maintain consistancy with current linux development, therefore several personal email addressed to d.mcbride@sco.com have been included in the apendix for your reading pleasure.
I have friends asking me to install a Linux partition so they could play with it, brush up their resume, basically, claim their coolness about being in the know. I don't bother anymore. The problem is that it's still too easy to go down in command line dungeons with no way out. A book like this sounds useful, but once you give it to a computer illiterate, it becomes clear very quickly how different they think. It is very well possible that this book descends to the level of these illiterate (I didn't read it, so it's hard to judge). However, it only becomes clear when somebody reviews it who's at that level. A seasoned computer guy will assume certain steps as obvious even though they're not for the illiterate. In other words, while the review itself is quite ok, I wouldn't base a decision to buy it for, say, my mother, just on this review alone. Unfortately, almost all reviewers are knowledgable at the start, so I guess this is the best we can have. Tom
"Unix is a pain. Cryptic commands
as opposed to winipcfg, netsh, and fdisk?
confusing explanations
As opposed to...
WORD.EXE CAUSED A GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT IN CODE CHUNK 0xBADC0D3 AND PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION
00 FF AA 00 EE WW TT FF
JJ 00 00 SU X0 RZ BA HA
Since I'm posting as an AC, I'll admit I used this book to start using Linux. It had good instructions to get it installed, and pretty good overview of things former Winblows users like me don't get (the / file system, for instance).
It wouln't help you to recompile the kernal, but will help you update GAIM.
I did my own review of this a couple months back, here it is:
There is absolutely no hand holding with this book, I was able to follow along and get the installation going. However, I continually received a mysterious "input/output" error about half-way into the installation. When I contacted IDG books for an explanation, I was pointed to Sun's installation website (where I should have looked before buying the book). However, if the person read my e-mail at all, she would have seen that I knew how to set up the partitions and get the installation running; I simply couldn't figure out the error message. I was finally told that they did not support Red Hat Linux! What a copout!!
I then had to buy an Official copy of Linux (the install was successful) and figured I could at least get my money's worth by learning the basics of Linux. I wanted to edit a file so that xWindows could start automatically. However, the author fails to mention how to get out of a text file when you're finished! I combed through every page of the book including the index because I couldn't believe that an author could be so negligent. Believe me, it's not straightforward especially for a windows user like myself (you have to hit 'Esc' to get into edit mode, then type ':wq' to exit). I'm no dummy. I have a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and have designed a number of windows and dos-based applications. However, when the author doesn't have solutions to questions and simply neglects to fully explain even the most basic elements of Linux, it's time to look for another book. I'm simply writing this to make sure that no one else wastes their money on this poorly written book.
I've got to say that most books just don't seem that great at really helping someone new to Linux - it's hard for a single book to introduce you to a whole new way of using the computer I know. I've had to learn like many others through trial and error, and now run Suse 9.0, Knoppix 3.3 and Debian (mainly as an on-going assignment to learn set by myself)
Not to be a little b&@#!, but if someone couldn't grasp linux in the first 4 editions, I think they should give up and just get a Mac.
Kinda like summer school. Sure, you couldn't understand algebra in 8 months... so now you have 6 weeks!
And I use a mac, so commence making fun of me for being a hypocrit. Linux is an OS for guys with testicles far bigger than the lowly pair I was given.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
You mean pico, Timothy. Besides, if you don't know vi, you don't deserve to use Linux.
Having spen all of today revising for my ergonomics exam tomorrow (ha! they things it's engineering! I'd like to see them fly a plane with no wings and a comfy seat), it's convenient I just finished the chapter on user interface design.
However, despite their odd views on almost everything, they have some good points:
Command lines ROCK when you need to remove every file with a "Q" and "l" in the filename containing the word "banana".
GUIs and CLIs work best when they are INTEGRATED so you can use the GUI and it helps you figure out how the CLI works next time.
Linux has the former, with all the normal UNIX goodness. Now it needs to work on the latter. Then it will introduce not just sysadmins who type commands at over 40wpm and know regexs backwards through training, but also those that can benefit from picking up the CLI on a more casual basis, through interaction with other applications.
Beep beep.
Upgrade your Heatsink and overclock your RAM ?? Come on. Are you kidding me ?
is that the technically astute think Unix is great and the unwashed masses think it's hard. We can debate the merits of Unix vs. other OS's, but let's not resort to the "smart people agree with me" argument.
The second edition of this book was my first ever look at Linux. Now I run two Linux machines and boot a third to Windows only when I have to (and almost never for my own personal use.) I maintain a few Linux servers and have written a handful of web-apps, for which I've been nicely paid.
My point: I'm no dummy, but I had no knowledge of the subject. I was the target audience, and the book hit the mark and got me started.
Evil is the money of root.
By doing it yourself. Take one part knoppix, another part google, and sprinkle in another computer if needed(ie something that can connect to the internet if you are having connection problems). The biggest fears I think most people have about switching to linux are: a) an irrational fear due to the image of *nix's being some arcane, command line driven OS for geeks and b)(This is probably the biggest fear about switching OS's in general) fear of change.
In my experience, most people hate having their computer systems changed because they have been hard wired to do everything a certain way, and don't think they will be able to learn another way. I have had some arguments with Windows fanboys(I was surprised such people even existed the first time I came across one) and basically it boiled down to those 2 fears(the 2nd also being an argument against switching to OS X)
hat's the viewpoint (same broad brush) of a lot of people who -- let's say -- aren't the ones rushing to upgrade their heatsink and overclock their RAM,
This is fine and well, but what about those of us that are rushing ot overclock our BIOS, upgrade our cases and install heatsinks on our cdrom drives?
We can't be in any more a niche market than those pesky heatsink-and-RAM proponents!
do() || do_not();
(for plaintext, this book leans understandably toward vi over emacs, but where are pine or joe?),
Pine? I think the reviewer means Pico. It's great, but not included on some distros, which is probably why it wasn't covered. I agree it should have been mentioned, though, especially since it's pretty much self-explanatory. (Joe is too, but the Ctrl-key combinations strike me as odd.)
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
I guess folks dont want to be seen as a nerd, and think it's cool to not understand a computer or whatever. That was the thing in high school, no girl would ever admit she was good at math.
I knew a girl who had a 97% average in calculus, but would act stupid and go "tee hee i dont know" when she needed to figure out the 10% tip for a dinner bill. Stupid is supposed to be sexy, or something.
All the same, I don't know why people line up to buy books that define them as a dummy or idiot.
I could see "Unix for people who have no clue about Unix". Hell, there are plenty of dummy books about stuff I have no clue about, but I'm not a dummy, and wouldnt buy them.
Why not an advanced series: "The smelly fat sexless windbags guide to sendmail.cf"? Or "The sleazeball ambulance chasers guide to civil aquisition law"?
Whatever, label yourselves an idiot or a dummy. When I see someone with one of those books, I sure do.
It's just one of the oddest cultural phenomenons out there. No wonder America is slipping in science and tech, when it's cool to be a "dummy" but terribly uncool to be smart.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
How about this? It's for true geniuses.
Linux for Windows Users. Nah, Dummies is far less offensive.
"Slashdot editor"
But I can't decide if that's an oxymoron or a plain old moron.
Fragmentation.
That's why UNIX is a pain in the ass to non-technical people and the most misunderstood OS the worls has ever or will ever see. The same command on AIX (ls for example) will be differernt on Mac OSX and Linux. You can't use the -h flag on one platfrom, OS X version 10.2 doesn't suppor it, AIX never has, but the GNU version does and now OS X 10.3 does too, but on Solaris... it's different, you substitute the X key for...ad nauseum
Not to mention the various shells, editors, scripting languages. Fragmentation is why people preceive UNIX as being difficult. Now, if all of geeks who hack it would get rid of their egos and put the best of breed into one utility instead of fighting over 50 or more different ones, then Microsoft would be out of business tomorrow.
That's all I have to say about that.
I start up Linux in a GUI. I know I can switch to a shell screen with ctrl-alt-f2 (or other f keys). I could also open a shell from the GUI, but in this case I want to switch with the ctrl-alt-f2 trick to see the original start-up dialog while the system was booting. OK, this works fine. But how in the world do I get back to the GUI??? I would have expected it to be anothet ctrl-alt-Fx key, but none get me there. I spent hours last night searching on Google with no luck.
What's the magic way to switch back to the GUI, and how does a Linux noob learn all of these little tricks that the Linix geeks just think everyone should know? Sure, I know about man, but without knowing what to look up (if it's even there at all), it really doesn't help.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
long Dummies = 0;
long Guru = 1000000;
int bookLearning = 0;
bookLearning = 1;
int Linux()
{
for (Dummies = 0; Dummies != Guru; Dummies++;)
Dummies += bookLearning;
loop;
return 0;
}
But I would assume that although timothy may have the problem you mention (not being able to see what true Linux Dummies would miss), I'm pretty sure the publishers of the Dummies series don't. Wiley's Dummies series have always seemed like excellent books to me, whether I knew the topic cold or was a complete newbie. I have read several books from this series and my only complaint is that the books are too short. It would be nice if they would use the same style for an "Advanced Such-and-Such for Dummies" series. Fortunately these books usually set you up with a really good base to where you can pick up some other more complete text and have a fighting chance with it. On that basis, combined with timothy's positive review, I would very much recommend or buy this book for people like your mother.
I do not have a signature
It would make it easier for "New" Linux users, if there where a couple of CDs (or DVDs for the rich) of Linux with the book. SuSE, Mandrake etc. somthing that is easy to get running but has all the programs without paying extra (not somthing I can say about Linspire.)
However, IDG likes to put nasty (C) things on CDs with their books. Or are the dummies books published by Hungry Minds this year?
*nix commands are not cryptic, they're just (typically) not English words, and for very good reason : words carry a range of meaning and novice users may be tempted to believe that some of those connotations spill over into the command. Single words having a range of meanings is anathema to computing, where precise definitions are absolutely essential.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
In a modern distro, such as Mandrake 10, SuSE 9.1 or Fedora Core 2 you will be SHOCKED how easy it is. You will be flamming people for spreading lies about Linux. Its true. The GNOME 2.6 and KDE 3.2 GUI's are so easy to use you will wonder how you got on without them!
So, if you haven't tried Linux or are using an old version, get one of these distros right away.
Just avoid distros like Debian or Slackware, they are optimized for the geek sector, and thats why there is a mis-conception, because there are too many people trying the wrong version of Linux!
I am typing this from Fedora Core 2, and my experience with it is incredible. Stable, Fast, Easy, FUN.
Download fedora here
Go here to learn how to install cool stuff such as Flash, Java, MP3, etc
The best way to get into Linux is to get a decent distro on a machine with no hardware 'issues'. I tried several distros but didn't have the patience to fight with them. Then Mandrake 8.1 installed perfectly on one of my machines and I liked the result. This gave me a base to work from. Everything I needed from that time, I was able to tackle on an ad hoc basis.
Linux for Dummies was just about the last book I bought on the subject and I didn't get much use out of it. Most of the time I just google for solutions. A few choice web sites easily replace most Linux books.
It has nothing to do with that. First of all it's a light-hearted joke which fits in with the overall tone of the book. This is the reason why people like them, because they're (rightfully) scared by huge hard to understand manuals that don't really help.
It's like saying, "Hey, don't worry about it, I'm a user of this system/program too and here's what's really helpful instead of what the people who wrote it think will be helpful."
It's the man pages and hard to understand command line syntax that users feel are calling them dummies. If they wanted to feel stupid because that's cool, then they would jump right in with no help from such books and emacs would do a fine job of it.
And that part about not being able to pick up a woman in a bar while talking bout quantum mechanics... How many women in bars do you think are actually interested in quantum mechanics? Not because they're stupid or don't like guys that are smart but just aren't interested in quantum mechanics? I'd say most aren't, that's why none came up to you. If you were talking about baseball in the physics department of a university how much do you want to bet that any girls there could not care less?
Reviews should be done by a peer of the target community. If you're of the opinion that only total newbies should use Linux, then of course reviews like this should be done by total newbies.
But this is "Linux for Dummies", so the only people who are going to touch this are total newbies.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
was Linux for Dummies a long time ago. It got me up and running, that was it. After that I got sick of Redhat's RPM hell and switched to Debian. My problem with that book was that it just showed me very basic stuff, none of the cool stuff that I wanted to do, like getting into the guts and figuring out what all the files mean, where they sit, and what they do. I don't think they even got into compiling software, which I think would be a pretty important thing for beginners, especially if you want to install programs and such. All that's available via man and Google. Google's the Linux for Dummies who don't mind pecking around the net for tips. I feel the beginners should begin with debian and not redhat - I feel that it's easier to learn with. Besides, if you're only going to play around on the web and read an email or two, does it really matter?
I also reply below your current threshold.
What books do the ./ers recommend as a follow-up to someone who knows enough Linux to screw things up but is looking to improve?
"Everything in the universe is clouded by the impositions of the mind"
Shouldn't it be:
do() || do_not(); int *try = 0;
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
For those who work for "President-Vice" Cheney.
Enjoy!!!
As always,
Kilgore Trout
Yeah, windows has cryptic commands too, but how often are they used. In *nix's, solving a problem might require the use of a cryptic command where in windows, it's point and click here and there and it's fixed.
.conf files here and there. Those drake wizards mandrake users use, for example, take the cryptic command headache away from the user and makes changing settings like from the windows control panel.
The windows gui knows to an extent what's going on and has the ability to change settings and such. Linux on the other hand was designed not to require such levels of complication of the gui, but rather a bunch of
My point is that in linux, you WILL HAVE TO use commands more frequently than in windows to fix a problem. However, that may not be a bad thing as it doesn't require a configuration app to change settings. But for the beginner, this gets confusing. And man pages do not help at all when you're a beginner.
And btw, when kde crashes, I can't make any more sense out of the error messages than the ones that come from windows xp. Thank god for xkill though.
Wow, someone's got a big ego. This is totally offtopic, but I guess it goes somewhere.
Ever think that "the general opinion" could be that most Americans ACCEPT the fact that they don't understand everything there is to know?
And if you think that you can pick up a gorgeous woman anywhere on this earth by just spouting pi to the 151951th digit then, you sir, DO lack social skills.
Just because YOU understand a topic, doesn't mean anyone else understands it or is interested in it. As for baseball, you can safely assume than a large portion of Americans know what baseball is.
It's so typical of "smart" people to be entirely condescending and blame everyone else for their problems instead of evaluating their own actions and beliefs. The fact that you can't accept that you just might be a dummy on certain subjects just adds to this theory.
JN
"Microsoft Works"?
:-)
(stolen from userfriendly.org, yes
In the same series there's also "AOL For Dummies". How's that for a redundant title!
What's next, "Scratching Your Ass for Dummies"?
Having bought (and returned) a book from Wiley in the past, I can further develop the author of this article's impression that they tend to put in a lot of filler. I bought a book called Hack Attacks Revealed, thinking it might be a good primer on network security (it's not! I am embarrased to have purchased it in the first place, hence AC) and a bit of fun to read, but it turned out to be mostly filler, devoting at least half of the thousand pages to screenshots of windows backdoor frontends.
Most of the information in the Wiley books can be found elsewhere, in much more detail. They are a company that, in an opportunistic fashion, looks to sell books with as little new information or effort on their part, merely exploiting the so called "hacker" craze or exploiting ill informed users.
Duuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh..... I don't know.....
And the pluperfect plural of beeeeotch is BEEEEEOTCHAE!
Why? You can skip all the install crap, and not worry about blowing up you Windows machine.
/home to a USB key, and it's good to go.
Configure this version to default
"12224 bytes in body"? Sheesh. What, did you guys just post the whole book?
The fact that you can't accept that you just might be a dummy on certain subjects just adds to this theory.
This is exactly my point. From www.m-w.com, dummy means "one who is stupid". Stupid means "slow of mind".
Not knowing anything about a specific subject DOES NOT make one a dummy. In fact, it would be a huge insult to anyone of any intelligence to say "you don't know anything about Linux, therefore you are a dummy".
Assuming you are of reasonable intelligence (very doubtful at the moment), a book truly aimed at dummies would be so simplistic it would be useless to you.
... how much I have thought about your idea as well. I got into linux late (rh 7.1), and as such, never had to learn much command line, nor do I now. I was a mac classic background, so there ya go. I never liked windows at all, fooled with dos way way back for a couple of months, despised it, bought a point and cliky mac instead. If there was a program for linux that would let you SEE what was going on in real time, and if it gave you a graphical representation of all the files being accessed, and where they are, etc, that would be SO *nice*. I have found man pages as they exist now to be almost totally useless coming from near- zero command line background. I even bought a linux book (linux , the complete reference), which was basically a thousand plus pages of reproduced man pages-I never use the thing, I was so dissapointed. It's like, there's no "first steps" written in english anywhere, perhaps this book is it, not sure by the review. I can find my way around any sort of graphical menu, and can go look on the net if I get stuck, but it's not the same as LEARNING something. I got a feeling I'm between this book in the review and something else, not sure what that would be though. I'd rather have it running as a program though. You know in some menus where they will show you the keyboard shortcuts for what you are clicking? Same deal, but the total command line sequence.
I have to mount it, I do - doesn't work.
Even if it works, I try to format it - you guessed it, doesn't work.
I'm using SuSE, btw, and in their YaST tool they allow me to load LILO onto a floppy so that I don't have to mess up my boot sector on the harddisk. Yes, you are right again - it doesn't work! The floppy drive goes whirr-click for one second and immediately I get the message that LILO was successfully installed onto the floppy. So I reboot, three times. Right you are; it doesn't work, it hangs after saying "LI".
No wonder this system is still so rare among people who are actually trying to accomplish something with their computers! After all, they don't have to spend a half an hour to format a floppy, only to fail in the end!
Something is terribly wrong here. And yes, I followed the instructions, even the instructions that I get from man or the command itself.
Help me out here, or stop promoting this abomination of a system.
One thing which doesn't help is the lack of pointers to information.
... but frankly there should be a self-contained way to find out.
Here's an example : imagine you have only your computer whith a working linux distro, no net connexion and no one ever told you about df and you want to know which program does the job of giving free space left on the disk partitions.
Where would you ever learn that df actually does the job?
Of course nowadays you have Google and all it takes is a few seconds' typing and a few milliseconds' waiting for the search, depending on ISP and voilà
> Why in the world would anyone buy a book that says "for dummies".
Because everyone was a 'noob' at some point, or did you just graduate right to genious, smart@$$ ?
> What man pages aren't is consistently friendly and approachable
As a documentation volunteer, I wonder if timothy (the author of the article) created bug reports for those man pages. I also wonder if he sent re-writes of those man pages after he figured them out. After all, how else will they become "friendly and approachable"?
Dummy != noob; damn you must be stupid to think otherwise.
Any (and all) linux users who have ever proclaimed that what linux needs to win the desktop is.... Need to realize that what Linux needs to win the desktop are solid beginner level books like this.
/.'ers are) am well past the target audience of this book; however, I found it to be a useful resource to have to remind me of some of the questions that those silly little n00bz (like we all once were) have. More importantly -- what kind of answers those same beginners need.
;)
I (as I'm sure a good percentage of
[Blanket Statement]
The largest problem that the linux community has are it's users.
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Crying to the heavens above for Linux to get a fair shake on the desktop and then crassly informing someone that they should just go and RTFM is a counterproductive shot in the foot.
If half of the homebrew IT guys around would suggest this book (and a few others) to new linux users, a lot could be done for the OSS movement.
Just as a supporting statement I should add that in the past two months, I have succesfully switched 6 users from Windows to Linux (2 custom built Gentoo boxes, and four SuSe installs). Suggesting this book sold the deal for two of those.
One could say that I shot myself in the foot, now that I no longer have those clients calling me about all those Windows annoyances... but, hell, they were a pain in the ass clients anyway.
#SickNotWeak
What about _Introduction to Linux: A Hands on Guide_ by Machtelt Garrels? It doesn't have an insulting title and it's available for free from The Linux Documentation Project in different versions.
Perhaps a Linux newbie could ask for a printed copy and review for Slashdot.
"And where is this so-called manual?" :)
That quote from the post reminded me of the first time I really used Unix in a class and the teacher kept talking about these 'man pages' that I couldn't find anywhere in the book for the class.
I used to fall in the #2 category but I've become so accustomed to the shortcuts in vi and all the handy commands like find and grep that I miss those things when working in Windows. I would guess that happens with a lot of people that use Unix for a while.
> crassly informing someone that they should just go and RTFM is a counterproductive shot in the foot.
> If half of the homebrew IT guys around would suggest this book (and a few others) to new linux users, a lot could be done for the OSS movement.
So let me get this straight... Suggesting that someone read a free manual is crass and counterproductive but suggesting that they buy a book with a insulting title isn't.
There may be two problems here -- one personal, and one more technical.
First, Unix people may read "cryptic" as a slander, and others may use it as such as well: for "cryptic", read "obfuscated". The slanderous implication is that programmers make complicated interfaces for no good reason -- or specifically for a bad reason, such as to maintain prestige or "job security". This is, or at least feels like, a personal attack: "Computers are not inherently hard to use. Computer nerds have deliberately made them hard to use, in order to hurt me. Therefore, my inability to use computers productively is not due to my own refusal to learn; it is, rather, due to their malicious action."
Second, the unexpressed alternatives to "cryptic" may well be "verbose" and "dumbed-down", and being cryptic may be the least of these three evils. A syntax appears cryptic when it tries to represent a large amount of complexity without requiring a large amount of typing. For a powerful syntax which prefers verbosity over crypticity, see COBOL -- by all reports a capable programming language, but one that few wish to use because it requires you write ADD 1 TO X GIVING X where C has x++;.
If one wishes a system to be neither verbose nor cryptic, the only option is to dumb it down: to remove capabilities which can only be represented with complicated expressions. Most Unix programs are far more powerful than their Windows analogues; you can do much more with the find command than you can with Windows' GUI equivalent.
Most Unix programmers choose likewise: if one has the choice to be either dumbed-down, or verbose, or cryptic, one should choose the last of these. Why? Of the three, the cryptic (but not maliciously obfuscated) system is the one which most rewards learning. Becoming an expert in a dumbed-down system is no great shakes: you can't do much more than the novice can, because all the system's functionality is geared towards the novice. Becoming an expert in a verbose system gives you power, but you have to wear your fingers down to stubs. Becoming an expert in a cryptic system allows you all that power without so much pain.
Linux for total f****n' idiots.
The UNIX command line presents the user with the "parser puzzle". The system knows the syntax, and the user has to satisfy the system, without much help. And, typically, the user gets zero help from the system in keeping things consistent. Of course users are bitching.
Keeping things consistent is the real problem. But I've written on that before. For now, let me point out that the command line lacks a basic function we expect in everything else in computing - undo. Think hard about why that's the case. It's not fundamental that command lines can't have undo. Command line systems that support undo exist. It's just that the UNIX model doesn't support it. If you want to think about this clearly, understand what a transaction is in the SQL sense, and how commit and revert work in the database world.
The input side of UNIX commands is cryptic, but the output side is worse. Especially for scripting. One of the fundamental design mistakes of UNIX is that programs have arguments on the input side, but all they return is a single integer. If programs called other programs and got answers back in argc/argv, or the environment variables, scripts would be much more effective and reliable. Error messages from programs that called other programs might look like the designer had a clue. Scripts tend to blindly plow ahead, even when doing something totally bogus, or fail at the first problem, leaving the system in some wierd state. That's not a good thing.
I've been using UNIX-like systems since 1978. I'm not impressed with people who think they're l33t because they know most of the options to "ls" and can write simple regular expressions. If that describes you, go read "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" before replying.
Do what I do-give them a Knoppix disk or an ISOLinux boot disk and let them play with it for a month. Tell them to carefully research everything they can on the web, and maybe loog at a simple *nix manual. If they still want to install after that, set them up with something user-friendly (I sense a promising distro war would happen if I named distros, so I'll leave it to your own judgement;).
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
> Fragmentation. That's why UNIX is a pain...
What would you call Windows 3.1, 95, NT 4.0, 2000, ME, and XP then? If you've ever had the wrong drivers, you'd agree that this is also a pain.
> if all of geeks who hack it would get rid of their egos and put the best of breed into one utility...
Afterwards, the companies that employ the geeks would sue each other over NDA/DMCA/trade secret violations and copyright/patent infringement. Pray for peace but prepare for incompatibilities.
I've often felt that the Unix people making cryptic stuff should take a few weeks off from destroying desktop linux and go read some fine manual titled "Dummies For Idiots".
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Linux, while arguably lacking in the ease of use area, is most certainly not for--
Oh, now I get it...
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Now, if all of geeks who hack it would get rid of their egos and put the best of breed into one utility instead of fighting over 50 or more different ones, then Microsoft would be out of business tomorrow.
Who chooses what's "best of breed"? Maybe one group has '-h' meaning "help", and one group has '-h' meaning 'hexadecimal input', and '-?' meaning help. Maybe there are legitimate disagreements about what the good features are, and not just "ego" problems. And the reason for the "various shells, editors, scripting languages" is because different people like different ones. The truely awful implementations, like the ones where '-h' means "skip every third line of input, except where the fifth word is 'flamingo'," die a natural, Darwinian death because people don't like them, and don't use them.
I appreciate uniformity and clarity, especially in things like Internet standards. In that case, the value in the standard is that without it, the different implementations would be worthless. But I don't see why it's reasonable to expect all commands across all Unixes, Linux, Solaris, or AIX, to function exactly the same.
People *can* create a standardized, windows-like experience from Linux/Unix components; hell, it's what Apple did with one of the BSDs. It's called a distribution. Any company or group is welcome to standardize the '-h' flag to mean 'help' across their distribution, but you certainly can't force me to adopt it.
A lot of Linux distributers are finding that people actually like lots of options. It's the reason SuSE comes with a slew of raster and vector graphics programs, and Windows comes with Microsoft Paint. Speaking of which, I really don't think the point is to kill off Microsoft. I use Linux because I enjoy it and find it useful. I don't care if Microsoft lives or dies, and I think it would be irresponsible to restrict healthy competition just to attack another software developer.
Nah, it's "umo\t"! No 'n' required.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Linux is a kernel, not an operating system.
A more appropiate title for this book would be "GNU/Linux for Dummies", or perhaps "GNL/Linux for Dummies".
GNU is not Unix, and GNL is not Linux. GNU/GNL/FSF proponents offer a set of high-quality, non-unix, non-linux, utilities that while being non-unix and non-linux are unix and linux like. All of these non-unix/non-linux utilities are free and can be used on unix and linux systems.
Please stop confusing the issues!!! And vote for me for this November... DRM is bad. SCO is bad. HP is bad. IBM is the devil. Look to the turd... I mean hurd.
RMS
Here's the bottom line: (whatever-flavor) Linux is too hard to (fully) install. Red Hat/Fedora tries to do too much while Arch does too little (yes, I understand that's the point of Arch, but it has the capability to auto-recognize my ethernet card, yet it doesn't include that capability at install time. Yay for me!). Who is going to give up their valuable productivity in fixing (whatever-flavor) Linux? Testers and ambitious developers will, but if you expect a widespread adoption by the masses it needs to be a painless installation process ... and by that I mean a comprehensive and complete installation to where I can actually use ALL components of my computer when it completes; like a Windows installation. Haven't seen one yet.
I like Unix - I used Solaris and IBM AIX althroughout school and was able to learn it very quickly. Linux, when installed, is extremely similar and easy to use. However, when it comes down to installing Linux, there's a ridiculous mess of crap to figure out, which varies from flavor to flavor of Linux.
If you personally want (whatever-flavor) Linux to succeed, make it work - out of the box. While I'm an active developer in the OSS community, I'm not fixing Linux at the sacrifice of my productivity. Unlike other open source programs/tools, the operating system can either inhibit or encourage your ability to do work in general. Frankly, I don't care what OS I'm using. I need to get work done.
The problem is that over 90% of computer users don't even know what a boot CD is. Let alone that there are other operating systems.
Simple solution:
Just explain to them that it's a restore cd but won't cause them to lose their files. They'll have used it a couple times by the end of the day.
When they come back and say it fixed their blue screens but they DID lose all their files and can't figure out how to get them back... well you'll have to come up with your own solution for that.
You might think you know what computer literate is, or how knowledgable the average computer user is.
But you don't, if you want a crash course, work for any major computer company in desktop support. When your a world class veteren of 3 months (thus get first dibs on vacation days and such). THEN you'll comprehend this concept.
Until then, just take my for it, if they've figured out there is something called a mouse and something called a keyboard, they are above average.
If they understand the monitor is not the computer and are no longer trying to puzzle out why the box thing is so big... they are WAY above average.
If they can install winzip when you put the setup on their desktop and show them where it is, they are essentially a windows uber guru.
No I'm exaggerating, that's the sad part. Face it guys, there are people who are reasonabley intelligent but computer illiterate... I've met some of them. But if you have to explain shutting down the computer twice, your dealing with an idiot... period. *sighs* Most have be told how more than twice.
> Where's the pictures? I can't read manuals without pictures.
Here's an example of a manual with pictures: Blender documentation.
I remember in #linux of EFNet, "man" was the response to about every question. Of course, no one would ever tell the linux newbies (me) that man also took a numerical argument of 1-9, and that the page I needed probably wasn't the default to appear. Then there was also the dreaded "info"... both made early days trying to use Redhat 4.2 a real pain in the ass.
I like thinkgeek's version:
$ man woman
Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
Much funnier! :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I used to love the apropos command. It was the ultimate "I'm looking for something but I'm not sure exactly what command" - kind of the google of the linux command line.
Sadly, a lot of programs these days seem to be moving away from this system towards html help. So these days, apropos might help, but mostly it doesn't.
Someday probably there'll be an XML help standard for Linux, but in the interim linux help seems to have moved backwards since the time of apropos...
Uhm... They were convicted in court?
You're right. Those two share a neuron (I'm short of them), and I let my fingers type the wrong name. As you say, pico is what I mean to say there. Of course, if you install pine, you get pico, but, uh, that's not a good excuse.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Linux, for various reasons of various worth, can certainly be cryptic (the same can be said of Windows and probably every OS under the sun)
I suppose I better take another look at Solaris, it's obviously worth it's price tag if it is the least cryptic of os'.
OK thats two words, but either we have fragmentation/ diversity and progress or we become The Borg!
I remember reading "Linux for Dummies" First Edition and not learning enough. Then, I picked up a wonderful little book that I found in a used bookstore entitled, "Think Unix!" which sparked a deep appreciation for Unix and Unix-like OS's. Through "Think Unix!" I came to understand the power, simplicity, and sophistication of the command line interface and also useful principles for managing a *nix system. In fact, while reading this book, I practiced on FreeBSD BEFORE I went on to Linux. Thank you, Jon Lasser!
perl's elsif (yes there's an "s") makes slightly more sense, if only because it sounds like what it is... "i put an elsif in there" ... it's *almost* ok. just not quite. at least i can remember that it is that way, since it struck me as so odd the first time i came across it.
that's just insane. the choice of what editor to give a dummy could be made on the length of the man page. iirc, last i checked vi's was over 100 pages long. maybe compared to emacs, vi is a lightweight editor... but that doesn't stop it from being an arcane, opaque piece of shit. (yes, i'm bitter.)
i completely agree that a beginner should be shown nano. it works well enough, and will allow people to get far enough along that they might have a need for a more capable program. but until they can do simple editing, all that extra power is just a brick wall to bash heads into.
totally obscure, completely cryptic, entirely unguessable?
/dev/fd0 .
that should answer your question. while i can read your command just fine, please notice that no part of it contains "format" or "floppy" or even "disk". to even begin parsing it, you need to be able to guess that fs means "filesystem", that mke means "make", that 2 stands for "into". oh, and then you need to understand
i know this stuff isn't rocket science, and it's obvious once you know it, but the barrier to entry is needlessly high. but i'm not suggesting that programs be renamed with long descriptive names that take ages to type and use lots of space.
a CLI program called "help": you type "help", it runs. it gives a menu of help options - matching natural language to a man page for a command, or giving a general introduction to the filesystem structure, or maybe even a glossary, or the jargon file... whatever. but presented quickly, nicely, in natural language, with obvious (read: printed on-screen) navigation commands... how hard is it to understand how many people this would help?
i'm not asking anyone to make it. i don't have time (or even all the knowledge) myself. just recognize that people need it, and drop the attitude.
[|]
linux is sturdy
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
The biggest problem they've had with Linux has been missing functionality (e.g. my sound-tech roomate was missing the sound editing functions) that has been mostly provided with the most recent Linux software.
In my experience, Linux is ready for the prime=time desktop... The next problem is convincing the prime=time desktop user to try Linux. All of my roommates were a bit iffy about trying Linux, but they were happy once they took the plunge.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
hmmm, i dont get it...
im sorry, are it especially the americans who dont take booktitles not serious?
I dont think it is a question aboutselfconfidence and not in which country yo live!
Just to follow-up for those who commented or others who later read this, here's the full story:
I'm using Knoppix. I had no idea which Linux would even matter. (Can you imagine the public outcry if old MS-DOS and PC-DOS and even DR-DOS used different keys for CRTL-ALT-DEL or had CTRL-ALT-DEL do different things?) Well, I retried all of the ALT-f7 and ALT-F-anything key combinations, relaesing and repressing the ALT and/or CTRL keys, all of the CTRL-ALT-key combinations, but nothing seemed to help until this post. Yes, ALT-RIGHT ARROW or ALT-LEFT ARROW work great, although the suggestion that I could use CRTL-ALT instead of ALT in the terminal screens was wrong, CTRL-ALT-Arrow does not work in the terminal screens (and, of course, ALT-Arrow doesn't work in the GUI).
It amazes me that something like this (and it's far from the only thing in Linux like this) could have been made so complicated that most of the Linux using /. geeks could't even give me a working answer.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You've been using Unix or something like it for 10 years and you've never heard of "info"?
That's basically what info is. Did you try following any of the links in the info pages? (They're linked together rather like html.) Try "info info" or "man info" (or google "using unix info") for tips on navigating the info links.
Ah, I'm not sure whether/how tcsh implements "help"; I know bash uses it basically as man pages for the built-in bash commands (I think ksh does too).
I whole-heartedly agree, though don't forget to look past the first page of the manual. (Lots of stuff has a page-1 entry and people forget to look in page 8 or page 2 or whatever.)
All's true that is mistrusted
Are there specialised version for RHEL yet? I know of 3 opensource projects that all use RHEL but there are very few books written about it as of late. It would be good to see this as my shop uses RHEL flavor of CentOS 3.x exclusively.
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/