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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.
Is it Unixes? Unixii? Unices?
long Dummies = 0;
long Guru = 1000000;
int bookLearning = 0;
bookLearning = 1;
int Linux()
{
for (Dummies = 0; Dummies != Guru; Dummies++;)
Dummies += bookLearning;
loop;
return 0;
}