Linux for Dummies, 5th Edition

Two strongly contrary claims describe the usability of Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Roughly, these claims go like this: 1) "Unix is easy! With a few simple commands you can navigate the filesystem and manipulate text; for the rest, just read the fine manual." That's the viewpoint (painting with a broad brush) of technically literate technojunkies. 2) "Unix is a pain. Cryptic commands, confusing explanations -- when I can get them -- from my smug cousin Jim. And where is this so-called manual?" That'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, but have given things Unixy a spin. Linux for Dummies has been around long enough to reach its recently published 5th edition (written by Dee-Ann LeBlanc); it aims to bridge the 'Way too Hard!' and 'All Perfectly Easy' schools of thought. Read on for my review of the book. Linux for Dummies, 5th Edition author Dee-Ann LeBlanc pages 382 publisher Wiley rating 8 reviewer timothy ISBN 0764543105 summary The large-print onslaught on Linux anxiety continues, with lucid explanations and examples for the non-guru.

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.

Comments

Sheesh

[jazman_777]

Linux for Dummies. Jumbo Shrimp. Military Intelligence. It just goes on and on.

Re:Sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

joe bob can pickup a car manual and take apart an engine

Taking them apart is the easy bit.

Re:Sheesh

[jd142]

joe bob can pickup a car manual and take apart[rebuild] an engine

Ah, but the problem with that analogy, besides the condescending name, is that Joe didn't just decide one day to rebuild his engine without ever looking under the hood before. He probably started out as a small kid helping his father change the oil, then did work on his own car in high school to save money, etc. In other words, he had experience with the system before undertaking the complicated task of rebuilding the engine. Most computer owners, like most car owners, have only ever driven, not been responsible for maintenance.

I wonder if a better analogy would be that this book is trying to teach people how to change their oil. Fedora and Mandrake are pretty user friendly distros. The install isn't complicated. But like changing your oil, there's still the possibility that when you are done, the thing won't run if you screw up badly enough. Odds are you won't though.

And once you get through this a couple of times, you'll feel more confident about rebuilding the engine or setting up that redundant clustering solution.

Re:Sheesh

[Xugumad]

Put another way, I can build computers from scratch, sys-admin Windows, Linux, OS X, Free and Open BSDs, and program in C, Java, Perl, m68k assembly and a whole pile of other languages.

Anyone brave enough to let me near their car engine? *evil grin*

Re:Sheesh

[Anonvmous Coward]

"If joe bob can pickup a car manual and take apart an engine than he surely can follow a step by step FAQ on installing a sound card driver or even compiling his own kernel with all the GUI kernel compiler hacks out there."

Interest level plays a much bigger role in that capability of Joe Bob than you're letting on. Joe Bob loves cars, no biggie. I can use myself as an example. I've worked in Linux before. I more or less understand the fundamentals necessary to pick it up and run with it. The problem is, I'm just not interested in mucking around with conf files etc. Call me spoiled. Installation of a sound card in Windows is put in card, boot up machine, pop CD in, hit OK a couple of times. Sometimes, you need to reboot, and blammo you're done. Dual monitor? no problem. Display properties, Nvidia panel, two or three mouse clicks and I'm up. With good experiences like this, is it really such a shock that I'm not all that interested in a.) hunting down the info/FAQ off the web I need b.) finding the right files, c.) dealing with the troubleshooting issues that arise? I'm not interested. I just want the damn thing to work.

I am envious of the Linux users out there. You guys have some good stuff working in your favor. If I had a stronger interest in programming or something, it'd probably be a fun 'challenge'. But if Windows is doing it for me, and I'm low on both time and interest level in Linux, is it really all that unreasonable that I just keep using it?

Re:Sheesh

[It'sYerMam]

As long as you tried Linux. If you reject it offhand because of the "community" that you encountered, or some sort of FUD, then you have no right to offer an opinion of it (unless of course, you state your ignorance ;-))
However, having tried it and decided "no" what's wrong with that? Isn't this the natural way for people do things?

Of course, it's also natural for those who've already "converted" to try and "convert" you (I'm going to have stop using "air quotes" before I injure someone)
Personally, I use Linux. I find it mentally challenging + fun, a good learning experience, and I like being able to take the moral high ground.

However, we should all remember: each to his own, whether we agree or not - going for both sides of any argument.

Next title in the series...

[Anonymous Coward]

Short, Concise Book Reviewing for Dummies (tm)

Copyright violation!

[S.I.O.]

One of the words in the title is a trademark of Darl McBride. No, not the "Linux"...

Re:My review

[linzeal]

Than what is this for, geniuses?

man

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:man

[ejaw5]

Would you really want a woman explaining UNIX commands? See, man, however overly-complex it may be, will tell you everything you need to know, with no subtile details left for you to figure out /guess on your own. Now, woman, would just give you *hints*, and assumes that you're *sensitive* to those hints and figure it out. It doesn't help very much when you need to know a specific option to pass to the command.

Review likes this should be done by a total newbie

[wallclimber21]

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

Cryptic Commands?

[Nuclear Elephant]

"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

Re:Cryptic Commands?

[stratjakt]

my personal favorite is "umount".

Where's the fucking n?

How much productivity is gained by not having to type that n?

And why the second n if the first one was unneeded? Why not umout?

My own review

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Linux for Dummies, 5th Edition

[rattler14]

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.

Re:Linux for Dummies, 5th Edition

[Psiren]

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.

Thanks for that. It's not often I'm complemented on my testicles ;)

Re:Linux for Dummies, 5th Edition

[commodoresloat]

Actually you were complimented. Had you been complemented on your testicles, I would expect you would have three or four now.

Re:Linux for Dummies, 5th Edition

[Ilan Volow]

Linux is an OS for guys with testicles far bigger than the lowly pair I was given.

O'Reilly already publishes "Linux In A Nutshell". Perhaps one day they'll get around to publishing "Nuts In A Linux Shell".

2nd edition

[Scratch-O-Matic]

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.

I still think the best way to learn linux is

[foidulus]

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)

Pine?

[OECD]

(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.)

I really dont get this trend

[stratjakt]

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.

Re:I really dont get this trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, many of the "Dummies" books are pretty good. There are a couple of topics for which our local library only offers "Dummies" books. I swallowed my pride and borrowed the book. What a surprise to find that the book was very well written, and in an adult professional style that belied the deceptive title. I would recommend a "Dummies" book to anyone wishing to study an honest primer on a technical topic.

By the way, there are a lot of so called "professional" books by O'Reilly which really are books for dummies. I recently checked out O'Reilly's book on Objective C for Max OS X. It had almost nothing about Objective C. It was page after page of screen shots, and "explanations" telling you which menu button to click. They weren't teaching Objective C, they were teaching you how to navigate menus. There was a book for real dummies.

one word

[mslinux]

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.

Introduction to Linux: A Hands on Guide

[KevinDumpsCore]

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.

Cryptic isn't such a bad thing

[Frater 219]

dictionary.com says "Having hidden meaning; mystifying". I think all of those can apply to that command and the majority of commands that make up linux/unix.

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.