Slashdot Mirror
Linux for Non-Geeks
The title explains exactly how Grant's book is laid out. It's for Windows users, Mac users, and new or inexperienced Linux users who are non-geeks (or wannabe-geeks) and who are itching to take the plunge into Linux without having to wade through a multitude of books aimed at power users, online HOWTOs, weblogs and IRC channels. This is one volume with enough worthy information to credit the cost of the $34.95 investment.
The content is based on Redhat's Fedora Core and includes CDs for installation. As such, the author has chosen to go with the default Fedora desktop, GNOME. Choices have to be made: Fedora Core vs. Mandrake vs. SUSE vs. Xandros etc., and GNOME vs. KDE vs. Enlightenment, etc. Grant has chosen stability and ease of use, and he has chosen well. Fedora would have been Redhat 10, had Redhat gone that route. They didn't and we can all lament the changes the company has launched toward focusing on corporate gains or we can move on. Moving on, we can see immediately that Fedora Core is excellent and if Red Hat's idea in Fedora's community focus is to go the Debian route and have lots of experienced eyes taking care of this project, then it will continue to be excellent. Once you get into this book and get your fancy tickled by Fedora and GNOME, go wild. 'Nuff said.
The first two chapters of the book cover the 'penguinista' mindset (why you're even looking at a book on Linux), hardware compatibility and the install process. Easy enough, and Grant does a great job of leading the reader through this process. It's the scary part, after all! Once the deed is done, the reader is introduced to Chapter 3, 'A New Place to Call Home'. Gnome is the desktop of choice and the author goes into detail, easing the reader through a wealth of GUI options. Lots of screenshots and photos give the reader a clear sense of what to expect when they are navigating through the choices. Lots of time is spent on customizing and some may find this trivial but there is nothing more frustrating to the beginner than being told to "click click click" when they aren't comfortable finding the correct windows, buttons and choices. After spending some time on this chapter, the reader will be able to progress through the book with confidence.
Connecting to the Internet is the next chapter, with information presented on hardware, connection options, using the browser, email and IM. The Internet is a must-have so this chapter is well placed. Get 'em going and they'll keep plugging along!
Once the reader is up and running, a side road is taken for those who want to get more familiar with the GUI and who like to tweak everything to look as individual (and tacky) and they can.
After getting on the Web, printing is probably next on the list in importance. Grant dedicates Chapter 6 to explaining how the reader can achieve good printing karma with printer support, printing to PDF, changing settings and handling queues.
Part one of external media is covered next, with an introduction in to floppies (whaaaa?), data and music CD reading/playing/burning, and ISOs (an absolutely necessary part of life for Linux users, especially since we all tend to experiment with different distros when they become available!).
With Chapter 8, we get into the core of every OS user's skill set, no matter how newbie the newbie is, one thing everyone wants to know how to do on their platform of choice: how to install applications (did I say "games"?). Grant gives the reader a very well written chapter on package management, walking the reader gently through four examples, including Skoosh and -- woo-hoo!! -- Frozen Bubble (well, we all need Frozen Bubble!). He even gives the reader a taste of "dependency hell" (don't panic! It's a controlled environment!). There will be a few folks who complain that RPM is Redhat-centric thinking and they'd be right. We are working with Fedora Core after all. Remember the "'Nuff said" above'?. Grant later presents chapters on APT and Synaptic and also on compiling a program from source so the reader has ample chance to get geeky.
A (too short) chapter on the terminal and the command line is wedged in between with practice projects on pyWings and pyChing that brings it all home. Part two of data management comes next, covering USB storage devices and the Windows partition, if there is one. Chapters 13 and 14 deal in depth with music (audio formats, mp3 support, apps like Grip, Rhythmbox and XMMS) and 'getting arty with the GIMP' (including how to scan and use your digital camera).
Then, it's back to business, with several chapters dedicated to workplace productivity and what options are available to Linux users in a 'dark side' dominated world. Grant looks at several office suites including OpenOffice.org (the clear winner) as well as KOffice and some stand-alone apps like AbiWord, Dia, Gcalctool and GPdf. There is also quite a bit of excellent coverage on fonts (a must read!) and finally, language support within Linux.
Now, if everything is working well so far and you can connect to the Internet, print, get your work done and play games. So what's left? Doing it all from your living room, bedroom, even bathroom! In short, going wireless. Grant succinctly explains what it means, what you need and how to do it.
The last few chapters of the book deal with bits and pieces of necessary information that are essential to the reader for further Linux exploration: system settings and system updates, KDE, 'odds and ends' and the requisite troubleshooting section for "uh oh, now what do I do now?" moments. Lots of help and resources round out the book.
A few things could have been expanded on or included: a bit more on firewalls and internet security (we are not entirely immune, after all), handling email attachments is missing (the author promises an update to this on his web site), something on yum and device installation; the slim description of installing a CD-RW drive in the book merely refers the reader to his web site where one can download PDF instructions ...hmmm, that seems a bit skimpy. Installing drives and cards (especially sound cards) would have been a nice chapter on its own, especially since this would most likely require re-compiling the kernel. The reference to this on Grant's web site results in a 'broken' pdf link and no obvious way to alert the author to the damaged file.
At this writing, there are only a few errata but it would be wise to take a peek at Grant's site before delving too deeply into the book.
Overall, I like how Grant chose to lay out his chapters; he's anticipated the needs and expectations of the level of reader he's targeting and placed well-constructed topics in a logical series of chapters. Nicely balanced information for a new Linux user, an on again/off again Linux user or for the switcher (is that trademarked?!). Other distros will be a short leap after reading this one volume. So yes, I lied: Linux for Non-Geeks is for your mom -- and for you, too, come to think of it. (And are those references to Vonnegut scattered about? Erudite crowd, Linux folk, yes?)
You can purchase Linux For Non-Geeks, A Hands-On, Project-Based, Take-It-Slow Guidebook 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.
Wouldn't it be nice if it actually got more normal people to start using Linux?
Somewhat sick and tired of sorting out my mother's PC from virii, trojans, spyware ad infinitum. I wiped her box and installed RH (should have used Debian in retrospect).
Interestingly, once she knew which icons were for email, word processing and browsing, she was off. Her only problem was when her ISP changed dial-up telephone numbers, and the moron on support only had windows experience (or script). He claimed that the service she'd been using fine over the last year didn't actually work with Linux. A quick ssh and change of telephone numbers had her online again(*).
She even found out how to add a new printer on her own, something she never managed to do with windows.
(*): The telephone number changed meant that the previous low rate number became a standard cost per minute, and massively increased her cost of being online. The ISP didn't bother to notify her, and it wasn't until she got a phone bill that was 5x higher than normal that we knew something was afoot.
Yes, this is wonderful. As a person who considers themself a geek, but does not know very much about Linux, I think this book could be marvelous for me. I've been wanting to switch for a while now (sadly, I'm still on XP Home). The thing that's kept me back is that I don't know how to use Linux well, and don't know what questions to ask to get better at it. I have a box running RedHat 7-or-so, but I screwed it up by changing something I apparently shouldn't have (I can't find my programs as root anymore :-P). This lack of Linux know-how has been my main reason for sticking to windows, and now hopefully, I'll be able to change that. If more people could write books like this, the world would be a pretty great place.
"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams
I just installed my first linux (mandrake 10) this weekend.
:-)
:D
Of course, im a geek. Not a linux geek, mind you, but still a geek.
Im having fun discovering a whole NEW slew of prolems to deal with. Of course, these are slight more managable then the ones i used to deal with
google, slashdot, and random linux gurus online have been wonderful. thanks folks!
I should pick this up.
no
Looking at computers users now, in western coutries, I wonder if the people not using desktop computers (ms windows) will ever do. These ones are probaly relatively old compared to the younger who have been raised in a much more computer supported society.
Brand new average young users have no problem at all to explore enough the desktop computer and software in order to do what he wants. I think the culture now make this easy.
Young users can already figure out how to get things done if you present them an installed and ready to use KDE screen. But there is some lacks (which would be a long offtopic post) that show, compared to windows, that usability isnt good enough yet.
There is a market for the light-geeks who buy the "for dummies" books about everything (how to burn CDs, etc). But to get the majority on a diferant (free) OS you have to make it usable as easily as windows is now. After you can think selling these useless books to everyone who will want to buy them.
And for the ones who will cry about "linux should not try to copy windows!":
Windows is a model of usability that the world currently know and use everyday.
You must integrate many similar aspect of usability if you want people to switch to free os one day.
And of course there is many good things in windows, thats not all bad. But being a closed source os simply make it as evolutive as a very little and simple blue painted plastic piece lost in a desert (a big desert).
I don't believe that vulnerability exists anymore in Firefox 0.9 / Mozilla 1.7. See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=238684 if you're interested in the details, but basically that patch made unrequested attempts to install an XPI illegal, sort of like how the pop-up blocker works. You have to click a link or something along those lines for the request to be valid.
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago. Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions.
Sympathetic magic is the belief that like effects like. Stick a pin in the likeness of someone and he'll feel pain, break a stick to protect against snakes, etc.
Ultimately this was applied to words as well. The practice of "spelling" comes out of the belief that a word for something "is" that something, in the same manner that a voodoo doll "is" the person it represents. There is an innate "sympathy" between the noun and the thing it represents. A modern psuedo scientist might call them an "entangle pair" on his website trying to sell you secret mystical books of power (a grammar).
So the idea that I'm trying to convey is that I am not influenced by the book being assigned to "dummies" or that it has the spelling "dummies" on its cover. It has no hold on or power over me. I may purchase it, borrow it from the library, read it, absorb its contents, but that does not in any way make me, or imply that I am, a "dummy" because that is just an arbitrary sound/collection of letters arbitrarily assigned by some marketing geek (in the pejoritive sense of the word) who believes in sympathetic magic.
Plus I have this magic crystal that some gypsy women sold me to protect me from "dummies" books.
I don't suffer the editions that treat me like a dummy gladly, however. Some of their authors apparently don't have a magic crystal.
KFG