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The Official Ubuntu Book
Craig Maloney writes "Over the long history of Linux, there have been many different distributions. One of the most famous distributions, love it or hate it, is the Ubuntu distribution. Ubuntu has come quickly from being the new kid on the block with the Warty Warthog release (4.10) to the most recent release Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). In that three year span, Ubuntu has grown from a handful of enthusiasts and developers to a thriving worldwide community. The Official Ubuntu Book is the official book from Canonical, which describes not only the Ubuntu distributions, but also the community from which Ubuntu is derived." Read below for the rest of Craig's review.
The Official Ubuntu Book
author
Benjamin Mako Hill, Jono Bacon, et. al
pages
463
publisher
Prentice Hall
rating
9
reviewer
Craig Maloney
ISBN
0-13-235413-6
summary
An excellent way to get introduced to the Ubuntu distribution and community
The Official Ubuntu Book is comprised of 10 main chapters covering various aspects of the Ubuntu project. The first chapter discusses a bit of the history of the Ubuntu project, as well as the relationship of Canonical to the project. Chapter 2 dives into installing Ubuntu from either the Live CD or the Alternative installation CD. Chapter 3 shows how to use the applications that ship with Ubuntu with some detail. Some of the more in-depth programs get more attention, like The GIMP and Firefox. Also covered are the basics of the GNOME interface, such as adding items to the panels, or logging off of the system. Chapter 4 covers basic system administration (printers, upgrades, file sharing), and package management. Chapter 5 introduces the Ubuntu Server variant, covering RAID, LVM, and more package management techniques. Chapter 6 deals with support issues in a question / answer format, and is a great place for readers to get some of their more common questions answered. Chapter 7 covers the Kubuntu variant of Ubuntu in more depth. Chapter 8 and 9 introduce the Ubuntu Community, and the tools that keep the Ubuntu project running. These chapters alone should be required reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in the Ubuntu project. Lastly, Chapter 10 covers the Edbuntu project, and demonstrates how to set up a LTSP network. The appendices include the Ubuntu related documents, a quick tutorial on the command line, and a great Windows / Ubuntu equivalent section for those who are looking for the best alternatives for certain Windows programs. All-in-all, The Official Ubuntu Book covers the main aspects of the Ubuntu project in a very thorough manner.
Included with the book is the Ubuntu 7.04 release (Feisty Fawn) on DVD. This is a solid release, and was current at the time the book was published. It still has 12 months active support even in light of the recent 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) release, and should give those looking to try Ubuntu an excellent starting point.
The biggest issue facing a book like The Official Ubuntu Book is determining a target audience. Ubuntu appeals to a wide range of people; from the newest newbie to the hardened UNIX aficionado. Making a book that speaks to both is no easy task. Fortunately, The Book does an admirable job of providing enough to keep both parties interested. New Ubuntu users will find lots of information about how to get things accomplished in Ubuntu, while seasoned UNIX user will find enough information to see what th differences are between Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Both will find a great introduction to participating with the rest of the Ubuntu community in the later chapters of the book. Any user of Ubuntu would be well served in reviewing those chapters fora sense of what opportunities exist, and how best to participate in the community given their talents and skills. True, the chapters describing specific applications lack much depth, but the omission can be forgiven in light of the shear amount of material covered. Just learning how to navigate what is provided on the live CD could fill a tome the size of this book, leaving no room to discuss the more about the community. The Official Ubuntu Book balances between both extremes, and provides plenty of information about both the Ubuntu distribution, and the community.
The success of the Ubuntu project is due in no small part to the people who spend their time participating with other Ubuntu users. Reading the book not only gives a sense of what Ubuntu is about, but also shows how open and inviting these users are. It may not be the best tutorial for the new Linux user, but it is an excellent book for those who want to take the next step and be a part of putting together and supporting a large Linux distribution. The Official Ubuntu Book captures the spirit of the Ubuntu community well, and brings the excitement in a palpable form to the reader. I can recommend this book to new users of Ubuntu with only the caution that they may need to find other resources to learn the many new programs that ship with Ubuntu. However, I can also highly recommend this book to anyone who has even a passing interest in getting involved with the Ubuntu project, both new and experienced. The Official Ubuntu Book, much like the Ubuntu project, is an ambitious undertaking, and similarly we all benefit from their hard work.
You can purchase The Official Ubuntu Book from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Included with the book is the Ubuntu 7.04 release (Feisty Fawn) on DVD. This is a solid release, and was current at the time the book was published. It still has 12 months active support even in light of the recent 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) release, and should give those looking to try Ubuntu an excellent starting point.
The biggest issue facing a book like The Official Ubuntu Book is determining a target audience. Ubuntu appeals to a wide range of people; from the newest newbie to the hardened UNIX aficionado. Making a book that speaks to both is no easy task. Fortunately, The Book does an admirable job of providing enough to keep both parties interested. New Ubuntu users will find lots of information about how to get things accomplished in Ubuntu, while seasoned UNIX user will find enough information to see what th differences are between Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Both will find a great introduction to participating with the rest of the Ubuntu community in the later chapters of the book. Any user of Ubuntu would be well served in reviewing those chapters fora sense of what opportunities exist, and how best to participate in the community given their talents and skills. True, the chapters describing specific applications lack much depth, but the omission can be forgiven in light of the shear amount of material covered. Just learning how to navigate what is provided on the live CD could fill a tome the size of this book, leaving no room to discuss the more about the community. The Official Ubuntu Book balances between both extremes, and provides plenty of information about both the Ubuntu distribution, and the community.
The success of the Ubuntu project is due in no small part to the people who spend their time participating with other Ubuntu users. Reading the book not only gives a sense of what Ubuntu is about, but also shows how open and inviting these users are. It may not be the best tutorial for the new Linux user, but it is an excellent book for those who want to take the next step and be a part of putting together and supporting a large Linux distribution. The Official Ubuntu Book captures the spirit of the Ubuntu community well, and brings the excitement in a palpable form to the reader. I can recommend this book to new users of Ubuntu with only the caution that they may need to find other resources to learn the many new programs that ship with Ubuntu. However, I can also highly recommend this book to anyone who has even a passing interest in getting involved with the Ubuntu project, both new and experienced. The Official Ubuntu Book, much like the Ubuntu project, is an ambitious undertaking, and similarly we all benefit from their hard work.
You can purchase The Official Ubuntu Book from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
...these things are usually obsolete in, oh say, 6 months or so.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
So why does it need a book?
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
It just screws up the resolution when I use my GeForce 7600 GT.
Buy the book, get a free hard drive.
Kidding!
My issues of Newsweek from 1993 are practically useless now.
These stories are free but worth money.
Ubbbunnnntuuuuu
Support Democracy: Ship The Thug to Gitmo
Cheers,
K Trout
Idiots. The first sentence has a pretentious grammatical mistake.
The book is _composed_ of 10 chapters.
The book _comprises_ 10 chapters.
The book is not _comprised of_ 10 chapters.
Damn fools.
Finally - this book provides an antisocial way to approach Ubuntu.
Obsolete in 6 months is not likely, Linux/UNIX is much more stable than that other OS.
When you go to the trouble of buying a copy of the Ubuntu guide you might as well expect a customised ubuntu live cd complete with maybe a few text files and some sort of desktop guide for the more annoying things for grandma to figure out on her own explained in greater detail.
There are so many ubuntu books available - it's really quite an indication of how popular this distro has become. Though the same measuring stick would show that fedora has more material out there. It has been around longer though.
I work with Red Hat in my job, so I stick with Fedora but I'm seeing more folks around here running Ubuntu on their desktops.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I can't tell you how many epiphanies I've had while on the can reading an O'Reilly book.
But not in all seriousness...
Someone come up with a punch line for that one.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
I know it sound weird, but I just can't handle Ubuntu, It's so user-friendly it's lame! I mean, why would I want an auto-mount for my cd-rom?!
:(, that's really my opinion.).
If I wanted all that I would have used Windows at first place, I mean, If you're a user which came to Linux to look for alternative, Ubuntu is for you, but if you came to look for something better then Windows, the last thing on earth I would suggest is Ubuntu (I'd suggest Slackware, which is my favorite). That's why also I don't there's a need for Ubuntu handbook, I mean, it's all GUIish (jesus!).
I hope I will not get -1 flamebait cause that's what I really thing (plus, my karma now is terrible, and I'm doing my best to fix it, don't make me sad
Happy 10Th Slashdot birthday!
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WTF does this even mean? How is a three year span quick?
This isn't a simple grammatical correction - it's an opinion.
Generally, criticizing someone on Slashdot as harshly as the parent did, using terms such as "idiots" and "damn fools" (which I suspect should be "damned fools", unless it's an imperative sentence), on a matter of disagreement of opinion is modded as flamebait (e.g., "What the fuck kind of idiot would use AJAX?").
Wot ye not that human speech doest alter from year to year, and generation to generation? Wherefore then art thou distraught over 'comprised'? Pray then, do not let thine fondness of the past nor desire to linger therein prove a thorn in the side of thine fellow man, nor an hindrance to his future.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
The official Ubuntu Book, by Mark Shutleworth. Chapter One: RTFM! The End.
That and I'm of the opinion that people really don't understand the word, but it sounds more intelligent than "compose", so they try to sound smarter than they really are (and in the process end up sounding stupid).
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Partly because it seemed like the quickest way to get a Linux disc (crap 'net connection).
And I was disappointed.
I already have a pretty good idea what the Ubuntu community looks like. I know what Linux is, Slashdot is a better source for thoughts on free software, so those parts of the book were redundant. What I *wanted* to know was how to *use* the damn thing - not just to run Firefox, but properly.
Where's the command line reference? Where do I go to find a C compiler? How do I control the use of disc partitions? These, and others, are among the questions that this book leaves unanswered. Pretty basic stuff, I'd thought.
Trouble is, it's trying to treat me like a Windows user. That's not an entirely invalid assumption; but it's treating me as if I don't *want* to be anything but a Windows user. That's just silly.
I didn't mean that friendliness is bad, but it's too much at Ubuntu. /etc/init.d), a user should know how to chmod -x stuff, to understand the "/" directory base, and what things belong where.
I.e, Cd-rom auto mount isn't the best example, but let's say : why do I need to GUI'ly configure my ip?! that is 100% wrong! a Linux user which doesn't know how to use ifconfig shouldn't be using Linux (or atleast he should be able to know how to use the "man" ifconfig, in-order to know what to do)
Same for the following commands : useradd, su, cd, & [job], fg, bg, kill, killall, man, info, vi (or any other text editor - GUI is acceptable as-well here), ls, ln, tar, chmod, chown, grep, cat, mount, dmesg, more, less, head, tail, cp, rm, ps, pwd, lsmod, lspci, lsof, route, ifconfig, its own pkgtool/rpm/apt/..;
Yes, that's right, some of those commands are quite more then a newbie at his first day, but man, I expect someone who's coming to linux to atleast know how to use the man command, afterwards, all those are easy, and the upcoming will be challenged by the user.
A new Ubuntu user which comes to forums and ask questions like "what does -t do in ls command" without even looking for the manual, is what I fear from. An OS should be GUIish, but not to over react with it, a user should know how to disable things running from rc.d (or
Most of the new users which are coming to Ubuntu doesn't know, and doesn't want to learn all the above stuff, and then they flood linux forums with silly questions without looking them up first. So what I'm saying is, if you want more control of your system, without looking for menus all the time, use something else but Ubuntu.
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!!!
...the community from which Ubuntu is derived.
And by "community" you mean "debian".
As long as they don't give me a pack bathroom tiles instead.
Chapter one tells you all the features Ubuntu has which are just like Windows.
Chapter two tells you how to get all your hardware set up, which would automagically happen under Windows.
Chapter three tells you how to set up your machine to actually work, which would automagically happen under Windows.
Chapter four tells you how to install applications, which is far easier under Windows.
Chapter five tells you how much better Ubuntu is than Windows.
Chapter six tells you how to try to emulate Windows, so you can get actually useful applications working.
Chapter seven tells you how to fix all Ubuntu's problems by formatting the drive and installing Windows.
Just wanted to say kudos to Mako for this book and his work for both Debian and Ubuntu. You're doing a fine job!
This sig is intentionally left blank
Do you get the same problem with other distros? There's a ton of live cds and dvds out there now just shop around, get a dozen, really, get a dozen of the current examples, just go right down the list at distrowatch starting at the top, cheap/free download and burn or two bucks apiece mailorder. Dorking around banging your head against the wall isn't the answer, you need to find what works with your machine with the least time and effort involved, then stick with that. Don't try the square peg round hole idea because something is "popular", at the top levels of distros, more or less you are going to get all the same apps anyway, so it really is more a matter of *your* particular hardware and what works the best. I personally have had pretty good luck with all the fedora installs I have tried, even on lower spec machines (256 meg ram is the magic bare minimum sweet spot it appears for a full desktop manager system like gnome or kde, although a full gig is just dandy). Text based only install below that, but no problems finding the monitor or sound card, etc. On the debian derivative side, I have had better luck with mepis than with ubuntu though, much better actually, and I don't know why, but that distro seems to nail the hardware better. Just try a ton of them out one evening, doesn't take long to thin the pack out to the two or three that work the best, then go from there and make a decision. And next time you get a new machine, go right back and do it again, get the top dozen, try, lather rinse repeat. It's the only thing I have found that works the best and I don't stay married to any particular distro cult, because linux just changes too fast for that..
Ugh. People who complain about Linux becoming too easy to use are easily more annoying than the ones who claim it is too complicated.
You do know you can just ignore the gui tools and use the command-line anyway.
I know by default terminal is buried deep in the 'Accessories' menu, but I'm sure you can find it or press Ctrl-Alt-F1.
In the end though, isn't it nice that you can use the kind of distro that you prefer, and not have someone else's opinions forced on you?
What is there really to be upset about?
It also auto-mounts all partitions on USB drives. There are system partitions on my USB drive that I don't want auto-mounted. The drive is relatively permanent despite being connected via USB.
Personally, I found "Beginning Ubuntu Linux: From Novice to Professional" to be pretty good.
SARAVA!
Here are two weaknesses and two strengths of this book:
/home partition to CD. Simple backups are not covered, as far as I can tell from the index.
It seems to me the Official Ubuntu book is weak on helping a user figure out what she is going to do with the installed system.
For instancce, how would a new Ubuntu user backup her Windows files to CD ? Like transporting all your email and browser bookmarks from Windows to Ubuntu? Not covered. The focus of this book fades at the boundaries of Ubuntu itself.
Another weakness is, this book talks about Ubuntu but doesn't show a simple task like how to backup a
The strength of The Official Ubuntu Book is it describes the Ubuntu philosophy and commitment to creating highly usable free software with multiple growing communities of users contributing back to build a usable set of tools.
The Ubuntu accomplishment is social: Ubuntu is a suite of free software deliberately giving computer power to newcomers, students and non-technical users. Ubuntu should have it's own book.
If you are a techie, you can look at this book as something you would use socially the same as you might give a Ubuntu CD or DVD to a potential Ubuntu user.
I have written with some anguish about weaknesses with Ubuntu (see two articles in my Slashdot journal) but the balancing factor is: Ubuntu is free in all four senses defined by Richard Stallman.
Here is a review of Ubuntu Hacks by a Peninsula Linux Computer Group member, this is another Ubuntu book with a more technical focus:
http://www.penlug.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/LinuxBookReviewsUbuntuHack
The presence of GUI tools doesn't change anything to the underlying system, you can use one or the other. GUI configuration tools which were there in such friendly systems as SunOS ages ago BTW. Or on pretty much any CDE compliant desktop for that matter (the horror).
Did you ever use anything *but* Linux ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Not most famous, it is the most hyped. Redhat, Debian, Slackware and Gentoo could be called famous...sorry Ubuntu doesn't quite fit that title.