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A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux
r3lody writes "Finding a single book that encompasses what you want to learn can be difficult. Most cover a few portions of a subject in depth and skim over (or omit) others. Other books will cover each topic at about the same level: high enough to give an impression of what can be done, but not with enough depth to do it without a lot of effort. In A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux, Mark G. Sobell has created a single volume that gives the reader enough information to effectively install, configure and run workstations and servers using Ubuntu Linux. He has come the closest I have seen to containing all of the necessary information without being too shallow. Granted, to include everything you would want to know about Ubuntu Linux would take several books of this size, but this particular one provides most users the best bang for the buck. A DVD with the Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu in a directly bootable form is included with the book." Read below for the rest of Ray's review.
A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux
author
Mark G. Sobell
pages
1200
publisher
Prentice Hall PTR
rating
10/10
reviewer
Ray Lodato
ISBN
013236039X
summary
A complete guide to installing and running Ubuntu Linux for beginning to intermediate users
With over two decades of experience related to Unix and Linux, Mark G. Sobell has authored almost two dozen books on the subject. I had previously read and reviewed his book A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Second Edition) and found it the highest quality book I had yet read on Linux. This, his latest book, bears many similarities to the other text, including its high quality. The overall structure is like that of a textbook, providing a summary and exercises at the end of each chapter, as well as copious cross-references.
A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux is broken up into five parts containing 27 chapters in all. After providing the now obligatory history of Linux and the GPL, Part I uses two chapters to provide an overview of, and step-by-step instructions for, installing Linux. The overview provides information about the process including how to try Linux with the Live DVD supplied, planning your hard disk layout, acquiring a newer version of Ubuntu, and the install process in general. The step-by-step chapter goes into great detail on each step of the process, using both the graphical and textual installation paths. It also throws in additional detail on how to configure the X server.
Now that you have Linux in a runnable form, Part II provides higher-level information that shows newer Linux users what they can do. Four chapters serve to introduce basic Linux to the user. Topics include how to update, install and remove program packages, how to use the command line (and some basic utilities such as cat, ls, more, less, etc.), how the filesystem is laid out, shell concepts such as pipes and job control, and where to find additional documentation.
Part III uses another four chapters to dive deeper into the Bourne Again Shell (BASH), the GUIs, and networking. First the X Window System is described, followed by the GNOME and KDE desktops. BASH is covered in two separate chapters, inexplicably separated by the chapter on networking. The first BASH chapter provides the reader with information on startup files, command history, redirection, etc. The other BASH chapter goes into depth regarding programming BASH scripts. The intervening networking chapter provides a basic understanding of network protocols and some utilities such as ping, traceroute, host and dig.
Up to this point, Mark has been showing the user how to use Ubuntu Linux with little modification. Starting with Part IV, he describes how to perform the more common configuration tasks. Using seven chapters and over 200 pages, Part IV provides a great deal of detail regarding system administration. Starting with some core concepts (running as root, sudo, startup scripts, wrappers, recovery mode, etc.), Mark then leads the reader into the nooks and crannies of the filesystem. The following chapter shows how to add and remove applications using apt, aptitude, dpkg, wget and BitTorrent. Printing using CUPS is given its own chapter next, as is the (at least to me) daunting task of rebuilding the system kernel. The last two chapters in Part IV cover the miscellaneous administration tasks of adding, changing, and deleting users and groups, backing up and restoring files, managing the various logs, and setting up your network connections (both wired and wireless).
The final section, Part V, uses nine chapters to go into depth on set up various servers and use their clients. OpenSSH, FTP, exim4 (for mail), NIS, NFS, Samba, DNS/BIND, the firewall (firestarter and iptables), and finally Apache. Each of the chapters provides Jumpstart sections to help you install and configure each server quickly, and enough detail to handle the more common configuration changes.
There are five appendices covering regular expressions, where to get help, general security considerations, the Free Software Definition, and a bullet list of major items added to the 2.4 kernel to form the 2.6 kernel. These are followed by a fairly comprehensive glossary and index.
Overall, A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux by Mark G. Sobell provides all of the information a beginner to intermediate user of Linux would need to be productive. The inclusion of the Live DVD of the Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu makes it easy for the user to test-drive Linux without affecting his installed OS. I have no doubts that you will consider this book money well spent.
You can purchase A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux is broken up into five parts containing 27 chapters in all. After providing the now obligatory history of Linux and the GPL, Part I uses two chapters to provide an overview of, and step-by-step instructions for, installing Linux. The overview provides information about the process including how to try Linux with the Live DVD supplied, planning your hard disk layout, acquiring a newer version of Ubuntu, and the install process in general. The step-by-step chapter goes into great detail on each step of the process, using both the graphical and textual installation paths. It also throws in additional detail on how to configure the X server.
Now that you have Linux in a runnable form, Part II provides higher-level information that shows newer Linux users what they can do. Four chapters serve to introduce basic Linux to the user. Topics include how to update, install and remove program packages, how to use the command line (and some basic utilities such as cat, ls, more, less, etc.), how the filesystem is laid out, shell concepts such as pipes and job control, and where to find additional documentation.
Part III uses another four chapters to dive deeper into the Bourne Again Shell (BASH), the GUIs, and networking. First the X Window System is described, followed by the GNOME and KDE desktops. BASH is covered in two separate chapters, inexplicably separated by the chapter on networking. The first BASH chapter provides the reader with information on startup files, command history, redirection, etc. The other BASH chapter goes into depth regarding programming BASH scripts. The intervening networking chapter provides a basic understanding of network protocols and some utilities such as ping, traceroute, host and dig.
Up to this point, Mark has been showing the user how to use Ubuntu Linux with little modification. Starting with Part IV, he describes how to perform the more common configuration tasks. Using seven chapters and over 200 pages, Part IV provides a great deal of detail regarding system administration. Starting with some core concepts (running as root, sudo, startup scripts, wrappers, recovery mode, etc.), Mark then leads the reader into the nooks and crannies of the filesystem. The following chapter shows how to add and remove applications using apt, aptitude, dpkg, wget and BitTorrent. Printing using CUPS is given its own chapter next, as is the (at least to me) daunting task of rebuilding the system kernel. The last two chapters in Part IV cover the miscellaneous administration tasks of adding, changing, and deleting users and groups, backing up and restoring files, managing the various logs, and setting up your network connections (both wired and wireless).
The final section, Part V, uses nine chapters to go into depth on set up various servers and use their clients. OpenSSH, FTP, exim4 (for mail), NIS, NFS, Samba, DNS/BIND, the firewall (firestarter and iptables), and finally Apache. Each of the chapters provides Jumpstart sections to help you install and configure each server quickly, and enough detail to handle the more common configuration changes.
There are five appendices covering regular expressions, where to get help, general security considerations, the Free Software Definition, and a bullet list of major items added to the 2.4 kernel to form the 2.6 kernel. These are followed by a fairly comprehensive glossary and index.
Overall, A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux by Mark G. Sobell provides all of the information a beginner to intermediate user of Linux would need to be productive. The inclusion of the Live DVD of the Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu makes it easy for the user to test-drive Linux without affecting his installed OS. I have no doubts that you will consider this book money well spent.
You can purchase A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I thought the point of Ubuntu is that you don't need a book to use it. Everything should be easy to figure out, and if it's not there are forums.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Generally, if you are new to unix in general, you should get a good unix reference. I'd suggest Unix Power Tools by O'Reilly.
If you are an experienced unix user, and want to learn the specifics of Ubuntu linux, then this book seems very useful. It has both the gory details of the inner workings, and a guide to some of the application candy you may install for home use.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Every few years, I take a stab at installing whatever 'user friendly' distro of Linux exists at the time. I actually just installed Ubuntu 7.10 on a laptop of mine two nights ago. Overall, the experience is much improved. Actually, drastically improved over my last attempt several years ago. My wireless card just worked, which used to be the main hassle (I know why.).
The only problem I now have is with dual monitor support. It seems like a hodge-podge of ideas, nowhere very clearly defined. I don't know if I need Xinemara, TwinView, or both? I've tried countless combinations of "vsync to blank" (3 different locations), setting the vertical refresh rate (3 different values depending on where I look), none of which are 60 hz. There are many lockups while trying to change these settings through the nvidia driver settings.
I realize none of this is Ubuntu's fault, per se. Still, my multiple monitors works flawlessly in Windows without any fuss. It just seems obvious what to do there for me.
So while there have been great strides, I am excited to see the continual improvement in areas like these.
I did keep Ubuntu on the laptop and plan on using it, just with only one monitor for now.
Considering that Hardy will be coming out in a few weeks, and will be supported for 3-5 years as opposed to 18 months, wouldn't it have been a smarter idea to write a book on 8.04 Hardy Heron instead?
I'm just waiting for Prentice Hall to publish 'A Practical Guide To Practical Guides'.
I wonder if they give their writers a Practical Guide To Writing Practical Guides
Of course here is a book many people would find much more useful.
This new book has a pretty solid intro to shell scripting, enough to get you started, along with some other basics such as Apache configuration and something that's vital for new users who actually want to use their Linux box on real projects: ssh. (Here's another review of the same title, which I wrote.)
I thought the whole idea of Linux distros like Ubuntu was that you didn't have to have a book or hundreds of pages of manuals in order to use it. Am I missing something?
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Most howtos focus on basic installation of the OS and getting around the GUI. No basic administration, no information about installing new apps, no map of the file system so you know where your programs store shit. It's as bad as Microsoft, except that I happen to have lived with MS OSes since '85 and have mostly followed where the keep hiding the useful stuff (i.e. I know it's there, I just have to find the new widget they've hidden it under).
I installed Ubuntu for my daughter, and it worked well. Then I tried to figure out how to install a wireless driver. I gave up and bought a different wireless card that was supported out of the box - it was far easier and cheaper than the hours spent on line. Then I tried to install an application. I was stuck. You either had GUI howtos or you were into forums with power users.
Of course I had to bail on the install - a program I got from school (which she really likes) is windows only. There's no way I'm going to fight with wine on a full-screen DX app that barely plays nice on native software.
If this book really does tell me where everything is stored, and how it runs, and can take me from newbie (old-school CLI apple/ibm/ms) linux to power user that can troubleshoot the OS, I'm in.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Interesting, WAY off topic, but not a bad read for a short story.
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
Agreed. Or, I'd love to see a book like this with things divided into big chunks, clearly separated--maybe with a different background color or something: "This is UNIX stuff that has been around for five/ten/thirty years and will work on any distro (or OS X or Solaris)" and "This is stuff that's particular to Ubuntu."
In any case, I love how permanent this stuff is. It's not quite a general UNIX book, but I still find myself turning to my decade-old horsey book from time to time.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I'm hoping for The Complete Idiot's Missing Manual to Teach Yourself Practical Guides in 24 Hours Unleashed.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I've got it and it is a great book. Anyone who knows Sobell's work would tell you that his stuff is of keeper quality. I think I first ran into one of his Unix books around 1990. Why would you want a book for Ubuntu? If you are a little more into it than the casual user, it will make your life a lot easier in terms of networking, etc., etc. Of course you MIGHT find the info on the web but this will save you a lot of time. If your time is worth $25/hr and this saves you a couple of hours, it's worth it. Someone mentioned that Hardy might be in business longer than 7.1 about which this book is written. If that is true you might want to wait for a version that goes with Hardy, but I doubt that much at the fundamental level will change. Recommended if you are a member of the target audience.
Sobell did a great book on Unix that went through a few editions and that I still keep on my shelf although it is a bit outdated. I'm looking forward to the Ubuntu one.
I just read
When I was looking to learn more about how to use linux a little while after I'd started doing so I asked on the Fedora forum what they would recommend and someone sent me a link to a really great online book which contained so much information of such high quality that I felt like I really learned loads. It's also really easy going for complete n00bs, but I suspect that if I went back I'd still learn new things and have new interesting stuff to look at... you can check it out at http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
If you want a good unix/linux book I honestly don't think there is a better place to start (although some of the information seemed a little out of date (like modems being based on sound waves and hard drives being measured in MBs...) UNIX is UNIX, even if we now have slightly shiny-er linux wrappers)
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Kudos to the the guy for writing a book. But honestly ubuntu is so damned easy one is not exactly necessary. But then again neither are all those other "Getting the most out of Windows (version whatever)" books. Nice to see linux getting some shelf space. Even if it is just one space.
After my initial problems with ubuntu (mostly having to do with a buggy BIOS and figuring out I needed to use the "noapic nolapic" commands - now fixed after reflashing my BIOS to a newer version), I have had no complaints. My favorite games run under Wine and/or Cedega in a stable manner. Office is much more than I need. The only thing I miss is multi-monitor support (not DUAL monitor, I am talking 8 or more monitors - I trade stocks and look at a lot of graphs at the same time), but I hear better multi-monitor support is coming in Hardy Heron. I guess if I really wanted to I could play around with the xorg.conf file, but I really don't want to, any more than I would want to edit windows registry keys.
Linux has improved a GREAT deal in terms of user friendliness and being able to do almost anything with simple mouse clicks from the GUI.
The ubuntu forums are quite friendly, and it's not that hard to find the info to say get Evolution working with hotmail, or get ubuntu to play Hollywood encrypted DVD's (although that is laughably illegal in the US even if you bought the DVD). Better yet, download the AVI/DivX file and can claim that you're still only breaking one law.
Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself. This book is a great idea. The inclusion of a CD is a great idea, and hopefully more people will think about linux as an alternative to pirating/being extorted into paying for Windows crapware.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Or suspend to disk and suspend to RAM. Those two features are extremely important for a laptop user. Coupled with correct detection of lid opening and closing etc. And I have yet to find a linux distro og kernel compilation or software package (uswsusp etc.) that just works on the many laptops I have tried installing linux on. Come on! Laptops are increasingly popular and missing those features is a dealbreaker. It literally was for me. Also for my desktop computer, where I use hibernate and suspend a lot too. I have been running linux for 13 years off and on, but in the last couple of years, I always end up switching back to Windows XP because these features are lacking. Ubuntu (or any other distro) with at least perfect seamless no-hassle suspend to disk or RAM when I close my lid and perfect resume when I open it, would be a godsend for me.
I got mine used from an Amazon reseller on an eBay link on Google Shopping.
Okay, I lied. I snarfed it using Limewire (which I got using Kazaa).
...'tis easier to blame than to improve.
Forums, despite their low signal:noise, don't have this problem.
My recommendation would be to buy a good shell scripting book and read a few online tutorials on configuring whatever distro you have.
Generally, if you are new to unix in general, you should get a good unix reference.
Great suggestion. While Unix Power Tools is a fantastic reference book, something much narrower in scope (and much shorter) like Sams Teach Yourself UNIX in 10 Minutes can be a great help for those absolutely new to the command line.
End users should ever EVER do ./configure && make && make install. We really need to fight that mentality, its unacceptable. There should be packages, RPM or DEB or both, of EVERYTHING, and if a bug is discovered; there needs to be a new packages ASAP. ./configure && make && make install of end users really needs to stop. For good.
./configure && make && make install for developers as a stage in developers should be mandatory. And a baseline SPEC for the production of package for any given application or library. We are in the fight for our future people, and Microsoft is going at us like a sack of doorknobs, End users should NOT be doing ./configure && make && make install.
Now,
I am familiar with a lot of the material in the book, presumably, but I'd like to see what he did for coverage of Ubuntu, especially now that I'm using it fairly regularly.
(Background; I was involved with the Practical Guide for OS X 10.4.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
This is mainly because the video driver manuf's couldn't give two shits about user friendliness on Linux.
:)
But yeah, Ubuntu has made great strides. The installer is arguably more user friendly than Windows - and once you're up and running it's essentially the same with less bugs
Problems with Linux now, and for a few years now, have been with "obscure" hardware (dual monitor support is hardly joe sixpack, though it should be more user friendly). Which is a massive problem that won't be fixed until manufacturers decide Linux is worth coding for. With Vista looking the way it is, perhaps soon that will happen. Wouldn't count on it just yet though.
Thank you for saying this. I've been using computers since DOS 3.3 so I'm comfortable with the command line, but other than a short tryst with Slackware in the early 1990s I haven't really gotten into Linux. I'm sure that once you've done /configure make and install enough times it is fairly intuitive. However coming from a world where all that was required to get a program to install was to run the associated .com or .exe file, it seems pretty cryptic and clunky to have to feed source into gcc and wait for the system to compile your program for you. And if it fails to compile... oh boy... I don't have the patience for that crap anymore. I'll go back to what works and wait another year to see if the "Year of the Linux desktop" has finally arrived or not. ;)
I would never ever advocate the concept of running a program from an application vendor to install a program. That gave us our adware industry. DOS and Windows's methods are bad too.
I guess we all pick our poisons. I've never had a box compromised in fifteen plus years and I've been running vendor supplied installation programs all along. Sometimes I think Linux users like going through the make/install process simply because it lets them feel involved with what is going on.
Why are you compiling your own software? What's wrong with the packages in the Ubuntu repository?
Regarding the better support for multiple monitors in Hardy, it comes in the form of an xrandr front end applet. Having had a rather bad time trying to get dual monitors set up in Gutsy, I tried this when the beta came out (using a vanilla auto-configured xorg.conf). Looked pretty good at first; it shows the two monitors side by side, showing the one I hadn't been using with a screen resolution set to 'off'. I set that to 1152x864, and pressed 'apply': Lo and behold, it turned on and showed my desktop at that resolution -- except that the monitor I had been using before was now set to 'off'. I used the applet to turn that monitor on, it did so -- and turned my secondary monitor back off. Not impressed.
The old 'Screens and Graphics' manager is still installed, only it's been moved over to the 'applications' menu for some reason. It still works identically to how it worked in Gutsy. By which I mean: not at all.
However, even though the graphical front end to xrandr doesn't work, xrandr itself *does*. After a lot of experimentation, most of which is due to the fact that Compiz Fusion fails miserably when you try to enable dual screens, I found that I am now able to get dual screens working (with metacity only), using "xrandr --output DVI-0 --left-of VGA-0".
So, yay!
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Way to change the subject. The matter at hand is the necessity of compiling programs by hand when a package installer isn't available. The GP said that there isn't really any excuse for not having a package installer in this day and age, and implied that in order to get up to speed with the rest of the world (read, MS and Apple), package installers are necessary. I was agreeing with him.
1) insert install disk
2) follow prompts
3) done!
If there is no package the software may as well not exist. I suggest searching the package repository for an alternative application.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm probably going to get a new computer in part with my "economic stimulus check" and will definitely be putting an Ubuntu partition on there.
I built an Ubuntu 6.06 system that happened to have an ATI card in it. I was so impressed with the system that I decided to build a new system. Happy with the ATI card, I ordered an identical, brand-new card...only I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my new system because the SATA drives required a driver that wasn't in 6.06. I fought with the ATI drivers for over a week and never could get it to work. And I'm not the only one that had the problem between 6.06 and 7.10. The forums were running over with complaints, but solutions were few and far between.
After a solid week of late nights with the ATI card, I ordered an NVIDIA card. 7.10 picked up the card and installed the proper driver on the first shot. Never again will I buy an ATI card for a Linux system. The two cards costs about the same, but one is a hell of a lot more work to get going.
For all the Linux sucks with games stuff you hear, I play OpenArena on my LAN in a totally Linux environment and my kids and their friends love it. My kids also love xmoto.
transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
i am buying the book for the cd !
maybe in some time ATI will have better support, theyre working on it, but itd be a long time before i bought an ati card to use with linux.
:P /victory, sucker.
however, my T40 has a radeon 7500 mobile in it, and runs compiz great. however, its old, and uses open drivers
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
This book is GREAT. I have read it entirely and i can help my friends with all the ubuntu problems. We recently changed to ubuntu from windows because of all the problems that vista introduced and the programs that were coming out for it and not XP (we also hate bill gates). I got this book before it was slashdotted. I hear a lot of people talking about the needlessness of buying a book, but I like the rightness of having a book in my hands and not having to search through what seems to be endless blogs. In the end, I think anyone who is new to ubuntu, or even upgrading to ubuntu from other linux systems, should buy this book.
About twelve years ago, when I was living in France, I bought a 300 page book with a Slackware CD in the cover. OK, so at the time Slackware was not exactly forgiving... and the CD woudln't work. But the book was sort of useful. I managed to get hold of redhat, with no printed docs, and installed it and was a happy monkey for the next three years. In that time, I bought great thick book with a blue cover, with a entitlef "Linux Undercover" with a RedHat logo... it turned out to be not much more than a set of RFCs. After that, I went to Mandrake, which became Mandriva not long before the time that I moved to the US, at which time I switched to Ubuntu. And what printed material do I possess concerning Ubuntu? err.... Sorry, I can't produce that evidence. It seems to not exist. Sorry. The point being, that the vast majority of the printed material I formerly held on to concerned configuration and troubleshooting... something which seems to be mostly redundant with Ubuntu. Things mostly "just work", and for the few things that don't I have UbuntuForums.org to help me out. K.
I'm going to second Unix Power Tools as an excellent book for learning the whole shebang, but point out that you might as well get Linux Power Tools.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
For that matter, Sobell himself has various editions of "plain old Unix" books going back to the 1980's. The Ubuntu edition sounds like a useful update to my earlier editions of "A practical guide to the Unix System". Combine these with the Advanced Bash Scripting guide and the other online documentation at tldp.org, and you're good to go.
We are the 198 proof..
And you're saying this because?
I've been exclusively using Ubuntu since Breezy (more than 3 years), and have done "./configure && make && make" less times than I have fingers on my left hand. That's including at least 30 system installs, 5 servers of various configurations (including dedicated web servers), and a multitude of different hardware surprises from laptops and wireless cards.
This is a troll, but I'll bite anyway. Since when has a $20 piece of computer equipment been a show stopper for an entire OS?
A few years ago, I would have found your statement hard to believe; I would have labeled you as some sort of troll, deliberately provoking a response. More recently, I have come to learn that some people, like you, have a great deal of difficulty seeing things from the newbie point of view. This is not meant to be disrespectful, but at the same time I'm going to use you as an example to point out a flaw in many geeks, of which they are themselves unaware.
The problem with using the command line is NOT fear of the text-based interface.
Imagine for a moment that you have just been seated at a restaurant serving ethnic food that is new to you --say, for example, that your new girlfriend (who's dying to learn Linux from you) wants to try out that new Thai restaurant with you (replace "Thai" with any type of cuisine with which you are not familiar).
The waiter comes up to you and, instead of handing you a menu, says, "So, what do you want?"
"Well, what do you have?" you ask.
He shrugs. "Anything," he says.
"What do you mean, 'anything'?"
"It means exactly what I said," he answers. "You can order anything you want. We cook hundreds of different dishes, any way you like."
"Okay, I'll have a steak."
"That's not a Thai dish."
"But you said *anything*."
"But this is a Thai restaurant. When I said 'anything', I meant anything *Thai*, of course."
"Okay, I'll have a typical Thai entree dish."
"No such thing as 'Thai entree dish'. You have to tell me which Thai entree dish."
"Well I have no idea."
"Well, order anything. Anything *Thai*," he adds pointedly.
"Such as?"
The waiter becomes exasperated. "Well, you can have Pad See Ew, or Tom Yum Gong, or--"
At this point, your girlfriend wisely cuts in and says, "Could we have a menu?"
The waiter rolls his eyes. "All these newbies wanting to order from a menu! I honestly don't see how 'Tom Kha Khai' is master chef like or complex in any way. Our clients who consider 'Tom' confusing are the ones that will blank-face any illustrated menu for any type of food. For these people, we have the choice of two preset menus."
The point, I'm sure you'll have seen, is that when the command line asks the newbie, "Okay, what do you want to do now?" the newbie has absolutely no idea. There are too many possibilities. Sometimes the newbie will gamely try a command like "check my email" or "email", but the stony response of "bash: email: command not found" quickly puts him in his place. Hell, even *I* forget the ins and outs of some commands with their options (is it "find [directory] [target]" or "find [target] [directory]"?).
A common mistake, of which I will make yours an example (but you're certainly not alone in this), is that you think the newbie fears text mode. Now you see the difference? With apt-get, you could type any sequence of characters for a package name and there would be nothing to stop you except some cryptic message, "No such package as 'Thai entree dish'." The GUI, or text-based menu, limits your options so that it guides you to what you want. You can select packages. It doesn't matter whether the interface is graphical, ncurses, or just "Press 1, 2 or 3". Of course, newbies are more likely to warm up to the GUI, but that's secondary.
Now, I realize that you did say Synaptic would fill the void, but that doesn't necessarily help guide the newbie onto the command line.
I would love to have a tool that showed a menu of choices, either in a GUI or a ncurses text interface, that let me choose common commands, like that confusing "find" command I mentioned earlier. On the "find" window would be a form with a space to fill in "Enter directories to search" and "What filename are you looking for?" with perhaps some radio buttons or checkboxes for various command-line parameters. When you click OK, not only does it execute the command, it also tell
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
There's no denying that the UNIX Power Tools book is an excellent book - but the fact is that it's orientated more towards the intermediate user who is prepared to resort to the shell prompt to get things done. The same can also be said for O'Reilly's "Classic Shell Scripting" and "Bash Cookbook" which are also truly great books for UNIX and Linux but again deal wholly with the shell prompt.
People starting off with Ubuntu do not want to be worried about the shell prompt any more than they want to worry about the command prompt under Windows. Yes, eventually, they may realise that to become a Linux power user, they need to put together piped commands and scripts, but one step at a time is fine for them.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I'm fine with windows, but feel I should at least try switching to Linux. I try - and say Ubuntu installs perfectly. Web, email, file shares all easy to work out. I can use the nifty little wizards to install new apps - but that's about it. All the complexity is still there, it just takes you a little bit longer to hit it now. For example I was trying to get MythTV to work. Asks me for my mysql db settings, which I give and then it tells me that the db isn't available. I check the 'Services' program on the GUI and it says MySQL is running - and that's where I currently am with my Ubuntu machine, poking randomly at stuff without a clue what I'm doing (and probably beaking more than I'm fixing).
I thought it was the fact that people can't get enough of linux, so when they aren't using it, they want to read about it (on the plane, or in meetings, etc...)
This isn't terribly surprising. I have had similar experiences with ATI and Linux (Ibinti, Fedora, Open Suse, Mandrake (pre-mandriva), Etc. Sometimes they worked flawlessly, other times not at all. However, Nvidia has worked flawlessly EVERY time, regardless of Distro, for the over 6 years now that I have been using and abusing Linux in it's various flavors and forms.
Unfortunately, the situation is not improved with the Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). This distro dumps the Open Source XGL driver that works fantastic in 7.10 for the new ATI driver. The new ATI driver is absolute dreck. Not only does it NOT work at all on older cards, but it works poorly on the new ones too.
Perhaps in a few years AMD will have helped ATI along enough to actually have a good driver, but until then it's Nvidia video for Linux users. It's just too bad that so many laptop manufacturers went with ATI video in their laptops. That basically removes a HUGE chunk of laptops as Ubuntu upgrade candidates.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Note to self:
Make sure to SPELL CHECK your posts using preview. "Ibinti" above was supposed to be "Ubuntu". Dang fumblefingeritis.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Despite the name "universe", not every software package that is available is in the Ubuntu repository.
Not to mention the number of in-house apps that need to be compiled.
The world is not as simple as you think.
Google.
/* No Comment */
What you're looking for is apt-cache search [terms].
If you would take two seconds and ask instead of throwing your hands up and saying "oh noes! too many commands" we would've told you.
Also, see aptitude (run it with no arguments) for a ncurses based menu. Although, that's outside of the scope of CLI usage in lieu of a GUI.
There are only about a dozen CLI commands that most people need to be familiar with (and then you just reference the man page for syntax on the others). Or is it impossible now for someone to do what was commonplace just a little over ten years ago? (That would be using the CLI almost exclusively)
Disclaimer first: I didn't read the book so I may be wrong.
I'm glad to see such a book coming out. Though I don't like Ubuntu (I use a Fedora system), I like the idea of the book.
Some of us have argued that the Ubuntu community serves as a better source of knowlege. But a book is a different thing. I can tell from some of my personal experience.
I code Python programs in my spare time, and I'm trying to integrate Python in my physics studies. When I was learning Python from scratch, the only source I have were the docs (Tutorial and Library Reference) that came with it, the pydoc program, some open-source programs (which were too hard for me to fully analyze then), the mailing list and the comp.lang.python newsgroup. I made a bootstrapping start from them, and I could code something that worked then. Well I still paid the money to buy a printed book (Alex Martelli's "Python in a Nutshell"), since reading a book in my hand is a better, systematic approach to organize my knowledge on the topic, and more fun as well. I can read about almost everyting related to the language's semantics without having to optically parse the BNFs in the documentation.
Now it comes to a book for a popular, desktop-user oriented distro, it's quite different OK? Yes it is, but the learning mechanism is similar. For a typical desktop user, she has some docs from the vendor, the community-based forums (compared with c.l.python), example configuration files and shell scripts (compared with Python example sourcecode, also note that the users may not really understand them), however there's really not many choices for a decent book. I found O'Reilly has some titles like "Hacking Ubuntu Linux" and "Ubuntu for Non-Geeks", but just imagine the poor number of desktop Linux titles in a bookstore, compared to the multitude of Windows-related books (at least it is so here, in China, and most of the Windows books really suck).
Among the desktop users, only a small portion of them have a good understanding of their machines. I guess this proportion must be higher for Linux users, but it is also likely that most of (I mean most of) Ubuntu users are the least technical savvy of Linux-based distros' users, given the design goal of the distribution. On the other hand, they chose to use Linux for a reason. That may be mandatory if it's required for your job, but many of them are at least interested in something that has freedom built in the designers' mind, something that gains its position for its quality instead of marketing and user locking-in. These people are the fraction who has a desire to free their minds and learn, and I hope they can enjoy a book written for them.
BTW I hope there's a book that serves as an "Introduction to Computers" based on a general Unix-like platform. I hope such a book could exist so that an average user can learn more about the basic ideas behind the daily stuff on a computer, e.g. how programs are executed, how networking are possible, how to make best use of filesystems, the mindset of security, as well as information-related skills. Not everybody is computer-literate as /. readers, and they need education like this to satisfying their needs, as well as saving a lot of time dealing with "luser" problems.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I totally agree. The moment you ask regular end users to go to a command line, you have lost the battle. The command line should be for techies that like to fiddle with stuff and fix stuff and mode their machines. But installing an app for Joe Blow should be point-and-click via a GUI interface every time. And we also need more PLAIN ENGLISH descriptions of how things work and how to do things. Instructions, dialog boxes, error messages should have a simple strighforward explanation. "Devices using the ralink chipset are listed with the rt2x00 driver. the rt2x00 driver only works for kernels 2.6.13 or greater. For a kernel older then this you need to use rt2500 for pci devices or rt2570 for usb devices". Joe Blow has no frickin' clue what this means, and he shouldn't have to. He just wants things to work.
I am the very last person to claim I have much computer experience at all. Had a Mac for a long time, cool, etc; had to use Windows for work so could navigate that too. I had an Acer Aspire running Vista which, just like you said, pissed me off. I put Ubuntu (7.04) on it and it worked fine. I didn't mind having a wired connection. Stuff worked. The Gutsy upgrade got me wireless. This past weekend I put Xubuntu 7.10 on an old Dell Latitude. Again, I don't mind being wireless... I have made plenty of mistakes but I have learned from them. My personal experience with Ubuntu has been great, and a friend who is an IT professional first got me interested in Linux in the first place (his company runs Fedora).
I imagine that the waiter at the Thai restaurant might have the same rebuttal for you: "What you are looking for is [insert colour here] Curry with Rice. If you would take two seconds to read the Thai Cuisine journals instead of throwing your hands up and saying, 'oh noes! i have no idea what Thai foods exist,' you would have found out. There are only about a dozen Thai words that most people need to know, like 'Tom' means 'soup', and then you can ask what Thai meats and spices make up the dish. Or is it impossible here for someone to do what 63 million people do in Thailand? (That would be getting Thai food without a menu?)"
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
This is my experience - from all XP to Penguin Paradise
The first time I installed linux (I forget which dist.) was about 6 years ago (2002 or 3). I hadn't done any research and 6 hours after selecting WAY to many packages, my only computer was staring at me with - at the time - a very unfamiliar and daunting '$> _'. It had been a long time since I had used dos, and I was expecting a graphical interface. I freaked out and reinstalled windows.
2 years later, I bought a SUSE disc from Fry's with the infinite wisdom of "I paid for it, it's got to work". I installed it on my only computer, a laptop. Not quite. The dual boot operation failed and I was unable to boot XP. The Suse installation didn't like my graphics card and I had a psychedelic plaid desktop. I freaked out and reinstalled windows.
In late 2005, I got a job and became the web admin. After realizing that we had a T1 and a static address, I thought, "man, this would be perfect for a LAMP server". So, I did my research . I not only looked at howto's for installing a LAMP server, but also did every google search again with 'problem' added to see what to expect as problems. Then I did some research on hardware compatability, and bought a cheapo P3 motherboard off ebay for $25 and tested the process. It worked. I showed my boss and he was awesome enough to buy a decent server for me to manage and serve our website in-house.
Presently, I own about 3 desktops and 2 laptops and run a server at home and administrate the server at work (which now has email, ftp, svn, and samba services running as well). They all run Linux. I am no uber-admin, but that bash prompt is now a very pleasant site after using XP all day at work.
In other words: I felt your pain. That laptop I set up Suse on had an ATI graphics card, but the next time I bought a computer, I checked out it's compatibility - even though I didn't install Linux on it until a year later, I planned ahead. In fact I'm writing this on that computer. I've never had a compatibility issue on it.
The point is, I'm not going to tell you that you should figure it out and make it work or quit complaining. Just don't give up and keep it in the back of your mind. The next time you go to buy a computer, just take the time to find one that seems compatible - even if you don't plan on installing right away. That way the next time you try out linux, you'll be pleasantly surprised instead of predictably disappointed by your hardware.
Just my two cents anyways
The cool things is to have windows that bounce up and down like a good tits.
I know this is a bit late, but thank you for your response. It was possibly one of the best analogies I've seen (and it didn't even involve a car!). I can make the common user's head spin in the windows CLI (being an old DOS man, myself), and I can _navigate_ through the linux file system, but trying to _do_ anything is dicey at best. It has, to some extent, been made "worst" by windows - everything has an installer these days, so you double click the pre-packaged executable and it installs the program. I chafe a bit at it, as I often don't want all the install options, but in windows I can track down the offending parts and kill them. I know where programs are installed, and usually where the installation files end up. It's not as easy as it once was, with an .ini file in the program directory which controlled the SW. I once thought the registry was a good idea, now it's just a place to hide and obfuscate settings from the user.
And, if you will let me vent momentarily, man is about as useful as the windows help files. They give you syntax as long as you already know what commands are necessary to perform a task. Neither can help you find out what you need to do to accomplish a task.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?