Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Unfortunately, for any nontrivial problem the forums just send you in circles. Ubuntu is easy to use - if you don't do anything. As soon as you do something out of the ordinary, it's back to the commandline. For example, the version of gstreamer-ffmpeg in the repositories right now chokes on h264 files. Your average user has no idea why this happens, they just think, "oh, ubuntu is slower than windows". In reality, you can go download the newest release and compile from source, but it's not just a simple ./configure && make && make install either.
That said, it's not unusual for a book to exist. There's books for OSX and Windows too. Books save you the trouble of having to wade through the low signal-to-noise ratio that is ubuntuforums.
I have a Radeon 9200. I'd run any Ubuntu driver that's available, but there aren't any. Obviously, if I'm willing to run a Windows driver, I'm willing to put up with a proprietary driver. I use my computer for work. I don't have any games installed on either my work or home machines.
/., I got the response ATI is a bunch of amateurs and it's all their fault.
The forum response was, "lol get a better video card". I'm done with buying video cards. That's the extent of the support I got. On
I installed the proprietary drivers, the auto-loading GPL equivalent, etc. Nobody wanted to help or explain. I gave up.
The best part was how when you tested the settings, it would display as "fine" then when you'd apply the new settings, you would get a blank screen and you'd have to reboot.
Other than that, I liked Ubuntu. It detected a lot more than Win2k did, and the setup was really easy. Having said that, I'm done. Linux fails me every time I try it. (Just for the record, I've successfully set up servers using Linux before, and those have worked. I can use a command line just fine, thank you.)
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I have a Radeon 9200 and I get 3D acceleration with the reverse engineered drivers that are in X out of the box. Compiz ran fine. It even plays the proprietary games that I bought before I dumped Windows ( Warcraft III under wine, Neverwinter Nights with the native client, etc... ). I never got ATI's binary driver to work however...
On my Laptop the Intel card works just fine except for using dual screens with different aspect ratio. I'm not sure if this is a limitation of the card, driver or something else.
I had a Geforce as well earlier. 2D worked out of the box with the free driver, and 3D worked with the proprietary one. Ditched it for the ATI one due to the existence of free drivers for the radeon however ( nVidia's blob may work, but it has a tendency to break kernel updates and I prefer the free ones ).
Again, works for me doesn't mean it will for you, but from my experience it seems that if you want something working out of the box with as few proprietary blobs as possible then Intel is your best bet. Will be interesting to see what will happen with AMD and ATI.