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.

Comments

Re:A book?

[Trigun]

The first chapter is about where the name comes from.

The next three are defending their choice.

Installation comes in at chapter 18.

The rest of the chapters are self fellating, or taking potshots at Gentoo.

Don't underestimate the value of a plain unix book

[uigrad_2000]

Often, someone who is new to linux looks for all the books they can find with "linux" in the name.

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.

Re:A book?

[Digi-John]

1. Insert disc and hit "Enter" until things stop happening
2. Clean drool from keyboard
3. Post on Ubuntu forums

Ubuntu

[flynt]

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.

Re:Ubuntu

[jellomizer]

Linux Distros Still need a lot of polishing up. Open Source Software really needs a Good QA Department or group to check the software and enough authority to tell the developers this stinks do it again. The overall problem with Linux Distros is not Lack of good Ideas or Bad Coding. Just not a Good connection between the both and giving a good Big Picture Application. Person A is so focused on Making te CD Buring Software he has no care what Person B is doing for the File System Browser, which doesn't care what Person C is doing for the Windows Manager... While Person D and E are fighing over who has the best Screen Pager.... It is not that any one component is nessarly bad. But the fact that they don't work together well or feel right together that the sum of designs are lacking.

Re:Ubuntu

[mrraven]

I had the opposite experience my Dell D400 with crappy intel graphics will drive a 20 inch widescreen LCD under Ubuntu and not under XP. Too bad I can't run my crucial Adobe apps under Linux. And no Wine isn't the answer it really slows down productivity for me for example to not have a save dialog with clean access to the whole file system, not to mention instability of Adobe apps under wine.
I know it's not the fault of Linux developers that Adobe hasn't ported it's apps and that Microsoft has a closed API, but it still hurts and makes Ubuntu pretty much crippled for real work doing web design. As a web browsing and development OS it's excellent.

Re:Ubuntu

[dvice_null]

You won't always get help as some problems are just too difficult to solve from remote location, but in most cases you get help and save yourself several hours of work if you just ask. So I strongly suggest you to ask help (if you already have not) as solving your problem in here is much harder than it is in a forum dedicated to solve your problems with Ubuntu:

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=132

Why Gutsy?

[CSMatt]

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?

Re:Why Gutsy?

[webmaster404]

# Paperback: 1200 pages # Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 1 Pap/Cdr edition (December 28, 2007)

From http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Ubuntu-Linux-R/dp/013236039X considering that Ubuntu 7.10 hasn't been out until October of 2007 and when this was published in December it was only out for 2-3 months, that's still 3 months till Hardy stable comes out. This is just a late review of it.

Re:Don't underestimate the value of a plain unix b

[N1ck0]

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

Re:A book?

[wonnage]

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.

Shell coverage in the Sobell book

[dmarti]

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.)

Re:A book?

[Trigun]

The book business is very, very lucrative, and don't even get started on school books. Find a weird subject on wikipedia (use the "random" feature), then look it up on Amazon. Chances are there's a book about it, regardless of how irrelevant, simple, or plain stupid the subject is.

I just got a new hobby.

Lateral Consonant: Check
1672 Gezelle: Check
Palala River: Check

Oddly enough, this info is hard to find

[Overzeetop]

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.

Re:Oddly enough, this info is hard to find

[Anonymous Coward]

You either had GUI howtos or you were into forums with power users.

Mod parent up.

Linux/open source has come a long way from when I first started playing around with it in the '90s. Back then most of the help you ran across was of the "read the source, n00b" variety. "User friendly" distros like Mandrake (back in the day) or Ubuntu did a lot of good extending Linux to the non-elite user.

However, what I see these days is a too-narrow concentration on the novice-friendly line. As soon as you stray from "Aunt Tillie mode", you're dumped into power-user central, with arcane syntax options and a maze of twisty forum posts, all alike.

I think the next frontier in Linux/user interaction is to address this intermediate level chasm. Linux apprentices eventually become Linux journeymen, and it would be nice to have a way to seamlessly transition along the learning curve. The middle-grounders do have some resources currently, but support is threadbare compared to the "utterly clueless" and "master hacker" extremes.

Re:Oddly enough, this info is hard to find

[uniquename72]

I had the same problem as gp when I first installed Ubuntu (1st time using Linux). Synaptic IS dead easy, but a Windows user isn't going to have a mental model of using a repository, so any description of it is fairly nonsensical (usability is also somewhat poor -- you click Mark in Synaptic and nothing is actually marked.)

And apt-get? HTF would this make any sense to the average Windows user. Get what? From where? And what does 'apt' mean? It doesn't take special empathic abilities to see where people who grew up in a Windows-centric world would have serious growing pains adopting even the easiest linux distro.

I honestly don't see how "apt-get install program" is master hacker like or complex in any way. And therein lies the problem with linux adoption.

Re:Don't underestimate the value of a plain unix b

[sootman]

I'm hoping for The Complete Idiot's Missing Manual to Teach Yourself Practical Guides in 24 Hours Unleashed.

Got the book

[OldChemist]

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.

Re:gnath

[Dragonslicer]

yhf9ew89 99 9 9 yu yfy yu uy 0 0 0 hfdyu hhyYHIIH 7fy7e77w ak k k sj f jdshk k '; ' ' ' fey us u ihu UH HUH HO feuhfhhhhhh fhsofhaho fhop woppopopopo fyyhhyh Yes, emacs and vi are both available in the Ubuntu repositories.

Obsolete in a year?

[smolloy]

My main problem with all "Linux for Dummies" books is that, although they may be useful to begin with, they become almost entirely obsolete withing one or two major releases of the distro. The stuff that doesn't become obsolete is all stuff you can find in a shell scripting guide.

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.

Fight ./configure && make && make

[Zombie Ryushu]

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.

Now, ./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.

Re:A book?

[PopeRatzo]

since Ubuntu doesn't support ATI cards.

You know, I'd heard that too, but since then, I've successfully installed and run Ubuntu Studio on several systems with ATI video.

Please understand that there are some of us that don't get too exercised over running proprietary video drivers. Maybe that makes us traitors to the "cause" but we just want to get our work done.

Re:A book?

[Beardo the Bearded]

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.

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 got the response ATI is a bunch of amateurs and it's all their fault.

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.)

Re:A book?

[darkonz]

try this: Installing ATI Drivers. It is a post I made a LONG time ago, since i had the same problems (and graphics card) as you :)

Re:A book?

[BlueParrot]

I have a Radeon 9200.

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.

Re:Broadcom wireless

[dmizer]

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?

Don't you see why cmd line is hard for a newbie?

[KWTm]

I honestly don't see how "apt-get install program" is ... complex in any way.

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

My practical guide to any linux distro...

[Tarlus]

Google.