Linux Books

Although the name is scary, the ideas inside are simple to understand and implement, yet very powerful.

I especially like their way configuring terminals and backup solutions.

Make this the FreeBSD book you buy after you've got a basic understanding of the operating system. In other words, this is a very useful "sidekick" BSD book. It's full of creative and practical hacks, and the price is right. Highly recommended.

Originally reviewied for the Lower East Side Mac Unix Users Group:
http://lesmuug.org/reviews.html

OVERVIEW
--
There is a type of information that I consider to be a gem, a kind of information that doesn't really fit anywhere formally. It's too small, or perhaps too esoteric, to fit in most places.
This makes it hard to find- though these info-gems can often can be the source of wild hacking inspiration, or solve my un-solvable problems in some elegant manner.

This kind of information sometimes gets collected and recorded, Some of us at LESMUUG have really enjoyed the Mac OSX Hints book, spawned from macosxhints.com website,

http://lesmuug.org/reviews.html#Anchor-Mac-49575

BUT, after plowing repeatedly it's one UNIX chapter in Mac OS X Hints, I found myself craving more...

A Problem with BSD books:
One of the quietly great things about the BSD family of UNIX Operating Systems, is the terrific documentation. The quality and consistency of the man pages, across every BSD I've ever touched, I painfully appreciate when I use man pages on other non-BSD systems.
The FreeBSD world has the FreeBSD Handbook project, a printed and free online resource which sets the bar for every fat FreeBSD book out there. OpenBSD and NetBSD both have amazing online tutorials and documentation projects as well. Even the fledgling DragonFly BSD project has a full-blown Handbook, modeled after its FreeBSD lineage.
In the OpenDarwin and OSX world we enjoy the legacy of solid man pages and solid HowTo's online from our BSD heritage, and of course free registrations to developer.apple.com to boot.

With all that great documentation, it's really tough to find a BSD book that's really valuable, especially for experienced users, and Dru Lavigne has made a valuable and fun resource with BSD Hacks. The book is an impressive compilation of BSD gems, and as it's written for newbies and hardcore hackers alike.

Dru is a Canadian BSD Rockstar, well known in the BSD world for her articles with O'Reilly online, including the FreeBSD Basics column for ONLamp,

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/73

so who better to write a book that doesn't fit into traditional documentation?! Someone who KNOWS BSD.


ABOUT THIS BOOK
--
The Book is comprised of so many disparate yet complete ideas, It's hard to sum up exactly what's in there. From networking, to gems on system maintenance, and gems about basics that really get lost in man pages. There's information about things like keeping up-to-date, giving a tutorial-level big picture of what can be done to keep your UNIX system running smoothly, boot and Login gems, some good Security Hacks and hacks about system customization and shell tricks. There's even a tutorial for how to create YOUR OWN man pages.

For Mac/Darwin users, the majority of the book applies directly to Darwin UNIX! A section which by its nature is OS-specific, would be the hacks about various port and application-distribution systems. This includes a good how-to for DarwinPorts, right along with the usual ports systems for other platforms. The section on filesystems doesn't have anything on hfs+, but that can be excused, insomuch as many mac-centric texts do it the same injustice.

Check out the TOC online for a full description of the book contents:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bsdhks/toc.html


CONCLUSION
--
If you are a UNIX user who loves info-gems like I do, or you're a Mac UNIX user who digs macosxhints.com, (and the books published from it), I feel BSD Hacks will provide many weekends, and workdays worth of BSD gems- all written by a great technical author. This book now sits next to my printed FreeBSD Handbook, and since much of these gems are fairly timeless, I believe it will stay with me for a long time to come.

Whether you are a beginner or an advanced user, you will find this book extremely practical. Dru's solutions make building a BSD server from start to finish a snap. Buy this book as a supplement at the very least. 5 stars!

I just thought this book is not really that good. Most were not even hacks, but just basic usage. The only hacks book I really liked was by Rob - Linux Server Hacks. I would really recommend that one, even if you use bsd as it has true hacks with tar/ssh/etc. Try the Absolute OpenBSD book too. That is quite good and has a lot of info.

This book gave a solid grounding in what is available and a broad idea of how to use each of the options, such as IPSec with Openswan; PPTP with PopTop, using SSH+PPP, and other more proprietary VPN methods.

Some of the info is a bit dated; For example, many Linux kernels these days come standard with support for IPSec and PPTP as modules. I definitely recommend after reading this book and deciding on a VPN strategy, that you find quality web sites with more up-to-date information about how to configure your selected VPN technology on your selected Linux distribution. I chose Debian/GNU Linux myself. With this book and some updated information added to that foundation, I feel like I have a good start.

I don't know what is hapening with this people...
I buy this book based in that reviews (all 5 stars) and when I open the book I am totaly disapointed. About the book: The examples is not complete and the text is confused. I do not recomend.

Building Linux VPNs is the first book I've bought in the last three years that has the right balance between theory and practice. The first two chapters let you know everything you need to know about VPNs and network topologies and 'gotcha's (where should the DNS server go? How should I route?)

They get all this out of the way quickly. Many books that are dedicated to VPNs only talk about this part of the equation, and do so for hundreds of pages. Oleg and Brian get it all down so you can digest it in a sitting and have everything you need to know.

The remaining chapters cover specific VPN protocols. I needed to support PPTP for the majority of my windows clients, and IPSec for my remote offices and more recent laptops that suppported it. I literally built these VPNs by reading and copying in text (yes, I could have got the code off the web page, but nothing is better than doing it yourself) as I went along. Not a single problem, it was smoother than smooth.

I can't recommend this book enough. If you want a VPN on Linux (or other Unix for that matter) then this is the book for you.

I've been struggling with PPTP and FreeS/WAN for years now and the hardest task I now have to deal with is teaching others the intricate nature of VPN's, tunneling, masq'ing connections and linking private LANs together. This book has been an excellent resource to intruct others on how to administer our tangle of connections and taught me a few nifty tricks in the process.

If you need to know, really need to know VPN internals and how to make them work, Oleg Kolesnikov has written a masterpiece.

Our office has made a concerted decision to gradually move into Linux. And this is the best book not only for newbies to jump start on the learning curve, but also for those old-hands to refresh their knowledge.

One of the more significant characteristics of this excellent book is that the author wrote it like a diary so that you can install and run the next generation OS with little or no effort, but he also very skillfully interposed the plain English writing with important advanced concepts. So skillful that you may be fooled into believing yourself to have become an overnight Linux expert! But seriously, this book can at least make you walk and talk like a Linux geek in a hurry.

Linux is rapidly evolving. Kernel 2.4 and KDE 2.0 are coming out soon. Both will cause very significant changes in the Linux environment. Everything you have learned now probably will have to be updated in the very near future. Thus, there is no need to get into those thick and supposedly advanced Linux books at the present time. This for dummies book is just right for everyone, including, of course, you and me.

Our office has made a concerted decision to gradually move into Linux. And this is the best book not only for newbies to jump start on the learning curve, but also for those old-hands to refresh their knowledge.

One of the more significant characteristics of this excellent book is that the author wrote it like a diary so that you can install and run the next generation OS with little or no effort, but he also very skillfully interposed the plain English writing with important advanced concepts. So skillful that you may be fooled into believing yourself to have become an overnight Linux expert! But seriously, this book can at least make you walk and talk like a Linux geek in a hurry.

Linux is rapidly evolving. Kernel 2.4 and KDE 2.0 are coming out soon. Both will cause very significant changes in the Linux environment. Everything you have learned now probably will have to be updated in the very near future. Thus, there is no need to get into those thick and supposedly advanced Linux books at the present time. This for dummies book is just right for everyone, including, of course, you and me.

Once installation is complete, configuring KDE is not a difficult task. The problem for most newbies is installation. I believe that the book fails in this regard. For example, the description for setting up the modem (for internet connection) is convered in a few pages. Most probably people cannot connect to the internet since many ISPs won't accept the default script.

For those million plus people who have Corel Linux and are feeling a little like it's a foreign land: *buy this book*!

Steve brings the Linux world a little closer with his plain English translations. Another significant point is Steve's relating Linux concepts to the related or similar windows equivilent!

All this technical information presented in a clear and understandable way, interspersed with Steve's 'unique' brand of humour makes this a must-have for the Corel Linux owner!

I've been using Corel Linux for some time now, and seriously would like to remove Windows once and for all from my computer and go all Linux. However, being as I am not the only person to use my computer I of course have to consider the needs of my parents. With my mother in mind, a lady who has never quite learned to master even Windows, I got myself a copy of this fabulous book. Funny thing though, my mother hardly got to read it at first, because to my great surprise, I found it to be very informative myself. It's the little things that count. I've learned some of intricacies involved with using KDE that have really saved me time and increased my productivity. While very similar, there are subtle diffrences in the ways you use KDE, verses Windows. This book pays great attention to those details, yet still manages to be brief. Believe me, this is no huge tomb. While this is no mean feat, what is even better is the author manages to present this info in a manor which is not mind numbingly boring. But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Thanks to this book, my mom for the first time truly feels comfortable using a Window based GUI. In fact, she won't touch anything but Linux now, unless I can find her a Steve Harris book for Windows!

For instance, I would have understood the System Logs part just fine if it said it logs in the format ".", and listed the different origin and importance options.

After scanning the shelves of five bookstores, this was the ONLY book that answered my questions on Samba, NFS, and startup daemons enough to actually get me going. It's terse, but the information is all there. If the defaults are good enough, don't bother. If you want Linux running the way YOU want it, this is a great starting point.

This is the first Linux book that starts answering the right questions from page one. I often have to get deep into a technical book before I follow how the author thinks. Somehow I was immediately at ease with layout. There is also enough technical theory to fill in my limited knowledge of exactly how Linux works.

I can recommend this book to all intermediate to advanced users. Especially those who would like to set-up a Linux network.

Although a lot is covered in detail, it sometimes lacks just that little extra piece of info (yes, that part where you have to jump into the RFC's). But IMHO Jochen Hein wrote an excellent admin book, very clear and complete. Nice job! Recommended for starting linux-admins (those who already know how to install and repartition ;-)).

Hein covers alot. Unfortunately, there's very little detail. If you want to get a general taste for Linux, it's probably OK, but if you have jumped in and really need information, there's no depth here. I was (am?) a Linux neophyte when I installed RH5.2 and bought several books. Although I keep looking in Hein's book, I haven't found it useful even once. Not once. I recommend Welsh and Kaufman's Running Linux (O'Reilly) and HIGHLY recommend Butzen and Hilton's The Linux Network.

This is a fantastic book for me, as a beginner in Xandros Linux. It has become a great reference for me. I am still learning alot, yet this book helped me gain the knowledge needed to get a head start.

I have installed Xandros version 4 and at the present time Xandros doesn't recognize my Canon printer nor my external DVD-rw drive. I haven't tried my scanner, yet.

I'm looking for a book that will help me get up and running and I don't think this is the book for me.

If I can't get my peripherals running I'm going to have to change OS.

Even though I decided to use Vista instead, this Linux made easy came with a Open Source version of Linux on CD. I think that is Very Considerate it gives one a chance to try it, in fact at some point I might just do a dual boot with Xandros 4 Professional to open up numerous avenues of communications.
Real Good Deal in a Digital Processing Computer Book.

I'm buying Xandros and this is a good start in learning the system basics. The author explains the system simple enough for a Mac user to understand. I enjoyed it very much.

I agree with the other reviewers' positive comments about this book, and would like to point out that the material carries over well to Xandros 4 (with some minor exceptions). I did not order the book because of the Open Circulation Edition (OCE) CD-ROM but because I had purchased -- and installed -- Xandros version 4 (Home Edition - Premium). I first checked out a copy of "Linux Made Easy" from the local public library, and was pleasantly surprised that almost all of the instructions apply in Xandros 4 as well. So I ordered a personal copy from Amazon.

Although my boxed set of Xandros 4 includes an approx. 400-page, bound User Guide (admittedly a nice bonus), its writing style is terse and a bit dry. Grant's book is livelier and includes tips and tricks not found in the official User Guide. I especially like that he has hands-on, step-by-step mini-projects in almost every chapter. He holds your hand some without being condescending.

As an example of a minor difference, the first project in Chapter 10 involves scanning a photo using the scanning application known as Kooka. My version of Xandros did not have Kooka pre-installed, so I had to sidetrack and download the program from Xandros Networks (XN) -- a painless operation. Once I had Kooka installed, the remainder of the project worked exactly as he describes ...

I still have much to learn about Xandros but as I explore this operating system and get my feet wet with Linux, I am grateful to have "Linux Made Easy" as a resource. I think it has already saved me enough time to pay for itself.

My background is that I'm a former UNIX admin and now just have a small home (windows) network with a Linux server. I just wanted to set up a simple Samba configuration to share files. I looked in some of the all-purpose Linux books and they mainly devoted 4-5 pages tops to Samba, which I found to be insufficient, even for my simple needs.

This book on the other hand is kind of overkill (for me). It's 600 pages devoted to nothing but Samba, and things related to samba. It goes through all kinds of networking topics, describing the history of all the different networking layers, what they do, and so forth.

The strength of the book is that it takes you through windows and Linux networking in great detail, and if you read it cover to cover I'm sure you'll really know your stuff. The examples in the book are sufficient, but not great. Rest assured that whatever you need to know about Samba you'll find in this book (eventually).

The weakness of this book is that it's not organized in such a way that it will serve as a very good reference, and it's extremely verbose.

Wait for the next book or else go to their website and get the manual.

Wait for the next book or else go to their website and get the manual.

This is by far the best book I have read covering Samba. The beauty of this book is that it covers the topic from a Linux Admin's point of view, but explains the Windows networking and client setup -- including how to do logon scripts, etc. It also explains how to set up a Domain Server using Samba. I was dissapointed though is that it hasn't yet been updated to the current version of Samba 2.2. I was really hoping for up-to-date information on Domain Configurations -- however, the information was complete and I have found the book to be very helpful.

There was only one question in the advanced setup that I could think of that this book didn't answer. That was how to deal with a multi-domain set-up and the impact that has on browsing.

I was very pleased that this book even had a section on the protocols and how to integrate or block these messages for use over a VPN or how to keep the bad-guys out with firewaling.

Basically, very complete and explains every thing clearly. I would just appreciate a second edition (even a subscription to this book's editions).

Ok, firstly, I am *not* a fan of Microsoft File Sharing (SMB/Samba) as it is usually set up poorly, and quite insecurely. That said...

There are times where one has no choice but to use Windows Networking, and truth-be-told, the Samba implementation of the SMB protocol (Windows Networking) is (in my opinion) faster, less buggy, and more secure than the native Windows version.

Now, as with any network file sharing scheme, the System Admin *must* know how to properly configure & secure the system. That is where this wonderful book comes in.

Within these 600+ pages, Mr. Smith shows he understands his topic like the back of his hand, deftly helping newbie and experienced SA alike with both the basic configurations of file & print sharing, as well as esoterica of the SMB protocol suite.

Another feature about this book that I find exemplary is that the author speaks to *Nix admins about Windows file sharing like *Nix admins, not Windows admins trying to figure out how to share a file with a Unix user. This is very important to keep the number of pages about how to use "cat" "less" "vi" or other common tools to a minimum...

Overall, this is one of the best Samba books I have found, and highly recommend it to anyone deploying Windows file sharing in a mixed environment.

This book will give the finest developers a perfect training session in open source development, the community, gtk+, and of course, gaim. As for young developers, it introduces your into the community as we know it, and all the possibilities of 'how to get started'. Sean encourages you throughout the book, especially in the beginning, to get involved, how to ask questions, be a contributor and be someone who is wanted in a community.

The book is very rich and covers so many aspects, along with the coverage it also gives you helpful links for other projects you may want to work on, such as developing in gtk+ or helping the jabber community. It is not a 'Help us work on the project!' it is also a FANTASTIC introduction into Open Source and how it operates,
what drives people, what makes it run, what is at its core.

It covers every aspect of Gaim, along with helpful examples about how to program and develop in Gaim. It cuts out all of the crap of normal development books, and dives straight into 'getting started with your plugin'. It is very enthusiastic, and you can tell the passion of these developers, and Sean.

Along with the code, Sean also shares his experience with you. He shares his ideas and experience with Open Source, and the community as a whole. He gives you PRICELESS information on how to act in an Open Source community to get respect from others.

His analogies and breaking-down of the Community is incredible, linking to documentation and howto's all over the book, it is simply incredible.

For any developer, young or old, experienced or just written a hello world application, this book needs to be on your bookshelf.

-bk

I was quite pleasantly surprised by the the combination of depth and readability. Quite often a book with this level of coverage and depth will be fairly inaccessible, and simultaineously too long.

Mr. Egan has managed to provide a significant access to the content while doing it a manner close to a good story.

This is an extremely well written book and the author does a great job covering a number of areas including the GTK, TCP/IP and socket programming. It also provides great examples for the often convoluted steps on how to actually get access to the source code as well as to the usual compile/edit/debug tools available within the open-source community and get everything installed properly.

There's plenty of GAIM-specific information to be found and one should be able to build plugins with little or no difficulty. There's also a basic overview of the OOP approach to development.

for anyone who digs gaim and wants to contribute, or is just interested in how this whole open-source gig works.

I bought this book to get insight into gaim and opensource in general. Mission acomplished. The author has done a terrific job of starting from basics and build the blocks with short and to the point examples.

more real life examples and useful lessons needed for this, not the type of book I would recommend for a structured / class type learning environment. Over priced for the value received. Anyone want to buy a used door stop?

This is a good book to get started with using Open Office. Most of the things I do involve Spreadsheets and some word processing stuff. I recently decided to try and use Open Office exclusively and so far (about 2 months) have had very little trouble doing this. The book has been a help and lead me to try some things that I hadn't even thought of before. I would recommend this book for others who are thinking about trying Open Office.

Before I received this book I was using OO writer and calc in my business and although pleased with it, I'd inevitably wind up fighting with certain automatic settings like numbering or page styles or paragraph formatting and rather than relying on OO's formating capabilities I'd muddled through and hand forced the formatting the way I thought it should come out.

Solveig Haugland's book changed all that. The clear explanations of what was going on beneath the WYSIWYG interface and how they related to the configuration settings, coupled with the book's suggestions on defaults, made me far more productive with OO than I'd been before.

'Practicality' describes this book best. It is full of useful tips for situations that arise in 'real work.' It is not an academic or theoretical treatise, nor is it a true 'manual' in the sense of feeling the need to describe every option in every drop-down box.

The index is extremely well-done; it is easy to find the solution to a given working problem quickly and efficiently. For instance, I was working on an ebook that required numerous changes in page numbering throughout the book. This would have taken an hour or more on my own; with the Guidebook, I reached 'misson accomplished' status in about ten minutes.

To set the level here, I am no OpenOffice/StarOffice beginner; I have used the products back to the day before Sun bought out StarOffice and when the print manuals were completely, and only, in German. Yet, in just the first five pages of the Guide, I found two new tips, and it just got better after that. The 'demystification' of the use of styles is alone worth more than the price of the book.

The Guide is best for someone with some experience with office suites; complete beginners need to start with a tutorial book first. But if you have any level of knowledge, from rudimentary on up through expert, and want a large number of practical tips on how to really work effectively with OpenOffice, get this book at once.

This book fulfils a huge need we had! For all sorts of reasons we ended up with two PCs with OpenOffice.org on them, one running windows XP and one running Ubuntu. So this book is teaching us all the tips and tricks we need to know to get the best out of this suite in two totally different environments.

It used to be that if you bought a new PC it came with useful software such as word processing and spreadsheet programs. Lately, the pernicious practice has arisen of bundling "trial versions" of Microsoft Office that expire in a few days if you don't pay to buy them. I would certainly prefer the old way, where you may not get the most powerful word processor around, but at least you get one you can USE without it suddenly going dead if you don't pay for it. I wouldn't even want to TRY it, and risk the possibility that I'd get used to the software. So when I recently bought a new notebook PC and found this stupid trial version, I quickly uninstalled it and went to get hold of word processing and spreadsheet software so I had the functionality on my machine.

To the rescue: [...], a software package that includes nearly all the functionality of Microsoft Office (certainly all the functionality that I needed!) and even a few things that Office doesn't do (like creating PDF files directly without a separate program like Adobe Acrobat!) I downloaded the software, and immediately had a package of Office-like software free.

The only problem was that it is not well documented. Searching through a help file when you're trying to figure out how to do something is NOT fun to me. So I wanted a book, at least on the word processor, Writer. (The spreadsheet program, Calc, is pretty intuitive to me, but then I'm not trying to do things as fancy with it as I want to do in Writer!) And this book seemed the one to go with.

It has proved useful to me; I'm not sorry I bought it. But it has at least two shortcomings: (1) It describes an old version of Writer, version 1.1 while 2.4 is the current version, and (2) it has a woefully inadequate index. The first is not the author's fault; I'm sure she wrote about the version that was current when she wrote the book, but it does mean that sometimes it describes some feature that does not operate as she describes it, and I'm left trying to figure out how to do what I want to. But the second certainly IS her fault; I simply cannot expect to find what I'm looking for in the index and I'm usually forced to go trying to guess what chapter is likely to have what I want, then flipping through the chapter to find out if she discusses the topic I want to look up.

On the plus side, only two days after getting the book, I've succeeded in doing several things I never could figure out how to do before I had the book, so it has clearly proved useful to me.

Even though the book emphasizes a version of OOo before the current one, this book will get you proficient on the basics of Writer enough to get you off and running. The majority of the basic tasks you will do with a word processor are covered. I would recommend some previous experience with word processors and GUIs in general, but its not completely necessary. For someone switching over from Word to Open Office Writer, this book would more than meet your needs.

Writer is very easy to learn, especially if you have already been using some other word formatting package. A lot of care went into the design of Writer. So that you don't have to be a technical person in order to quickly learn it.

Which largely obviates the need for this book. Most of the material should be obvious to readers. Plus, the book's CD is superfluous, so long as you have Internet access. If you need a version of Writer to install on your computer, try going to openoffice.org and getting the latest version.

Jean Hollis did a good job of explaining how to do certain advanced things like styles and creating tables of contents.
I was really floundering until I got hold of this book.
I had always used Word but have not used it since.
I am a software developer and we are writing documentation for our software.
OpenOffice has been a good tool to have and this book was the key to understanding some really handy things.
It also covers some more mundane things like optimizations.

I have used OpenOffice.org since before it was called OpenOffice.org and I was surprised at how much I learned when I read this book. Most of the sections stand alone, which means that you can read the sections that interest you at the moment.

This book is very readable and accessible to beginners, and it contains content that some advanced users do not know. If you want to learn how to use styles, for example, this book is amazing. I also learned how to use fields to count my figures and other items. I consider this book a must have.

I read half of the book, but I realized that it is NOT really a practical guide as he titled, rather boring textbook. He spent a lot of space as describing the topics with many tables, and it made me boring to read this book continuously. What is a practical guide? It might be different from a reader to a reader, but what I am thinking is that he should have provided more practical examples instead of providing tables of describing menus or options. We can know them by reading manuals or man command.
If you are a beginner and are looking for a practical book, then you need to be careful to choose this book.

For the past several years, I have been using Mark Sobell's previous Linux book for an introductory UNIX class I teach, but it was getting out of date. So I'm very excited to have this new edition. But he has done more than just update it, he has added several new chapters and somewhat reorganized it.

The first section, GNU/Linux Basics, is a perfect introduction to UNIX, everything you need to begin using it. Mark doesn't waste a lot of time getting started, but after a useful historical chapter to "set the stage" and give some idea why one would want UNIX rather than alternatives, he jumps right in with logging in, changing passwords, and getting documentation. Installation is left to way later (and mostly referring to web documentation, which will stay more up-to-date.) Pico is used to be able to do simple editing, without taking a lot of time learning vi(m) or emacs too soon (but he has references to the chapters on both those editors, if the reader already knows them.) Then the book covers many basic commands (I'd probably leave out gzip and tar this early, as well as write, talk, and mesg. I'd also choose one of who, finger, or w, so as to concentrate on more critical commands.) He introduces pipes very early, which I think is necessary (many books don't introduce them until a late chapter on shells). I'd also introduce redirection before he does, but it doesn't mean much without understanding files and the filesystem, which he covers next. These first 5 chapters really cover all one needs to get started.

Each chapter also has a summary and some exercises, both basic and more advanced. The answers are (or will be) on Mark's web site. He includes sidebars with tips, warnings, security suggestions, and other things that would be missed if they were buried in the main text (or, sometimes, should be skipped.) He's good at defining terms, and there is a glossary in the back.

The next chapters cover various topics, and cover them well. In my UNIX II class, I cover the Bash shell, how it works and how to write scripts, both covered in separate chapters here. The book also has a good chapter on Networking and the Internet, and a very complete chapter on System Administration (almost 200 pages!) Rather than taking up time with vi or emacs in class, I let my students choose which they want and read the appropriate chapter themselves. There are also three chapters, on X Windows, GNOME, and KDE which seem to be a complete coverage of three very useful items not usually covered in UNIX books, and which I don't like to cover directly in my class (not enough time), but think students should have access to.

The final section of the book is a command reference manual in itself, with lots of examples. Due to the size of this book, I would have preferred it to be published separately, but this way allows Mark refer to details later instead of taking up space in the main text.

In summary, I really like his previous "Practical Guide to Linux", and think this new version is even better. I wish it could be smaller (carrying this back and forth to classes will be backbreaking), but it is nice to have so much packed into a single book. Real value for the money!

For my purposes, as a tech writer and intermediate-level user of Linux, this book has been very helpful. Certainly, some of the topics have been covered in other books I've purchased, and other books go more deeply into some of the topics. But overall, this has been the best of the bunch. The same goes for his Solaris book. I was especially pleased that he maintains a web site with answers to some of the exercises, posts errata, and actually answers users' questions via email!!

AND--Marc Sobell writes grammatically correct English, which is a virtue not found in many computer books.

Thank you (to the author) very much because of your new book "Practical Guide To Red Hat Linux 8", my path of migrating from Windows to GNU/Linux (as you (the author) mentioned, GNU/Linux instead of Linux) has become a far less bumpy ride. I've bought two copies of the book, one left in office and another at home (the big tome is not easy to carry around and I'm afraid it will fall apart).

Having just worked through a class that used another book as text, and having "picked through" Sobell's chapters to supplement that material, I'm now going through chapter by chapter. I can only say that I'm enjoying Linux for the first time. Finally, a text that's well written (as well as having other virtues); an author who responds to questions sent via email.

There's no one-size-fits-all in the textbook world (this from a former academic), but I give Sobell high praise from the student's point of view. There are other places to learn more advanced techniques and Perl programming.