Linux Books

I felt this book was more pro-Macintosh that pro-non-MS-choice.

The book gives good tribute to Microsoft on the things that it has helped to establish and the main point on the book seems to be on the ways Microsoft it self has stagnated. In it self the book is good narrative on the way the computer industry made it's image of being the "next big thing" in the 90's and ending up as the "stale box used to access the internet" of the new millennium.

Some how the book just don't carry the title in it's contents

Tony Bove's JUST SAY NO TO MICROSOFT: HOW TO DITCH MICROSOFT AND WHY IT'S NOT AS HARD AS YOU THINK is for any who have doubts about Microsoft's products and patches. Introductory chapters cover all its flaws and move on to explain how one's PC can be liberated from Microsoft products entirely. Chapters provide background history of Microsoft, detail its practices which have discouraged innovation and competition, and explains how competing operating systems work and how users can obtain and use these systems. Finally: a clear history and explanation of Microsoft's pitfalls and how to overcome them - by switching to an alternative that works.

Contrary to what it may seem, there *are* viable alternatives to Microsoft. Tony Bove strongly suggests you adopt them in his book Just Say No To Microsoft - How To Ditch Microsoft And Why It's Not As Hard As You Think.

Contents:
Part 1 - You Say You Want A Revolution: Playing Monopoly Is No Longer Fun; All You Need Is A Mac; Linux - Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
Part 2 - Rehab For Your Microsoft Addiction: Slay the Word and You'll Be Free; De-Microsoft Your Office; Media Lib - Microsoft-Free Music and Video
Part 3 - The Whole Network Is Watching: The Message Is The Medium for Infections; This LAN Is Your LAN; Browsers and Your Own Private Identity
Part 4 - Getting On With Your Computer Life: Twelve Steps to Freedom from Microsoft; Where Do You Want to Go Tomorrow?; The Truth Is Out There; Citations; Index

If you're a Mac fan or a Linux fan, you'll most likely agree with everything Bove says. He is rabidly anti-Microsoft, and has little to say that's good about the company. Microsoft's cash cow software, the Windows operating system and Office, is drawn and quartered as being overpriced and buggy. The alternatives are to use either Mac's OS X or a Linux desktop distribution. As far as Office, he makes the strong case that the free OpenOffice.org suite will allow the vast majority of the users to do 100% of everything they're used to doing, with virtually no learning curve. Browsers? Protect your computer, dump IE, and go with Firefox. The net effect of all these suggestions is to have an environment that costs far less than comparable Microsoft offerings, as well as having a more secure computing experience.

By no means is the author even-handed in his comparisons. The writing is strongly opinionated, but that's what makes it fun to read (in my less strident opinion). Some of his statements caused me to mentally step back and wonder why I continue to live with some of the limitations that Microsoft has put on my computing experience. While I won't be removing all vestiges of Microsoft from my computing environment, I will be more willing to question the common wisdom going forward...

I agree with the other reviewers who spoke of errors. The book twice states that Linux was invented by a Norwegian student, presumably mixing up the separate countries of Norway and Finland. It is generally known that Linux Torvalds was in Helsinki, which is in... Finland.
The writer is a Mac advocate, and there is nothing wrong with that; though maybe this could have been made clearer in the publicity.

Load up a computer today with a basic set of applications software, and there will be a de facto Microsoft tax on that computer. Add roughly $100- for the Windows XP operating systems and $350- for Microsoft office, and you have a significant initial financial outlay. If one would use an open source operating system and set of office applications, the cost savings would be enormous. That is why the option of open source is so financially compelling to the both the consumer and organizations have thousands of computers. And open source is correspondingly such a threat to companies such as Microsoft. The idea of saving money and never having to worry about a blue screen of death is the proverbial win/win scenario.

With that, Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think would seemingly be a most valuable book in helping consumers and corporations rid themselves of the Microsoft tax. Unfortunately, the book spends far too much time slurring Microsoft and Bill Gates.

The books main charges are that Microsoft has been far too predatory and that Bill Gates is not the technical genius that he is made out to be. Microsoft's questionable business tactics are not without ethical lapses, but it must noted that Microsoft is simply one in a long line of companies that have used their size and deep pockets to quash the competition. Microsoft is not alone and joins companies such as American Airlines, Ford and General Motors, Wal-Mart and more that have engaged in practices that while good for their stockholders, have not been good for the competition.

Bove is correct that Microsoft's practices over the years have discouraged innovation and stunted competition. But then again, that is true of Ford, GM and other such companies. The innovations of Ford and GM for example have been mostly superficial, without any significant improvement into crucial issues such as gas mileage and more.

Two of the companies that Microsoft has been accused of destroying are Novell and WordPerfect. Yet much of the blame for the demise of these two companies goes to their management that did not know how to properly market their products nor deal with a competitor such as Microsoft. This is not meant to imply that Microsoft is blameless; rather that Novell and WordPerfect had plenty of opportunities to fend off Microsoft, yet did not rise to the challenge.

Aside from the pervasive anti-Microsoft tone and style and the book, Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think provides a good starting point for those that are looking for a cheaper and safer alternative to Microsoft products.

Chapter 1 start with an overview of the history of Microsoft and how it grew to be the largest software company in the world. In chapter 2, All You Need is a Mac; Bove feels that the quickest route to Microsoft freedom is by purchasing a Macintosh. While a Mac is not necessarily cheaper than a Wintel system, the Mac OS X is considerably more resilient against attacks. In addition, the concern of malware such as viruses and spyware are much less of an issue on a Mac.

Chapter 3 deals with what worries Microsoft the most - Linux. Bove notes that large companies that deal with thousands of end-user desktops are discovering the advantage of migrating to Linux in a big way.

Chapters 4 and 5 deal with Microsoft Word and Excel. Word documents have become the de facto standard for document exchange and are what has locked many people into staying with Microsoft Word. Excel has a similar power in being the de facto spreadsheet. Most people think that the only alternative to Word is WordPerfect and simply don't know about OpenOffice Writer and Calc or other open source alternatives. The two chapters show how it is possible to effectively collaborate on documents without having to use Word.

While the book does not get into every open source alternative to a Microsoft product, Bove's web site has a comprehensive list of open source alternatives to Windows products at [...]

Chapter 4 concludes with a look at the technical and practical problems with PowerPoint. Bove notes that the corrupting power of PowerPoint is so strong that otherwise normally articulate speakers turn into zombies mumbling the bullet points that appear on the slides behind them. It is not clear though how Impress, the open source alternative to PowerPoint is necessarily better from a presentation perspective.

The next few chapters deal with Outlook, the application that has launched countless viruses and worms, and also detail other network-based problems with Microsoft protocols and applications. Issues such as the never enduing cycle of Microsoft patches are also discussed.

Chapter 10 provides a 10 step program (fashioned after the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step program) to free the reader from their Microsoft addition. While the steps are brief and effective, it would have been better had there been more technical details on how to migrate out of a Microsoft environment. For the person with thousands of documents and files in various Microsoft formats, it is not as effortless as to simply copy your old files onto a USB drive and move it to the new open source based host.

The book contains four parts, and there are four cartoons at the begging of each part that Bove wrote. The cartoons are quite funny in their own right and Bove should also consider a career as a cartoonist.

Ned Ludd said that the machine was the enemy, and Tony Bove feels the same way about Microsoft. For evidence, check out his campaign to stop the spread of Word documents at his web page.

The only negative to the book is that there are far too many anti-negative stories of Microsoft's predatory practices. A few stories would be adequate, but there is no point in belaboring the issue in a book that is meant to be more technical and practical, as opposed to political.

For many people who don't know better, they expect that a blue screen of death and monthly patching is part of a standard computing environment. Just Say No to Microsoft: How to Ditch Microsoft and Why It's Not as Hard as You Think is an interesting read that will open the eyes of those users to a cheaper, more secure and robust open source solution.

At fewer than 300 pages, the initial size of the Linux Security Cookbook may seem to be meager to cover such a broad subject. But what the book lacks in size, it makes up in content.

While many security books may waste the reader's time by spending hundreds of pages on introductory subjects; chapter 1 of the Linux Security Cookbook goes straight into using and configuring Tripwire.

The book then goes into fundamental topics such as firewalling with iptables/ipchains, authentication, access control, file control, email security and more.

If you are interested in Linux security, this is a well-written and well-organized book, filled with valuable and timely information.

I read this book from cover to cover and consider it a great effort by the authors to cover many security issues related to not just Linux, but most *nix operating systems. Here's a chapter by chapter review of what I've observed in the book:

Chapter 1 - System Snapshots with Tripwire

I liked the discussion of Tripwire and its configuration options. The sections on "Ultra-Paranoid Integrity Checking" were great! A decent introduction to Tripwire and some of its features.

Chapter 2 - Firewalls with iptables and ipchains

The difference between "Drop versus Reject" targets was good. So many books have info on iptables, but none discusses these issues. Also the point made about dropping ICMP messages was good. Quick to learn and implement recipes presented in this chapter.

Chapter 3 - Restricting Access by Remote Users

Recipe 3.7 was very neat. Allowing users to access a service only by port-forwarding over ssh allows the administrator to restrict access by user names. A smart way of imposing restrictions!
Also, in recipe 3.9, I liked the authors' approach to finding if xinetd is compiled with libwrap support.

All recipes regarding tweaking xinetd were good. It isn't always possible to look at all the configurable options with xinetd, and the authors did a good job in mentioning a few useful options.

Chapter 4 - Authentication Techniques and Infrastructures

Quick tips with PAM, openssl and kerberos. I couldnt get some of the recipes to work on my machine, but got most openssl stuff to work.

Chapter 5 - Authorization Controls

I liked this chapter the best. The discussion on sudo was enlightening, and I was able to effectively tweak most recipes to my needs. The man page would never have provided me with such a good explanation. Thanks to the authors for this chapter.

Chapter 6 - Protecting Outgoing Network Connections

Two of these authors had written the snail book and I expected nothing less than a very useful recipe session on SSH. The most useful recipe here was setting up public key authentication between an openssh client and an ssh.com server and vice-versa. I had always wanted to do this but didnt have a clue until I read these recipes. All recipes have strong technical content and are well written. The recipe on running cron jobs with ssh was
amazing. The authors teach how to be creative, rather than merely
explaining facts and methodologies.

Chapter 7 - Protecting Files

I liked all recipes on GnuPG especially neat hacks like maintaining encrypted files with vim, encrypting backups etc..

Chapter 8 - Protecting Email

I tried out a few recipes and got them to work with my configuration. Pretty impressive stuff! The difference between SSL and STARTTLS daemons was very well explained. I havent seen a consolidated discussion on this topic thus far and was really happy to see things explained clearly in just one sidebar. I couldn't get the imap/ssl recipe working for my settings, inspite of spending quite some time. Perhaps a few screen-shots
made available via the website would've been of greatest help..

Chapter 9 - Testing and Monitoring

Recipes on Cracklib, using find for setuid/setgid files and the discussion on the 'find' command are very well written. Though this stuff has been mentioned in most security books/magazines, a consolidated treatment here is nice to note. nmap truly deserved the long section and I was able to learn a few facts I didnt know about nmap until now. The recipe on examining local network activities covered the best tools in business -
netstat, lsof and rpcinfo. Sniffing network traffic, using tcpdump, ethereal and dsniff provide a good refresher and ready-to-use recipes.

Overall, Linux Security Cookbook is a very useful book for quick
reference. It covers a wide range of security topics and issues related to not just Linux but most Unices. The recipes provided here are well written and ready to use. I have found many tips related to sudo, SSH, xinetd, encryption and network security extremely useful. Full credit to the authors for bringing out such a comprehensive book on Linux Security.

I've been reading "Linux Security Cookbook". I fully understand the goal of this book is to provide lots of little bits of wisdom, not a full fledged security book. I think that's pretty cool. However I'm finding that a lot of the recipies, if you will, are either not well explained, the equivalent of reading a real cookbook witohut knowing what it means ot 'fold the blueberries into the batter'. They could easily have spent more time explaining things so we didn't need to go read/re-reading the man pages just to understand the book.

The Linux Security Cookbook is a good hands-on guide to the major aspects of securing your Linux box. This book offers many quick reference guides to pieces of software for securing or testing your system and goes through many different means of fortifying your box including:
-controlling system access with firewalls
-monitoring your network
-using SSH and SSL
-intrusion detection systems
-authentication and cryptographic keys
-encrypting files and email messages
-system security probing

The recipes in this book allows administrators to learn quick and easy ways to secure their systems including over 150 ready-to-use scripts and configuration files without having to look up or research specific syntax.

This book is definitely a quick hands-on guide to securing and monitoring your system and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good source of guides and ready-to-use scripts and configurations.

A very cool collection of recipes for common, daily, security of Linux
systems. Some of the other reviewers missed the point...this book
doesn't try to be the ultimate self-contained security book, it's a
collection of one-off recipes...it even says so on page 1. Look at
O'Reilly's other cookbooks (the awesome Perl Cookbook, Javascript
Cookbook, etc)--they aren't meant to be comprehensive or teach you
everything about the subject, they assume you know the basics already
and show you specific solutions to specific problems. This cookbook
does the same thing with Linux security, and I think it succeeds...it
sure helped me with my firewall and with gpg encryption. This
shouldn't be the only security book you own but it's great for what it
is.

This book is exellent for those who want to certify.
One big fat NOTE:
Do not use the training plan for each exam , that's in the book.
Go to www.lpi.org for detailed requirements. Also read online (HOW-TO's) while preparing. Although the book is really good for preparation, things have changed in the meanwhile..

A little dry from time to time but its a Linux Cert book, what do you expect?
A good read, general knowledge any competent Linux sysadmin should have handy, or at least nearby.
LPIC is vendor neutral, and the book reflects it having you set up Debian and Red Hat.
MCSE grads seeking credibility can run VMWare on their Windows boxes to get through the labs and obtain a real cert.

If you are buying this book to study for the exam, look carefully at the objectives on the lpi website rather than following the plan presented in this book. I studied the material in the sections that were presented for exam 101, but they have changed. It is an excellent resource, but dated.

This book is useful for reviewing and/or referencing but do not believe this book will get you past exam 101.
First, it does not stress rpm package installation; commands and options/switches. This book puts the latter with exam 102; WRONG!
Second, it does not provide all the detailed information required to pass, such as scenarios and X installation.
Finally, I suggest studying from the lpic website's detailed objective list.
Good luck everyone....Slackware rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Having gone thru the first few chapters, I get the feeling that the book is very focussed on the exams it tries to get you thru, and is pretty to-the-point in arrangement of topics.

Also the study guides and sample questions make it helpful in getting a grip on what the exam would feel like, for someone giving the LPI exams the first time (and hopefully the last time too).

Unlike Rute's Linux user tutorial which also caters to LPI exma sbut is more focussed toward learning Linux first and passing exams second, this book is more focussed towards passing exam more than the full internals of Linux.
Having both books by your side is of course the best thing.

This book is the first one I read about the history on Unix and I really appreciate the author's for the taking the time trying to preserve the history about Unix before it is lost. The book starts with a very early mention of computers, from 1870s and then ends with around the year 1994. Of course keep in mind that this is a Unix history and not Linux. And because it is published in 1994 do not expect it to tell you the history of Unix of the past decade. The book, however, cover the Unix history from 1969 till 1994 extensively.
The one thing that I did not like about the book - and it is very minor - was that the quoted text should have been italicized. Sometimes during the reading I would get confused as to whether the author is talking or he is quoting someone else. Other than that minor inconvenience the book is worth to look at.

A lively and impeccably well informed history of the birth of UNIX. It's not perfect, but it's still the best source around.

This is an expensive short book with mainly trivial chronological information, 90% of which are freely available on the Internet. As for the history of the first 25 year of Unix it is both incomplete and superficial. Salus is reasonably good as a facts collector (although for a person with his level of access to the Unix pioneers he looks extremely lazy and he essentially missed an opportunity to write a real history, setting for a glossy superficial chronology instead). He probably just felt the market need for such a book and decided to fill the niche.

In my humble opinion Salus lucks real understanding of the technical and social dynamics of Unix development, understanding that can be found, say, in chapter "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix from AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable" in the book "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution (O'Reilly, 1999)" (available online). The extended version of this chapter will be published in the second edition of "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System (Unix and Open Systems Series)" which I highly recommend (I read a preprint at Usenix.)

In any case Kirk McKusick is a real insider, not a former Usenix bureaucrat like Salus. Salus was definitely close to the center of the events; but it is unclear to what extent he understood the events he was close to.

Unix history is a very interesting example how interests of military (DAPRA) shape modern technical projects (not always to the detriment of technical quality, quite opposite in case of Unix) and how DAPRA investment in Unix created completely unforeseen side effect: BSD Unix that later became the first free/open Unix ever (Net2 tape and then Free/Open/NetBSD distributions). Another interesting side of Unix history is that AT&T brass never understood what a jewel they have in hands.

Salus's Usenix position prevented him from touching many bitter conflicts that litter the first 25 years of Unix, including personal conflicts. The reader should be advised that the book represents "official" version of history, and that Salus is, in essence, a court historian, a person whose main task is to put gloss on the events, he is writing about. As far as I understand, Salus never strays from this very safe position.

Actually Unix created a new style of computing, a new way of thinking of how to attack a problem with a computer. This style was essentially the first successful component model in programming. As Frederick P. Brooks Jr (another computer pioneer who early recognized the importance of pipes) noted, the creators of Unix "...attacked the accidental difficulties that result from using individual programs together, by providing integrated libraries, unified file formats, and pipes and filters.". As a non-programmer, in no way Salus is in the position to touch this important side of Unix. The book contains standard and trivial praise for pipes, without understanding of full scope and limitations of this component programming model...

I can also attest that as a historian, Peter Salus can be extremely boring: this July I was unfortunate enough to sit on one of his talks, when he essentially stole from Kirk McKusick more then an hour (out of two scheduled for BSD history section at this year Usenix Technical Conference ) with some paternalistic trivia insulting the intelligence of the Usenix audience, instead of a short 10 min introduction he was expected to give; only after he eventually managed to finish, Kirk McKusick made a really interesting, but necessarily short (he had only 50 minutes left :-) presentation about history of BSD project, which was what this session was about.

The really expensive little book lacks coherence and it is difficult to follow due to the full of citations and data piled up and left as row material page after page.

In 1969 the Unix operating system was born. The main developers were Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, two programmers at Bell Telephone Labs. Unix was born because of the cancellation of another operating system developed at BTL, Multics. Learning from the experience they gained from Multics, Thompson and Ritchie began working on Unix, which would later prove to be a good choice. At first they used the PDP-7 machine, assembler language, and the programming language B (by Dennis Ritchie). Only later did BTL upgrade to PDP-11. Because of the upgrade and because of the development of the C programming language, Unix could mature.

The book has six parts: Genesis, Birth of a System, What makes UNIX Unix?, Unix Spreads and Blossoms, The Unix Industry, and The Currents of Change. In the first part, Peter Salus introduces us to Thompson and Ritchie; there's also a chapter on computers in general. Part two, Birth of a System, tells the story about how Unix came to be with what today is seen as much outdated hardware. Later parts give information on the many companies and groups involved in the Unix history, most notably the development of the BSD systems.

Peter Salus has been involved in the Unix history himself, and therefore he writes about it with sympathetic understanding. That means that we don't get introduced properly to the persons. And it means that the pages are full of acronyms. The writing is very compact and full of quotes from interviews, magazines, books and other sources, and that makes the book difficult to read. The book also has some minor errors.

But if you can live with these flaws, "A Quarter Century of Unix" is a good read. It gives an overview of the Unix world, and shows that Linux is just a small part of the whole operating system landscape, and that there are alternatives.

2 years ago I was promoted to a tech. management position requiring me to administer several linux machines. Yes, I was a brand new to the world of linux and searched long and hard through book after book.

I can now tell you that as I move forward to my next position, the author and this series has become the most loyal and indispensable friend a linux newbie can have. The book consistently goes the extra mile on important topics. There were many a day that I "needed" and the book ALWAYS came through.

So, two years later I am taking the time to say thank you and recommend it to the world. A MUST have for those taking the plunge ... one in which you'll never regret.

First, a description of my system: HP Pavilion 514n PC, 1 GB of RAM, Celeron processor running at 2.2 GHz, two internal Seagate physical hard drives (the first a 60 GB hard drive supporting Windows professional XP, the second a 200 GB hard drive initially formatted as NTFS but subsequently reformatted to support fat and Linux partitions).

I wanted to set up a Linux subsystem in order to support my web server development work. I initially downloaded an ISO image of SimplyMEPIS, burned it to a CD, used its included utility "QTParted" to set up the required Linux partitions on my second hard drive, and installed and operated the software for a few days. After a while, however, I grew disappointed with how it supported some aspects of my system and decided I wanted a more established Linux distribution. I determined to give Red Hat Fedora a try.

At first I downloaded and burned the four required Red Hat Fedora Core CDs. When attempting to install it, however, the first CD failed its internal media test. Thinking to ensure I would get a good and safe copy of the media I ordered a copy of Red Hat Fedora and Enterprise Linux 4 Bible by Christopher Negus. The one DVD and two CDs supplied with the book were a major selling point for me. Unfortunately, the material provided simply does not work on my system. It is impossible to even install the software. I had much better success with the free version of SimplyMEPIS.

The DVD (and the first of the supplied 2 CDs) boot up okay. But the installation program fails miserably. Subsequent follow-up attempts to install the software produce alert messages like, "You have not defined a /swap partition ...", even though I had and the system had previously recognized it. Or, "You have not defined a root partition, which is required for installation of Fedora core to continue." Again, even when I clearly had established such a partition.

As I said, all of my attempts to install the software have failed. In a final note of irony, when the installation fails the software presents you with a list of error messages. It suggests you write these messages to a floppy disk so you can report them to bugzilla.redhat.com. But the floppy disk is automatically formatted as a Linux disk. So far, I've been unable to access the disk or its messages with my XP PC. I guess I can't report them. How convenient for Red Hat.

Many computer technical books which I own provide a link to a web site where you can find updates to the book, including corrections of information and (in many cases) published software and scripts. The link provided by Mr. Negus only provides information about material which is no longer relevant to Fedora Core and thus no longer appears in the book. No corrections or updates of material are provided.

Messages posted on bulletin boards on the Internet seem to indicate the failures I experienced are quite common and are known problems. It causes me to wonder why people would attempt to sell software and products which have not been successfully tested on a variety of common systems.

I bought the book about two weeks ago and found it to be extreamly helpful... note the dvd with fedora 4 core is DEAD and CD2 is corupt No biggie if you have a high-speed connection you can get a copy at linux.org

Was looking for a book geared for RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 system admins looking for info on configuring RAID with mdadm, lvm2, and ended up with a book more geared for a desktop user more interested in games and novelties than serious system administration. I really don't think the book is geared toward Enterprise users and the word "Enterprise" should not be in the title. For what it goes over it does a good job but I was expecting more core unix admin information and examples.

This books pretty much covers it all. From networking, mysql and dns to gaming, video/audio, office tools, programming, etc. etc.

Easy to read, well written, as I am from the Faroe Islands, and have no trouble what so ever reading it.

I like the "learn by example" method used throughout the book, which will have you exploring Linux Fedora on your own, in the minimal amount of time.

Also, the entire Linux Fedora 4 OS is bundled with this book, as 2xCD and 1 DVD. This, combined with the book, is all you need to get started in the world of Linux.

5 stars from me!

Rói Højgaard, Faroe Islands

There's so much to say, this book is perfect and Amazon.com completes the equation. First of all this book has it all, it really reaches out for all audiences with different levels of experience. It goes around explaining stuff related to Linux directly and talking about general information related to the corresponding field. I mean I am still an undergraduate student who is a MCSE, but hasnt practiced networking in a long time, and this book was an amazing revision for DNS servers, host files, cables, configuration topologies and everything!! It even taught me how to extend my knowledge's potential with Linux's powerful networking capabilities which was my main reason to start with the transition. Second of all Amazon.com is really an excellent company and I am very very happy and satisfied with it, I have never seen such professionalism and dedication towards the satisfaction of customers, even overseas ones!! My order was thought to be lost, and I was issued as quickly as a lightning a replacement order to find out that my original order wasn't lost, but stumbled over customs in my country, then I was thanked by Amazon.com because I told them I recieved my original order, and that the costs of returning it back was on them and it is totally refunded!!
I am really perfectly satisfied with everything, the book and the company, and I can't wait to order again!!!

This book is ideal for those who work with Linux and want something handy to use as reference. It is extremely comprehensive and complete. This book gives enough detail on just about every facet of RH Linux that if it doesn't come right out and answer your questions, it will certainly provide you with enough specific info to get you pointed in the right direction. I wouldn't recommend this book for someone new to Linux as there are other books out there which lend themselves to teaching the fundamentals much more effectively (slower pace step-by-step books). However for people who know Linux and are looking for a comprehensive resource manual, you couldn't find a better book. A must have for anyone working with Linux in: tech support, system administration, application development, etc. Worth every penny!

Bought this book a while back and I have to say I was dissapointed with it. Lightly touches on topics and tells you how to "install" programs but if you want to go outside the standard setup....good luck.

If you are experienced in UNIX-like OS, this is a good review.

If you are not, this book provides pointers, but you are going
to need to work hard to find out the rest.

I get a discounted price (US$6.99) on the book, so I feel I am
getting a good deal.

I've been a Solaris admin for a while and am recently moving towards linux. The book looked fairly complete on a quick view at the book store. After owning it for a few months I find I can't find the answer to my more advanced questions in this book. So I'd say it is a good book for beginners, but not for someone that is looking for an advanced linux reference.

This book is an in-depth reference to the StarOffice functionality. The book is huge, fine print; and still the book does not touch on the new database capability of Adabas.

The StarBasic programming section is particularly instructive. The book's programming tutorial nicely complements the SO Online Help system and the SO SDK downloadable from the internet.

For old hacks, like me, this material (and Linux) is the best of times for computing.

I agree that this is the most comprehensive review of 5.1. I use both 5.1 and 5.2, and this is in the main, applicable for 5.2 users. The included Adabas makes the database much better. Staroffice is not the only suite for Linux/FreeBSD, there is also Applixware. I like both. I only give it 4 stars because of the lack of the coverage of the new database.

I'm a technical writer who writes regular book reviews about computer and programming books. I can say without a doubt that this is one of the nicest, most user-friendly app guides that I've seen. It's a hefty book with lots of screen shots, and they cover a lot of material here, including a lot on installation for linux. They present a lot of materials in boxes and give "tips," and the great index makes me confident that I can find anything I want in seconds. Unlike most user guides for office apps, this book describes pretty thoroughly the limitations in star office (such as the fact that its database is not relational). I bought this book in late 1999, and undoubtedly other books have been published on star office, and more will be published as star office gains mindshare. But it really is amazing how thoroughly this application has been described by this book. This is the sort of book you'd expect for an app that is several years old, not for one new to the market. The group of writers must have spent forever not only studying the program inside and out, but presenting it in a form that is interesting and easy to wade through. Recently Star Office 5.2 has been released, and it's possible that the functionality will have changed. But this version or later versions of this book will still be the easiest to understand. It's not glamorous to write a book about office apps, but it's nice when a publisher has done such an excellent job.

Unfortunatly this was the third Star Office Help Book that I bought - I wished there was a review that discussed the book, instead of the progam - prior to my two other purchases.

The Special Edition book is a volumous tome of information that every skill level can use. The book is written in a manner that appeals to both the computer expert and the newbie user.

Each section of the book discusses the basic techniques that are used on a regular basis and then it progresses to more powerful techniques. Examples and illustrations are plentiful - which many people find helpful.

The index and table of contents is written is plain english - so it is not difficult to find the answer to any question you may have. The book also discusses the compatibility of StarOffice and other major office suites.

For expert level user tasks - macro designing, the book offers very little information on this area. But to find the answers on building the macros - I simply went to the Sun Microsystem's (The Makers of StarOffice) website and did some poking around until I found my answer.

Sadly, StarOffice 5.2 will debut this year and this book may be obsolete by teh time you read it - but if you plan to use or continue to use StarOffice 5.1 - then consider buying this book.

The price may be a bit higher then some of the "thinner" books - but in this case - you get what you pay for. Don't be a "Dummy." Purchase this book!

I bought this book because it definitely wasn't for Dummies, and I thought it would cover all of StarOffice's features. And by golly, it does. But darned if I can find what I need without wading through it for a half hour.

I was very confused by the organization; each product has a 60-some page *introductory* section. I couldn't figure out where to look for just a simple procedure that tells me what I needed. When you can find a procedure, it's often a series of long, dense paragraphs; the information doesn't exactly leap out at you. And the illustrations, while very professional-looking, really aren't that helpful--the callouts are just the tooltips, which are built into the program.

This book has a lot of potential and a lot of information but it needs an industrial-strength organizational makeover. before it can be really helpful. It's better than the quickie 400-page books, but I guess I'm still looking for the book I need.

(It's also outdated, on version 5.1...sigh.)

I agree with other reviewers that not everything on the exam is covered in this book, but since it claims to be the OFFICIAL CSA exam prep guide, I take a harsher stand. The label "official" raises the expectations on what to expect from this book, and at a minimum one expects an overview of exam contents.

However, knowing well the informational content of this, the official guide to the CSA exam, is insufficient for passing the CSA exam, and I find that inexcusable. There is substantial content covered by the exam that is outright missing from the Rehman book. You will find NOTHING on the subjects of partitioning, server hardware offerings, high availability, or Ignite, and you WILL be tested on them. If you bought the Rehman book expecting to know what's on the exam, you have been misled and will probably fail.

The book desperately needs a revision, and if the omissions are not corrected, the misleading label "official" needs to be removed.

If you want to purchase a CSA exam guide with the intentions of passing the CSA exam, I recommend the "HP-UX Certified Systems Administrator Training Guide and Administrator's Reference", 2nd edition, by Asghar Ghori, ISBN 978-1-4243-4231-0. The content closely tracks the overview of CSA exam contents that is found on the HP Education site. The book is current up to HP-UX 11iv3 and the Integrity servers.

Book arrived in a timely fashion, however, 90% of the book has the pages printed on an angle. It appears none of the data was cut off, but it does make reading akward.

Excellent Book, Complete reference, From Beginners to Intermediate,

Thanks Rafeeq UR Rehman

This is great product. The ordering process as well as well as the delivery was great.

I found this book to be very informative and helpful with the quizzes and study break exercises. However, I believe you will be disappointed if you want this to be a "show me what's on the exam" book. You'll learn a lot more from this book than is asked on the exam, IMHO.

I passed the exam today and honestly believe that there was so much more that could have been tested. The book explains how things work; the exam doesn't really seem to care. That's about as much detail as I can get into.

I will definitely use this book as a desk reference for the forseeable future. Be sure to check the website for error corrections if you plan to take the exam.

I have a working knowledge of a lot of what's covered in this book. The presentation is fairly elementary even for a novice. The level of expertise this book targets would be very hard to learn from just a book. They are better off spending $20 for a pizza anad a six-pack and finding a friend w/ a free afternoon to walk them through explaining and installing Linux. This book is likely to be either too technical or not provide enough information.

On the plus side it comes with a copy of Fedora Core and Knoppix but...

...who's idea was it to cover Linspire instead of Debian. Wait for the next edition which will likely cover Ubuntu, which is likely to become the new Linux standard.

Like all the other Dummies series, the Linux for dummies is another great way to learn Linux. With this book you don't need to have a geek live with you to use and understand the powerful and useful computer enviroment. I have used Linux for several years and the book taught me a few things I didn't know about Linux.

If you are new to Linux like me and would like to learn Linux in a week then this book is a must have along with "Linux Pocket Guide".

LeBlanc made learning Linux easy. The intructions and tips in this book are clear, concise, and very easy to learn. I actually have fun reading it too! After a week of getting my hands dirty with a Linux (Red Hat Fedora) box, I am starting to appreciate Linux more and more.

I'll be frank. I was really looking forward to using this book. Making ISO copies of Linux distros can be a tedious and lengthy process. It's nice to know you can get the distros on one CD and check things out.

Here's a gentle reminder: If you are installing Linux on an older system WITHOUT a DVD-ROM, you cannot use the disk that came with the book. DUHH!!

The publisher will sell you all the CDs. The problem is, the distros that came with the book have been updated. For example, Mandrake is now Mondriva and Red Hat FC3 has moved on to FC5. Who wants to install older distros?

I simply did not find this book useful. The author mentions GRUB and LILO boot loaders but really provides no help or insights if you encounter boot loader difficulties during installation.

After successfully loading FC4 on my computer, I still have not found this book useful. I attempted to update my software and the instructs in this book didn't apply to the newer distro. For example, this book makes very little mention of the Red Hat FC4s *yum*. Many of the Linux commands reviewed in this book may be found over the Internet for free, as in free beer.

The author likened the ease of becoming a Linux user to boiling water (see the Introduction). This is not an accurate depiction.

I realize the author took on a great challenge in the writing of this book and I salute her for her efforts; however, this should not be the first book you pick up to teach yourself Linux.

Includes a DVD with OS for Linux. Only the last few sections deal directly with Linux commands and only briefly. Most of this book deals with installation issues of different Linux OSs.

This book has many useful articles in it and will be useful to any linux users at any ability. It includes a lot of things that other books leave out like gcc and teTEX. This book also includes an excellent discussion of how the linux file system works --essential if you want to work with files effectively. The Network administration section is excellent as is the section on being a SysAdmin. The book would be helped by a better organized table of contents and perhaps by grouping similar HOWTO's together. As it happens, it looks like Mr. Purcell has glombed a bunch of stuff together and then slapped together a quick index and table of contents and then sent it off to Walnut Creek. Also, the pages are too thin. I think I am going to tear the book when I turn a page. Havoing said that, this will be a cherished possession for many years and I will read it often.

If you miss all your "not there anymore" How-TO's from the TLDP .... this one has them all (1997 and prior) so ... i beleive the cost of the printer INK is far more costly than the price than the 2000 pages this provides ..... even if you don't need it all .... Sometimes its better to get away from the box to read the info .... :-)

I would say that sales of this book should be left to the stores dealing in obsolete computer merchandise. Most (if not all) of the applications mentioned in this book are obsolete, having been upgraded to the point where a great deal of the advice given is no longer valid.

This is not, however, to say that this book would only be useful as a boat anchor. It still has a good deal of useful information in it, and can still be quite helpful, ...

My only burning question is, where ... is the 8th edition?

My comment to that person who only gave it one star would be; Sure, it's the HOW TO pages. All neatly bound and printed. Do YOU want to sit down and print out all that ...? I have better things to do, and I, for one, prefer hard copy. Easier to read.

The book contains a complete walkthroug of the installation and a lot of howto's. It has all the answers.

What a dissapointment - this book is just a collection of the Linux Documentation Project's "how-to's." Back that up with a horrible index (a measly 7 page-index covers 2000 pages of text), and these guys get an F for effort. The installation-guide wasn't any help for me because I bought a specific guide for that. What I needed was a comprehensive and well indexed reference.