Linux Books

I found this book to be very readable and a good way of getting up to speed on Linux. The book: (i) guides you how to load Fedora onto your computer, (ii) describes how Linux works, and (iii) discusses Linux applications, networking and scripts. The author also touches on the Red Hat Enterprise version of Linux throughout the text. The Linux installation section is well written with plenty of screen shots showing the various screens during installation. The other sections are also very readable. The book comes with a couple of CDs containing Fedora Core1. A reader may wish to download a more recent version (Fedora 4 is available at the time this review was written). This book is a good springboard in getting into the Linux world with Fedora; however I think that a person will want to supplement this book with a reference on Linux (such as Linux in a Nutshell) in order to get a more detailed coverage on topics.

My recommendation is, this is a good book for a Linux novice or someone starting with Fedora for the first time.
Those with experience, will probably want to pass on this book. Its not likely you'll pick up anything new
(I didn't). (For those unfamiliar with what Red Hat has done with the split out of Fedora; think of
Fedora Core 1 as Red Hat Linux 9.1 or 10; if Red Hat had continued the product line.)

This book focuses on the "NEW" Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core 1 Linux user. The book is a relatively
easy read. Bill McCarty writes a clear and well organized book. From a novice's perspective, the author gives
you, what you need to get Fedora installed, running and usable. The author does a good job of pointing
the reader at additional information sources on each topic. The book is short, less than 300 pages.
This is nice compared to some of the other 1,000 page plus Linux novice tomes; which try to be a "how to get
started" book and a "general reference" all at they same time; except they don't do either well. Linux should
be friendly, not scary. First timers shouldn't have to read a Encyclopedia to get started in Linux. I agree
with the author's choice of brevity for his book.

One suggestion to the author, would be to include output examples with the CLI (Command Line Interface) examples.
He does it with the GUIs, so why not with the CLIs???

I bought the book because "Red Hat Enterprise" (RHE) was in the title. I was disappointed in the fact there wasn't
more detail about RHE. In retrospect, anyone doing RHE, is probably an experienced Linux person working for a
company, where RHE is deployed and may even have had formal training on RHE. So why would they need this book?

My bona fides; I've been using been using various flavors of Unix for an embarrassing long time, Red Hat Linux
for 8 yrs (from release RH 3.0.3 to 9) and I have been running Fedora Core for about 5 months now.

From the title I would have suspected something about building scalable Linux servers for web applications. Turns out the book is nothing like that. It's a ground up introduction to Linux from the end-user perspective. It starts in Windows with prepping a system for Linux installation, works through the installation (replete with lots of screenshots), then goes into the basics of window managers and Linux Office-style applications. The last few chapters go into some depth on working in the shell and shell scripting, but it's pretty light.

This is a solid introduction to end-user level Linux that should be suitable for anyone who is reasonably technical (no need to be a programmer). The only reason I give it four stars instead of five is because of the reliance on numerous screenshots, which isn't the best way to explain things, and is not the quality that I expect from O'Reilly.

I wanted a book that could help me with fedora in TEXT MODE. This book looked great and obviously, books from Oreilly are always good so I bought it.

This book is absolutely NOT a good book to learn Fedora in TEXT MODE because the book is about graphic mode and it wasn't said somewhere. It's all about GNOME and KDE.

Be sure you use the graphic mode before buying!

In my quest to learn Linux, I've been working through the book Learning Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora by Bill McCarty (O'Reilly). This is exactly what I was looking for in a learning guide.

Chapter list: Why Run Linux?; Preparing to Install Linux; Installing Linux; How Linux Works; Using the GNOME and KDE Desktops; Using Linux Applications; Conquering the bash Shell; Installing Software Using the RPM Package Manager; Configuring and Administering Linux; Connecting to the Internet; Setting Up Network Services; Advanced Shell Usage and Shell Scripts; Linux Directory Tree; Principal Linux Files; Managing the Boot Process; Linux Command Quick Reference; Index

This book concentrates more on the desktop and graphical interface aspect of running Linux, which is exactly what I was looking for. While this book won't tell you everything you need to know about any specific subject (like shell programming or networking), it covers more than enough to get you up and running with a complete Linux setup. Using this volume, I've been able to get a full desktop and server setup going with little effort or trouble. By following the rest of the book, I'll gain a solid base of knowledge of Linux, and then I'll be ready to move on to more detailed learning.

Perfect level of coverage for where I'm at, and enough detail to get me up and running quickly... I like it.

My book DOES contain information that every sysadmin knows, and it ALSO contains information that every C programmer knows. My POINT in including this material is that a sysadmin doesn't know much about C; nor does a C programmer know much about networking; I included both so that both types of readers can expand their knowledge enough to actually build a working cluster computer!

I should also note that the older kernel was used to TEST the software. That means you can run it on a bunch of cheap computers, and not have to spend thousands of dollars on high performance processors. That old kernel is NOT a requirement, as some readers might believe.

One final note: if you have a bunch of PCs on a network, that's ALL you've got. It's the software that makes them work together as a "team" of individual processors, toward some common goal. That's about the clearest definition of a "cluster" that I've come across.

The (debugged) software described in my book is available from the Sams Publishing web site for free download. It works just fine on my current cluster running CentOS 4, which is the free OS version of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 4. (That's just one generation ago. It's like running XP instead of Vista, like most of us do at home and at work.)

There are some issues related to the (then) R-commands: rsh and rcp, for example are suggested as a test for network connectivity. Shortly after the book came out, Linux dropped these in favor of the secure S-commands, like ssh and scp. A few minutes of your time reading the latest MAN (help manual) pages should bring you up to date.

Doesn't really tell you anything you don't already know. Seems very outdated also.

I found this book by shelf-shopping at MicroCenter in Dallas. My brother, who is a mechanical engineer, mentioned needing a cluster computer for his work. It was the first I'd ever heard about this sort of contraption, although I've been a hardware-hacker for years, and have played around with Slackware and RedHat since 1996.

"Linux Cluster Architecture" is an excellent place to start. It has a lot of basic hardware background, including a compelling argument for using the obsolete "digital doorstop" computers that clutter your guest room floor. (There's also a lot of C code in the book, which I skipped over, because I don't do programming.)

Following successful hardware configuration on three junkers, I bought "The Red Hat Bible" and continued with the setup. The newest computer became the Master and the identical-twins became Nodes, using RedHat 9.

That done, I gave the Homemade Cray and "Linux Cluster Architecture" to my brother, and he's using the book to learn about distributed loads. He is well-versed in C++ and in FORTRAN, and says that the programs are just what he needs to get started.

I've been dealing with Linux clustering for a while. I found the basic and difficult concepts are well explained and useful for newbies and more experienced. The book makes you want to read more with interesting, practical sample codes. The author is very knowledgeble and hits a nail right on the head.

Although, some topics seem outdated, the underlying concepts holds through time. You're gonna enjoy tuning and adjusting it to fit your system environment. There is no abusolte solution for every system. As long as you understand what the book explains and many useful examples, you'll never get lost with lastest technologies and be equied with some solutions in mind. The rest is up to you to work on your cluster piece by piece. That's the beaty of clustering.

I love the sections of Distributed Server Process in action, external performance measurement and analysis - estimating and displaying network utilization, inter-process commincation - messaging and more. I think most information in this book could not be found anywhere, even on the web.

This is the first book I have found that actually tells you how to build up your cluster. Yes, it is technical. But it actually talks about everyman-hardware not just the high-end unobtainable. I came at this project from a power-user perspective in the *nix world. I can build up a Novell or MS network in a snap but some of the *nix topics are new to me, like shared memory across the network. When I built up my cluster I ran into a few problems. I contacted the published and within a couple of days Alex wrote back. Together we spent the next 3 weeks emailing back and forth. I would make a change, reinstall the OS, etc. Alex hung in there and helped me get everything running. That was a first for me, an author that actually cares.

in a word this book is at best confusing. it tries really hard to be a good book that combines the theory behind how everthing works and how to become a competent linux user. unfortunatly, i'm not sure what these guys were smoking when they wrote this ( maybe some ground up windows cd's, since they're so good at linux they didn't need to buy any more windows products) anyways I suspect that the writers are much bettr linux users then they are writers. If you buy this book and it works out for you, thats great but I think the odds are against you.

I have used and taught UNIX and LINUX for over a decade and this is arguably the bext LINUX textbook for entry- and intermediate-level users. The writing style is lucid and examples that work. For a change, this book contains shell scripts that actually work! One of the rare books that elegantly combines operating system concepts with LINUX examples. Simply a first-rate book. I give it two thumbs up and look forward to more books by the author team.

You don't even need to know much about computers. They assume nothing and you never get lost. It is a pleasure to read.
A bonus is that, if you like books, you will appreciate the quality of the printing and the material used.

Author: Computer Science/Math double major at Cameron University. Junior.

After reading four five-star reviews, I think I need to speak up. Our school used this book for a freshman-level Operating System Utilities class and I was not fully pleased. As far as positives go, I will give that this book is extremely comprehensive. Most important commands are explained and the more obscure commands and options are included in the back. Even though I disliked the book, I still keep it as a reference due to its scope. Issues regarding differences between different versions of Linux are not covered well, but that's really too much to cover in one book. Just make sure to get a book specific to your version in addition (or possible exclusion) of this one. I have Red Hat and fortunately most of the code in here is portable to Red Hat. Also Mandrake is included on the disk (at least in my version), which is the version the book is catered to. Maybe it's just bad luck but I found the version of Mandrake included to be quite buggy, but that's a separate rant.
The main reason I didn't like the book is the usual flaw in technical computer books: unclarity. The explanations are not well-written and are short of examples in some areas. Also, the explanations that are given tend to be just as dry and boring as unclear. In addition to the constant vagueness and unreadability, there isn't enough attention given onto the traditional privileges and restrictions of the typical user. The examples and explanations don't give the reader a good feel as to what they can do on a Linux system, unless they happen to have full root access. Given an experienced programmer knows there restrictions and they may vary, but the introductory Linux programmer is not clear on the kind of programming environment they will be working in.

Impressive book, well written, self explaining and covering almost all aspects required by the linux "not-so-expert", as I am. But:
One really important part is missing! Almost no discussion is provided on the user profile definition. How the user is related to the group, how can a user be part of several groups, etc...
Really, is a good book, but the writers suppose that everybody will use "root"? I hope not. To be useful for the IT Professional, a little more has to be spent on this area.

I primarly use *BSD and was hoping to learn about NFS/NIS from this book, more than what I had already gleaned from the man pages. However this book is very heavily geared towards the Solaris OS. It does give exlamples of where the filename(s) or folder structures under a different flavor of Unix would be, but exept for these small tables, the rest of the text uses only the Solaris names/folders.

This book is quite outdated. For example, it predates NFS version 3, NFS over TCP (mostly the default these days), or autofs.

If you are a beginner and are looking for fundamental information this book might be useful if you remain aware of its shortcomings. It covers the fundamentals of NFS V2 over UDP, and NIS quite well, and has a good troubleshooting section, which might help beginners negotiate the interoperability and tuning issues that are common in today's multivendor environments. It covers automounting issues quite well, from an "automount" (SunOS 4) perspective.

Hello, My name is Mike Eisler, and I am one of the
co-authors of Managing NFS and NIS, Second Edition.
I'm writing this note to offer additional information
to potential readers.

At the time I submitted this note, most of the
customer reviews for this book referred to the first edition.
One of the reviews states that the book is focused on NFS
version 2 over UDP and the old style automounter.
Actually, you'll find the second edition of our book
is more modern. New topics in the second edition
include NFS version 3, NFS over TCP, modern autofs-based
automounters, Kerberos V5 authentication for NFS, NFS Access
Control Lists (ACLs), and client side fail over.

Another difference is that first edition of this book
used SunOS 4.x as a reference for examples. The second
edition uses Solaris 8.

The second edition provides information you won't find
in NFS product documentation, such as using tools like ethereal
to debug NFS problems. This book will give you the benefit of
insights from people who probably wrote some of the code for
your clients and servers. You may find (and I hope) that
it will save you the trouble reporting a problem to
your vendor's customer support line.

Thank you for considering our book.

Anyone who has ever administered a network of at least 3-4 servers (if not more) will find individually updating accounts, software and such to be a burden. I found myself in this situation not too long ago, and then I picked up this book, and found the answers I was looking for.

Most Unix admins have heard of NFS and NIS but might not have considered using them together. This book gives a very thorough discussion each topic, how to set it up, how to deal with advanced issues, and how to troubleshoot. Admins will really develop an appreciation for how useful these tools can be, especially when used together.

Though LDAP is gaining prominence, a network utilizing NIS, NFS, and automounter is still a very nice network to administer. Even just learning NFS/automounter is time well spent because it is a service not likely to go away. I really felt this this book was worth the time and money because it really helps the intermediate to advanced admin better gain control of the network (instead of the network controlling him :). Definintely give this book a try. Enjoy!

O'Reilly puts out so many well written books and the quality of the authors is usually the highest, and this book is no exception. Both of these subjects are covered in more than enough detail for anyone need to setup NFS, NIS, or both. It is written in such a way that you son't have to read straight through, but can use it as a reference for the information you need. I would recommend this book for anyone neededing a decent to thorough understanding of this topic.

This book included most of the information I needed to set-up, and run my mkLinux system, but it took a lot of paging back and forth to get the information I needed. Also, there are some missing steps in the info on compiling the kernel which I had to get from a mailing list. Other than that, a decent reference for those with a mac that want to play with linux.

This is the ideal starting point for a non unix human into the weird world of linux.. just follow the dots and it will run ... Sadly the book does not cover some of the bare basics of the OS itself, so while installing is really easy, getting the OS to actually do something is NOT covered... As all linux distributions vary a certain amount some things mentioned in other publications might not work..I had rather seen it included in this book.

This book contains some very good hardware details about the Power Macintosh for people who like writing device drivers for the rest of us. The only reason it only gets four stars is that the documentation has a bunch of bad links. Everything is there, it's disorganized.

This is something every dedicated Mac user should not be without. While Linux is perhaps not the simplest of OS's, this is by far the simplest form of Linux I've ever seen or worked on. If for no other reason the two included CD's are worth the price alone. Although a more indepth basic linux book would be usefull too unless you are well versed in it. Overall I'm well pleased.

Very detailed instructions of installing the MKLinux and nothing else! I would hope there at least is a quick reference for basic setup and configure of the system. No help at all after the system is up running.

This book is good if you want to find bottlenecks in your system. If you are interested in finding a good book which helps you tweak your system for better performance (eg. web server performance tweaks vs. database server tweaks) keep looking. I think the title "Optimizing Linux Performance" is misleading.

Otherwise, if you are interested in learning how to analyze data from tools like vmstat, sar, or top, then it is worth the purchase.

This is a great book for isolating and resolving performance problems on a single host. I wish the author would have spent less time on graphical tools, and more on multi-system/inter-system performance tuning.

Let me start off by saying that this book is not really bad. It doesnt really give any wrong information, it is organized in fairly nice fashion, and for beginners its probably a great place to start. The title is a little misleading though. It doesnt really give a bit of advice on how to optimize Linux performance. It is merely a beginners language version of the man page for tools.

I was expecting something that would explain how to resolve thrashing or cpu usage issues, not simply give me a rundown on the tools that can find those situations. I found the cause, now what? This book doesnt help answer that question at all.

I liked the attention to detail throughout this book, but felt it could have gone much farther. The case studies were excellent, but at the same time disappointing because they concentrated on code bugs/problems rather than optimization of the system itself.

In spite of that, this is still valuable, I particularly liked that the output of tools was mostly fully explained: too many books ignore that detail and leave you wondering what certain column headings mean.

I didn't like that the shell examples were run on different machines with the prompt set to the machine name - this was confusing as often I momentarily thought the prompt was a command being run.

[Review: long]

First about the title:

The title should have been just "A Hands-On Guide to Linux(R) Performance Tools".
That would have been less missleading and most readers could have appreciated the debugging scenarios
at the end of the book more.

O.K now about the book itself:

I am currently a system administrator in a medium sized company (ca. 200 employees)
I am using different flavours of Linux since 5+ years (Debian, Mandrake, Suse, Redhat etc). Every now and
then I found several man pages sometimes hard to comprehend. Most man pages do describe available
options on their own but - unfortunately - they fail to deliver the big picture, including f.e. practical
samples of how to use those options in real life scenarios and how to evaluate (read) the output given
to the screen (or a file).

This is exactly where Ezolt comes in with the "Hands-on Guide" and ease the pain in a fantastic way.
Whats makes this book so indispensible is that it describes the below list of tools in a way
that demystifies many of the command line options and the screen clutter.
The book immediately became my best friend.

The book is with 350p quite compact (keep in mind the many tools described below) and that allows you
to take it with you onsite, while not being to heavy.
To really maximise the usage of the book I suggest to use little post-it like notes, so that you can
refer to them, when you are onsite and forgot the one or the other trick.
My post-it notes loose regularly the writing from the many tear (usage). ;-)

Note that many of the tools below are described 2 times or more within the book, depending on their
usage f.e. as CPU or Memory based investigation tool.

The book is somehow different from what I expected, but keep in mind that one book can seldom tackle
all issues and I believe Ezolt has striked a very good balance here.

Ezolt is describing many scenarios that probably most system admin came accross, but didnt know yet how to handle them.
Ezolt now gave them the tools to finally put them to good use in a wide area.

I give Ezolt both thumbs up alone for the fact that it is the first book out there that tackled that man page issue quite nicely
and "translated" those man pages including the refering command line interfaces in a for me readable format.


Well done !!


List of (mostly command line) tools described in the book (39):

For CPU + based troubleshooting (13):
vmstat
top
procinfo
gsm
mpstat
sar
oprofile
time
strace
ltrace
ps
ld.so
gprof

For Memory based troubleshooting (8):
free
slabtop
memprof
valgrind
kcachegrind
ipcs
iostat
lsof


For Network based troubleshooting (8):
miitool
ethtool
ifconfig
ip
gkrellm
iptraf
netstat
etherape

Utility tools (10):

bash
tee
script
watch
gnumeric
ldd
objdump
(f)grep
gdb
gcc

This book is good if you are new to linux. Although, I found playing games on fedora was unnecessary for the author to add in this book. Afterall linux is not for playing games. Overall a very good book.

I selected this book over 3 others about the same topic after
an hour of browsing in a local bookstore (I usually also buy
books in a store and not online for that reason but had a gift
coupon with Amazon this time). None of the 4 books I looked
into did get a score of 5 stars, overall the Paul & Andrew Hudson
book I liked best:

What I liked most:
- extensive index section: 69 pages !
- a lot of useful information, helpful tips for the practical use
- extensive references to related web links following each section
- extensive use of command line examples
- overall good coverage of the topic, well balanced,
should be a lot of useful info in for everyone interested in FC5

What I did not like:
- missing "xterm" in index and coverage in the book
- little info on other, light desktops like "xfce",
too much Gnome and KDE specifics
- in software development sections, missing Fortran (like "gfortran")

As the title suggests, this is a book about the latest release of Fedora Core Linux distribution. Thanks to its correct approach, however, it would be accurate to claim that this is a book that can train you appropriately in the ways of Linux Operating System using Fedora Core distribution as a reference, instead of being just an other shallow distribution-specific manual.
GNU/Linux (usually referred to simply as "Linux") is a completely free Operating System that can be used for a wide variety of tasks. Fedora is a community-driven distribution of Linux, sponsored by Red Hat, one of the leading and oldest organizations in the field.

Contrary to popular belief, Linux is not a specialized OS that can only be found as part of network infrastructures. Through the last 15 years it has evolved to a modern general-purpose OS that can be used for almost any task you can think of: from office workstations to WAN backbone routers and even for some that you probably hadn't considered, like voice machines, PBX, televisions, compact multimedia devices and much more!

Most importantly, Linux's software for such applications has reached production-level quality, is free to use, modify and redistribute and supports every open standard. Also, it performs well on commodity hardware, even old Personal Computers that cost less than 50$ can be more than enough for most jobs.

As one would expect, however, an operating system of such flexibility unavoidably has a certain degree of complexity in its roots, and configuring it appropriately can prove challenging even to experienced users and IT professionals. Official software documentation, while detailed, often seems too specific for a user that lacks the technological context to comprehend it, especially in complex tasks where the tight collaboration of more than one piece of software is required.

This is where "Fedora Core 5 Unleashed" comes in. It is essentially a training guide written with the completely inexperienced user in mind, however, it also manages to extend its information to an advanced level for most of the subjects.

The "Unleashed" book series from SAMS is known for its thoroughness and detailed coverage of each topic. Fedora Core 5 Unleashed, counting 6 well-balanced parts in more than 1000 pages, stands up to this legacy. Each part contains numerous Chapters, at the end of each chapter there is a reference section containing links to web resources for related subjects. This is a very good idea that increases the book's value. The same applies for the gray tags that mark each chapter on the side of the book, making browsing each part easy and the comprehensive appendix in the end which contains a thematic index of all the material based on keywords.

Inside the book there is also a DVD containing the complete Fedora Core 5 Linux distribution so that you can get started right away.

The material covered is organized as follows:

Part I is the introduction. It covers the procedure of installation, some of the fundamental information about Linux and especially Fedora and some basic configuration instructions, so that everyone can have a fully functional system before continuing the book.

Part 2 is dedicated to the use of Linux as a personal desktop and office workstation. It provides information about available office, multimedia and leisure applications and documents in detail the graphical environment. All users that intend to use Linux as a desktop will want to read this.

Part 3 focuses on system administration. Most of the concepts and facilities of Linux are described here, so everyone should read it carefully.

Part 4 describes the possibilities of a Linux machine serving data in a network. All popular types of services (mail, databases, dns, proxy, filesharing, etc) are described in detail, both in theory and in implementation. This is primarily important to System Administrators that will use Linux as part of a network infrastructure.

Part 5 is a fairly detailed introduction to programming in Linux. More specifically, there is a basic tutorial on PERL, PYTHON and PHP, enough to get you started with those languages. There is also a chapter dedicated to C/C++ and available Integrated Development Environment applications. Developers and power users will be interested in this part, since scripting greatly enhances the functionality of the system in many scenarios.

Part 6 offers practical advice for a wide variety of subjects like security, performance tuning and troubleshooting. This is an all-round chapter that can help everyone, regardless of how they intend to use Linux.

In each part, advanced users will find some very cool ideas and pieces of important information they'd been missing. Inexperienced users will find themselves on their way to becoming geeks without losing track at any point, thanks to the plentiful explanations, examples, references and illustrative tables.

The fact that absolutely no previous knowledge is required for someone to follow the book means the only real requirement would be an interest in familiarizing with the great Operating System called Linux. Fedora Core distribution, along with Fedora Core 5 Unleashed, provide a great training package for anyone wanting to achieve this efficiently.

Good starting book. You will need to buy specific book for more in depth coverage of your particular subject.

When I was a Solaris trainer a few years ago, the one thing that I always told the students was, 'If I would go over in any detail everything that Solaris can do right out of the box, this course would take over a month.' Linux has fallen into the same quandary. Because so many functions, utilities, and applications are available, to find a compilation that explains everything that it can do would be impossible. Red Hat Fedora 5 Unleashed does a good job at covering a lot of topics, though.

This massive book consists of one thousand pages covering hundreds of topics in almost forty chapters. It also includes Fedora Core 5 on DVD so that you can start working with it immediately - assuming that you have a system on which you can install it, of course.

I can't possibly go into all of the topics here, but I will say that as a systems administrator there is nothing that I could think of for a basic server that I did not find listed in this book. You name it, and it will probably be there. Installation, user management, X windows selection and configuration, Samba, DNS, FTP, sendmail, networking, Perl, PHP, Python, Apache, compiling, security, package management, and a lot of other topics that most system administrators would probably want to know are covered, at least briefly.

The one thing about this book is that it is primarily a 'get your feet wet' reference book. There are hundreds of screen shots, but none of the topics really go into any depth. This certainly is to be expected, though. If all of the topics in this book discussed intricate details, this would end up being a multi-volume encyclopedia. There is enough information to get you started on a particular topic, but you'll have to find more informative resources if you want to know any of the topics in any type of detail.
Although this review so far might imply that this book is geared towards the system administrator, RHF5 Unleashed is just as geared towards the more casual user. Topics such as CD/DVD writing, TV tuning, photo manipulation, digital cameras, webcams, printers, dial-up Internet access, and even gaming are discussed.

The big catch with this book is that it's not meant for your Aunt Bertha in Sheboygan who does nothing but write letters to her sister Mabel in Tuscaloosa. If you're going to read this book, you must be a power user before you open the front cover. You don't necessarily need to be a UNIX administrator to understand it, but a fundamental knowledge of how operating systems work beyond the Start button or a keen grasp of technical details is definitely required for this book to be worthwhile.

This book only mentions the various topics with basic information; but depending on what you want to do with Fedora 5 the basics might be all that you need. Quite simply, this is a really good book. If you want to give Fedora 5 a try but you don't want to 'go it alone' with just a downloaded DVD image, I highly recommend Red Hat Fedora 5 Unleashed.

I liked it and it is easy to understand.

For a Windows 95 user like myself, Unix looked liked a dark and mysterious night, unpenetrable and unfathomable. This book came like a guiding light and saw me through.

I think this must be one of the best UNIX-manuals ever written. Mr. Hahn shows skills and knows how to teach even a beginner everything from basics to the more advanced. I would highly recommend this book to everybody who would like to learn a bit or eight about Unix- The most interesting and powerful MUOS there is!

Having been using the UNIX system for six years, I'm still referencing from this absolute beginner book from time to time because the language is so non-technical, yet the information contained within is more than enough to get you started on using UNIX operating system and learn to love it.

The author did a very good job particularly in describing and tutoring the reader how to do common tasks such as using email systems, doing text editing, issuing commands from the CLI, etc. Not very in-depth but the point is, it is enough to get you interested to look for MORE, which is the most important thing. There is no point in explaining something in-depth only to discourage the reader to look for more information, and only to leave the subject untouched because it looks "hard". If you are a UNIX veteran/advanced user/system administrator, this book is not for you, as you have probably known way more than what this book contains.

I highly recommend this book as the very first book on UNIX to read on, if you have never even heard of UNIX before, and only experienced in Windows/MacOS environments.

I found this book to be excellent. I feel it teaches you all that you need to be a comfortable UNIX user. This may not be the ideal book if you are looking for a quick reference for commands etc. Great job by the author.

My one pedantic complaint: The overwhelming majority of the examples in this book are done on linux and there is some coverage of bsd. Putting UNIX in the title is a bit misleading.

This book is full of errors (spelling, syntax, jargon). The content is what you would expect from an entry level UNIX book. They do a fair job of covering the basics although a high percentage of their syntax examples are amazingly wrong. It almost looks like an artist reviewed the book at the last minute and decided that all the '-' characters were too boring and decided to replace some of them with '+' characters instead. I cannot imagine how confusing and frustrating this would be to a beginner.

I was also sad to see that they spent 7 pages on telnet and only 2 on ssh. Never once did they mention the security implications of using telnet. Given that this book was published in 2005 there is no good reason to perpetuate the use of that wildly insecure connection method.

If you have to purchase this book for a class, I feel for you.

If you are trying to learn UNIX on your own, I'd advise you to keep looking.

This book will waste your time. The author can't explain basic staff.

Not even one script worked!! Here is exactly in the book on page 417:" We do not show the program headers...for the sake of saving space." If I can get it myself, why should I read your book?! There are a lots of similar non-sense stuff!

If you want to have headache, then buy this book. I will never buy any book from this author anymore.

I wish other people had written this before I bought it.

Another excellent book by the author team. I have used and taught UNIX and LINUX for over a decade and this is arguably the bext UNIX textbook for entry- and intermediate-level users. A lot of new material has been added in the second edition that makes the book current and much more interesting. The writing style is lucid and examples that work. For a change, this book contains shell scripts that actually work! One of the rare books that elegantly combines operating system concepts with UNIX examples. Simply a first-rate book. I give it two thumbs up and look forward to more books by the author team.

I have been teaching UNIX for over 15 years. I have used many introductory books but this is by far the best. The authors seem gifted with the ability to explain difficult topics with ease.

Some of the salient features of the book that I particularly like are:
a. Topics are arranged in a very nice, ascending order of difficulty
b. The book is very comprehensive and I often use it
c. The book discusses important OS concepts not found in any other introductory book on UNIX
d. Shell scripting is explained very well and, unlike many other books in programming, ALL of the programs in the book actually work!
e. Nice intorductory chapter on X Window System

I look forward to more introductory books on computer science by the author team.

This book is wonderful, it is a very usefull text/reference book. I never had any experience before with Unix. After reading this book, I found it to be very educational and entertaining. I give it two thumbs up. A++

This guide is very concise & straight to the point. Do not be fool by its size. Team and project managers along with business analysts should find this guide very useful. This pocket book is an easy read that packs enough meat to get you going with Extreme Programming. It is written for anyone who is interested on knowing about XP.

By the end of the book you'll have a clear understanding of why use XP programming, practices, events, roles, code principles & style. Best of all, it provides you with clear examples and suggestions on how to adopt this methodology.

I bought this book as a desktop refresher on XP practices. It does that just fine. If you are looking for an in depth book, you need to go elsewhere. This is a reference guide to use as a refresher from time to time on how to implement XP practices.

I think this book should be required reading for anyone exploring XP. I introduced XP into a research lab of a dozen students and professionals, using the original books as reference. However, things would have gone much more smoothly had I simply read the pocket guide. Excellent!

I needed a break recently, so I pulled this tiny work off the stack of review books (now 30 books high) and blasted through it in a short hour.

It's short, sweet, to the point, also injected with the occasional XP Dogma Line such as if you don't implement all 12 practices then you're not doing real XP and your manhood will shrivel or your womb will be barren. I get tired of that line, but the rest of the book is truely golden.

It's concise and lays out great sections on why one should consider XP, roles in XP, artifiacts, and a few others. The real wealth is the section on XP practices where the 12 tenets are laid out in concise, reasonable fashion. These practices are clear and understandable without a bunch of mystical handwaving or badly-written example scenarios I've suffered through in a couple other XP books. (Roodyn's Extreme .NET comes to mind as a painful example of that.)

The book's conciseness and focus makes it a perfect tool if you're trying to sell XP to your management, team, or co-workers.

In today's world of tech books that are hundreds of pages long, it's nice to see a short, "no fluff" guide to a subject that is actually usable. This book fills that bill nicely.

Even if you've read about and implemented XP in your shop, there are times you need to review one of the points about how it all works together. Since the author covers all the main points of XP, you can quickly find the information you need. You also get a nice cross-reference at the end of each chapter that shows how each point relies on other parts of the methodology. I find this very useful if you are faced with having to modify XP for your use. It's recommended that you implement XP in its entirety, as it's meant to be more than the sum of its part. But if you have to tweak something, you know how it will affect the other areas.

I would not recommend this book as your only resource if you were just starting to implement XP. You really need to read Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck. He's the founder of XP, and that book goes into much more detail as to the whys of the process. But this book is one that each member of the team should have to keep the concepts fresh.

This is a very good book to use as a supplemental reference or reminder guide if you're using the XP methodology. If you were looking for a concise explanation of XP, this would also work for you. If you were looking for a more in-depth explanation of the methodology, I would recommend one of the books by Kent Beck.