Linux Books

Since I am a computer engineer I was hoping to find that this book offered some home projects let alone hacks. First let me state that this book doesn't offer any "Hacking Projects". To be honest it barely offers any "Home projects". Fortunately for me I have a friend who is an electrical engineer. This book is extremely misleading. More than half of the projects listed in this book simply can not be accomplished because the projects mentioned severely lack the required information or were never honestly tested to see if the might actually work. A good part of this book suggests you will need a skill set of 3 out of 5 to accomplish a given task. What it doesn't say it that you will need significantly more money and electrical knowledge than this book will ever provide. Many of the projects listed here are extremely costly and provide little advantage to some running it through a computer. In addition, you will have to know a computer language [Pearl] in order to get remote benefit from any project. Having looked over the Pear scripts I have found some mistakes in the programming. It seems to me that O'Reilly just wanted to sell a book.

A great deal of the projects in this book are basically various forms of X10 module automation. The projects include how to automate a light with motion sensing, how to remotely monitor your pet, creating a whole house audio or time shifted audio, a keyless entry system, and intrusion detection and deterrence. For each project the items are detailed, the software described in detail, information is included on where to locate them, assembly instructions, scripts, and everything else you need to complete it. Only basic skills are needed for each project. Each project includes information on estimated cost, time and difficulty ratings so you can easily decide which ones you will tackle and which ones you may not want to. Home Hacking Projects for Geeks is recommended to anyone wanting to have a little fun with home electronics.

Home Hacking Projects for Geeks is a really fun book to read which also provides instructions on how to perform some very interesting home improvements. This book reminded me a little bit of O'Reilly's other book "Smart Home Hacks", only the hacks in this book are not all specifically smart-home related. In any case, some of the hacks in the other book mentioned are also found in this book. "Home Hacking Projects", however, does contain some fun projects I haven't seen anywhere else.

Some of the more interesting projects in this book include how to remotely monitor your pet, creating time shifted radio, and how to make your home talk. One thing I really enjoyed about this book is that examples are provided for both a Linux and Windows environment. Additionally, configuration information is provided for your router, if the completed project is to be accessible from outside your home network.

While there are some projects included in this book that you might find elsewhere, this book does an excellent job of providing clear and detailed instructions, including wiring diagrams (if applicable), screen shots of configuration information, and a lot of other things that make the successful completion of these projects much more likely. You'll have a blast automating your home with this book.

The cover of the book deliberately harkens back to a retroness of some earlier decade. The 70s perhaps. The projects discussed are however of quite recent vintage. One useful improvement in this book, over earlier ones in this series, are the visual slider estimates at the start of each chapter. There are 3, for cost, time and difficulty. Gives you another handle to quickly assess what you might tackle.

Many projects revolve around integration. How to build some hardware electrical gadget and hook it up in some fashion to your computer. So that the computer can get data from it, or control it. The software components of these projects is kept very minimal. The authors are clearly aware that the likeliest readers are hands-on folks. Who might think that there's already too much software in the book.

Nothing in the splash page, back cover or anywhere with info letting you know it is almost 100% about the X10 hardware. I already own a house full of X10 stuff, so the fact that I wasted money on this book burns my soul. Not one thing deals with how to set up, rig or configure any of the projects without having to spend money on whichever X-10 product will do the job. If I wanted that I would just buy the product and read the installation guide that comes with it.
The author suckered me into buying the book... don't let him sucker you!

This book dose not teach you any think, everything is a reference to some other sources.
I will agree with a comments about Java and Linux going hand to hand but this book will not
show you how to program java on linux. I have seen many other books in that price range
and by far they where much better.

Java development on Linux has lagged behind until now. The news of the day is Java Rocks on Linux. This book goes into detail how to get set up, what tools are available and where to get them. There is a CDROM that comes with the book and a website (CDROMS tend to get stale fast) for crucial updates, news and other vital information. IMHO programming Java on Linux has been one of the best kept secrets of the late 90s. This book is a step toward disclosure. Linux and Java go together like milk and cookies.

I honestly believe Microsoft has intentionally and unintentionally helped keep a very powerful crossplatform tool combination. Programming Java and Linux go together like cookies and milk. Since it's inception in the early 90's, Linux has always been a superior platform for Internet development and Java is and will be one of several paramount tools for the web. This book is written for people who know what they want, not for Windows weenies.

I don't know if the other reviewers have read the books carefully or not because the books have been over-rated. First of all, the book is filled with reference stuff for both linux and java which do not help people to understand either of them. The useful stuffs are to help people WHERE to get java softwares, HOW to install them and how to CONFIGURE them both as SYSTEM wide and USER limited usage and HOW to RUN THE SOFTWARES. In these aspects, the book did not do a very good job. The one website the book referred to is BLACKDOWN which is a good site but the java softwares there are not updated often( it still carries jdk1.2 beta ! ).

In conclusion, the book should be trimmed down in half and emphasizes more in those aforementioned stuffs and cut the price. To be fair, the book does contain some good stuffs but these are rare.

This book is outdated and provides very little real information on programming in Java. As other reviewers have stated, it is primarily a list of (outdated) Java programming resources. The author also makes the mistake of assuming throughout the book that the book will be read from cover to cover. As I tried, however much in vain, to use the book as a reference, as I thinks most readers do, I constantly ran into unexplained references to "phenomena" and had to go back through the book looking for the initial explanation of said phenomena. Of course, we should always expect that a book nearly three years old would be somewhat outdated, but it would be nice, for a change, to find a publisher driven by more than mere greed who would recognize the diminishing utility of a book like this and adjust the price accordingly. After reading quite a bit of the book, in retrospect I would not even pay half of the [price] when I bought this book, but at least a 50% price-reduction would have meant a little less of my hard-earned dinero wasted and thus available to buy a truly useful book on Java Programming on Linux, if one truly exists...This book should be pulled from the eShelves and replaced with something useful. SAVE YOUR MONEY!!!

Being a beginner at Latex I began reading with the thought
that the learning curve would be a long one. I soon found
myself writing a few simple document as soon as I read the
first 3 chapters... on the day I purchased the book. I'd say
it definately clarified a somewhat complex programming
concept for me.

This book is a very poorly written book, trying desperately to introduce you to the LaTeX world. The examples it has are detached, the whole script way of writting is not clear, it isn't fully explanatory trying to light touch all the subjects does a not so clear job. I am using LaTeX for years and I had some hard time navigating myself through the thick structure of irrelevant junk this book has. Please if you consider buying this book, you can aswell consider downloading the LaTeX instruction manual for free from the Web. The former will be a waste of money, the latter will be a non-time consuming investment!

This is still the best introductory text for LaTeX that I've seen. The Linux Journal review got it exactly right -- this book takes the the mystery and complexity out of LaTex while still tackling many advanced aspects of the language. It uses good examples and is actually formatted using LaTeX. As such it provides a strong visual argument for the power of LaTeX and the value of learning it. This is a great book for doing exactly that.

... users with some experience with this package will find it next to impossible to use as a reference. Bits and pieces on a topic are often scattered throughout the book. This works if you read it from beginning to end as it builds up in sophistication. On the other hand, it makes it difficult to find answers when you need to look something up. The book description is entirely accurate: an "introduction and guide to using LaTeX". The book also has some coverage of the various utilities one needs to make effective use of LaTeX (it would have saved me some time if I had it when I got started). The physical layout of the book may come as a bit of a shock (it initally struck me as uneven and unprofessional), but now that I look at it a few years later I realize this was largely due to the fact that there are a lot of examples of the output produced by the various examples (the whole point is to show you how to do things instead of selecting examples that won't interfere with the look and feel of the layout). The negative reviews this book has received are unfair since they were written by people who wanted an advanced book and bought this one ignoring its description (it quite simply isn't reasonable to say that Hondas are useless just because you're in the market for an exotic sports car). Those looking for more advanced books should consider the three "LaTeX Companion" books by Goosens and friends (these books are suitable for use as reference). The truly advanced user should have a look at "TeX Unbound" (not specific to LaTeX, but extremely useful once you are capable of reading and absorbing its contents). For the novice, I would recommend the Lamport book in addition to this one: it is thin, easy to carry around, and does a fantastic job presenting concepts (doesn't cover nearly as much ground as this book, but does a much, much better job at what it does cover).

I agree with the last two reviewers that Latex for Linux is an excellent teaching book, with simple explanations and lots of examples. The explanations may be simple but the material explained isn't---NFSS is usually considered advanced. Here, it was tucked in where it logically belonged. And made understandable.

I didn't find the typesetting ugly. I have a copy of the 2nd printing, so maybe they improved the print quality--it looks fine to me.

Paul Jackson's review wasn't very relevant. He didn't seem to have gotten far enough into the book to know the author was a her not a him. When I'm learning a new environment, I'm looking for a good, clear tutorial not a "good read" This book is a very good tutorial.

I found this book to be the most up to date Red Hat book in its class, covering the recent Red Hat innovations like the new network and system administration tools (something missing from many other Red Hat books). Though accommodating to the beginner, it provides professional level discussions of server, system, and network administration. Security coverage is very extensive including topics like latest encryption tools, integrity checks, and firewall configuration. Claims that the book overemphasizes GUIs are completely wrong. For example, the book spends almost 40 pages detailing configuration of Linux FTP servers (for which there is no GUI tool). Unix features such as shells, scripts, and regular expressions are covered in far more detail than any other book in its class. As far as GUIs are concerned, Gnome and KDE are here to stay and have become an integral part of most software projects in the Linux community. In all I found it to be not only the most current Red Hat 7.2 book in print, but also fully compatible with Red Hat 7.3.

I found The Complete Reference not very complete. If you are a PC user and making the move to Linux you will fine this book very helpful. If you are a Unix user (Solaris, AIX, HPUX etc...) and are transitioning to Linux you will find this book severely lacking. For the most part it only shows you how to do things using the GUI. The book gives no reference to the underlying files/commands that are being edited/executed. Most Unix users prefer command line which allows for automation through scripting not to mention the ability to troubleshoot.

I found The Complete Reference not very complete. If you are a PC user and making the move to Linux you will fine this book very helpful. If you are a Unix user (Solaris, AIX, HPUX etc...) and are transitioning to Linux you will find this book severely lacking. For the most part it only shows you how to do things using the GUI. The book gives no reference to the underlying files/commands that are being edited/executed. Most Unix users prefer command line which allows for automation through scripting not to mention the ability to troubleshoot.

Being a newcomer to Linux, with an extensive background in the "other" OS, I spent quite a while debating over several Linux books. Even though I had installed Red Hat 7.3, this book on 7.2 SEEMED to be the best of the lot. Now after several weeks of observing the author going aimlessly 'round in circles trying to explain concepts, I've had enough and must shell out MORE bucks trying to find a decent Red Hat book, as this one is destined for the trash bin. The book is very poorly organized and the author never focuses on one topic long enough to fully explain it. The final straw came when, in the chapter "Setting Up a Local Area Network...", section titled "Internet Access by Local Hosts", he explains how to set up the gateway host for IP masquerading but never even touches the topic of how to set up the host to connect to the Internet through the gateway. I was, and still am, absolutely livid. Since he stopped halfway through the explanation, can I have half of my money back?? Isn't there SOMEONE out there with thorough knowledge of Linux who has the ability to effectively convey that knowledge in type????

I am tired of all the books that have the audacity label themselves as "complete reference". I have used linux for several years and this book is very much lacking in details. Security is coverly too lightly. The author focuses on the gui front ends for system administration, which may be fine for a home user toying around for the first time, but a serious administrator needs more information about what goes on behind the scenes. As a previous reviewer stated, this book covers a lot but doesn't cover anything in depth.

This book is a good introduction to someone who know little about linux but I would not recommend it to anyone who plans to use a linux machine as a serious production server.

A doctrine of the open source movement is that although the software is free, you have to pay for the support and documentation. While anyone can ..get the Red Hat Linux software for free, books on Linux or other open source topics will cost the reader money. But for readers who are willing to shell out [the money]for a book about Linux security, Red Hat Linux Security and Optimization is a good overview on the core concepts of Linux security and how to secure, optimize, and harden Red Hat.

The book is titled Red Hat Linux Security and Optimization, indicating that both topics are covered, but the bulk of this book (chapters 8 - 21) really deals with security topics. Only the first 7 chapters deal with system and network performance.

Part 1 of the book comprises three chapters on system performance. Issues such as performance basics and kernel tuning are discussed. It shows how users can compile and install their own custom kernel. Chapter 3 is on file system tuning and deals with standard issues such as determining which file system to use and the creation of volumes and partitions.

The three chapters of Part 2 (Network and Service Performance) detail the issues of network and server performance. Chapter 5 provides a good overview of tweaking Apache and the use of Squid.

Part 3, System Security, is the heart of the book. The author takes a bottom up approach to security, where he starts with kernel security and progresses to other topics such as file system security, network security, passwords, and more.

Part 4 details network security, from DNS and BIND, to SSL, FTP, and the other major networking protocols. Chapter 17 has a good synopsis of email and the vulnerabilities associated with open email gateways, and how to control mail relays so as not to be used as a spam clearinghouse.

The book finishes with Part 5, which comprises two chapters about Linux firewalls. It also includes information about VPNs, SSL tunnels, and assessment tools.

The enclosed CD-ROM has a lot of security software, including standard security tools such as John the Ripper, netcat, nessus, nmap, and more. Is also includes other software such as Tripwire, Saint, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, tcpdump, and more. Also included is an electronic version of the book. With the exception of the electronic copy of the book, everything on the CD-ROM is available free off the Net. It would have been nice if the book could have included a second CD-ROM with the Linux operating system software. Although the software can be downloaded from Red Hat, the nearly 1 GB of data can take quite a while to download, even with a broadband connection.

Red Hat Linux Security and Optimization is a straightforward book that details all of the rudiments of Linux functionality and security. While the book is written for Red Hat, the majority of the information can be applied to other flavors of Linux. Overall, Red Hat Linux Security and Optimization is a good option for readers who want a security reference book....

Red Hat is synonymous to Linux for many people, and this book is obviously trying to cash in on that. The editing of this book leaves much to be desired - there are some really terrible errors throughout. I am usually partial to books that have CDs with them, but in this case it doesn't add anything. The tools on the CD are freely downloadable from the internet, and are being updated constantly. The versions on the CD are very old, so you need to download new versions anyway.

Overall, for my money, I'd buy the oreilly security book or the hacking linux exposed one.

Great Book!! Great Writer!!

Nice to have a book like this.

I want to begin with whats good about the book. It does a good job of covering Linux security concepts, and centralizing them in a well laid out, easily referenced book. Others have pointed out that a lot of this information is available on the net for free, however without a reference like this they wouldn't know what they should be looking for. (How many folks know their BIND server should run in a chroot environment to even begin the research?).

Despite having Red Hat in its title, and being released as a redhat Press book, the book is surprisingly generic in its treatment. While that may be a welcome releif to Suse/Debian/etc users, its a bit annoying to redhat users who were expecting more specific help, and perhaps less conflicting help. Several of the security measures covered in the book have already been implemented in the default redhat install, except using different usernames, file paths, etc.

Some of this may be an artifact of the book not covering the latest release, but some have been around long enough to convince me the book was written to a far more generic audience originally then given a new title. Which isn't bad by itself, just not what a novice user would expect, and might not catch.

My final concern is that some of the implementation steps are just flat wrong. The section on running BIND in a chroot environment is one, it describes the process in 7 steps (only 6 are enumerated) and does not mention redhat's prefered method of passing the options to the daemon. However, since knowing that it should/can be done is half the battle in linux, the correct procedure can be found on the web.

This book has so many flaws I would not recommend it to my enemy. The scripts are totally useless!! You have to rewrite them completely, and no what you are doing beforehand. If I knew what I was doing beforehand, I wouldn't need the book! I can't believe a publisher would let something as bad as this go to press. I don't normally criticize books, but this was too much. If I could rate it a negative, believe me, I would this doesn't even deserve a 1. Maybe I'm just talking about a small section and the rest is good, but I don't need the rest. Microsoft ships products with LESS bugs in them then this book.

The book is a good one, and it possesses the mother-load of information to be expected from a Slackware Book. Unfortunately, the book spends much to much time on advanced topics that noobs have very little information on. It talks about Advanced Perl scripting, when the user only wants to know how to use different fonts.

Not for noobs.

Then again, slackware never was. :D

Actually ... this one had a bit of disappointment going into all the gui / motif programming; but that's partially due to the year it was printed ...
but also ... it was written by someone who's proud to be affiliated with SCO ... but times were different when this was written so I won't judge it on that ... but i've also put this one on the back-burner just to due to the way SCO has treated the development community in whole ... so its hard to give any opinion of this

Slackware Linux Release is a very comprehensive book covering much of the topic. I thought it was an exceptional book! I successfully installed in an older X386 33MHz machine. Initial install isn't exactly automatic but is manageable for one with reasonable computer skills. Book not only covers basics but is also good for intermediate use and as a general UNIX reference. Browsing through other books on the topic, I would strongly recommend this book as well as the Slackware distribution of Linux that comes with it.

The book's best point was the copy of Linux that came with it. There wasn't too much there as far as teaching you how to use Linux unless you already had a bit of knowlege of Unix/Linux Commands. On a positve side, the last few chapters about network programming in C were quite helpful to a beginner in that area...

Slackware is a great os and this book shows you how you will make Slackware run at peak preformance and show to you that the worlds highest price and most baught virus win 9* is such a piece of crap. Buy this book now you will not be sorry you did. Power to the Penguin The_Phreaker

The suits give each other millions of dollars.

Robert Young styles himself as a salesman, not a technical type, and it shows.

Meanwhile the real story goes untold.

You can be a Linux enthusiast yet still find this book about as dull as the instruction booklet for your microwave oven. It's a combination of corporate cheerleading, meeting minutes, and open-source propagandizing. I approve of Young and his efforts, but this badly written, chaotically organized, and totally colorless book gives them a bad name. It has none of the atmospherics and vivid personality of, say, a book like BURN RATE. I cringe to say it, but even Bill Gates's THE ROAD AHEAD was more interesting...

a great text on the history of the open source movement and on the first IPO for a business catering to the linux community.

a new business model has proven successful. hats off to robert young and wendy goldman rohm for taking the time to do the research to "get it right" and to map out an alternative to the more traditional business plans of the past.

it just became required reading for our team. methinks investors wanting to understand the new model [of making money based upon a 'free' product] will gain tremendous benefit too.

This is the story of Red Hat through its public offering in 1999. Red Hat is the largest provider of fee-based Linux products and services in the world. The book emphasizes the economic model advantages of creating a company based on providing open source software to established companies.

Linux is an operating system for computers that offers many advantages for users by typically being faster, more reliable, less expensive, and easier to improve. It is an open source program, which means that you get all of the software (including the source code) for free and you are licensed to make any changes you want to it for your own use and to share or resell. Unlike other operating systems, this one was developed by the volunteer work by thousands of contributors around the world. Their motivation came from the desire to have a better computer environment to work in, to be able to do their own work better, an altruistic desire to help others, and for personal recognition. Through Red Hat and other Linux providers, Linux is becoming the major alternative operating system to Windows in personal computers.

Think of Linux as being somewhat like creating the world's largest free electronic library for accessing information, by having people with the copyrights on all of the most valuable information share it for free on-line with volunteer librarians to put it all into shape and to create the Web site.

I strongly urge you to read Eric Raymond's excellent book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, before reading this book. Although the open source software movement is accurately summarized in Under the Radar, you will not fully understand its development and potential power without more background. With that background, this book deserves four stars. Without that background, this is a three star book.

If you are like me, what interests you about Linux is whether it will spread beyond advanced users in scientific laboratories. The first sign that that could happen was when ISPs (Internet Service Providers) began favoring Linux for their servers.

In Under the Radar, you will learn a great deal about the reactions at Microsoft, Intel, Netscape, Dell, and other major computer industry companies to the news of Linux's success in these environments. To me, this information confirmed that Linux's best days are ahead of it, as Microsoft's are behind it. While most people are focusing on the Department of Justice's case against Microsoft, the real action is in the development of Linux-based competition for Microsoft. That is where the break-up of the Microsoft monopoly will come from. Now that you can get personal computers with Linux preloaded from Dell and others (and a Windows clone of Linux is just down the road), the monopoly is doomed. That will be good for us all.

What will even be better for us is if Linus Torvald's vision of eliminating all software patents occurs. Then open source will become the standard for software rather than the exception.

I also learned a lot about how Red Hat will be important in taking Linux into the corporate market by making people feel comfortable with its reliability and predictability. I wish the book had spent more time in discussing how current and potential customers evaluate Red Hat's version of Linux. That would have made this a five star book, assuming you already had the open source software background to understand how the development process works.

Where else is secrecy delaying human progress? (I call this the trade secret stall.) Could it be that this will be the case with patents on genes? How can the equivalent of open source development of gene therapies be pursued to accelerate healthy progress?

Open your mind to the full potential for cooperation!

A fascinating story that succeeds somehow despite the terrible writing. It as if the authors simply assembled at random the chapters and, in many cases, whole paragraphs within any given chapter. There is no discernable flow or organization to the tale -- chronoglogical or otherwise -- and it is difficult to follow the events being described. As acknolwedged in one of the introductions, it appears that the book was all too hastily thrown together in the face of a looming deadline. Still, the story is worth reading for software engineers, entrepreneurs and others involved in the VC industry.

Linux system administrators who want to solve problems quickly may already have many Linux references at hand for in-depth treatment, but the advantage of LINUX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION is it's a quicker reference than most - and thus more valuable to Linux programming libraries and programmer collections than weightier coverages. Its at-a-glance pages offer up plenty of real-world case history scenarios, question/answer formats, and tips which advance the training of existing Linux administrators who want to enhance and expand on their skills. From installing Apache and MySQL on a web server to using Linux visualization with VMW are to run multiple kernels on one piece of hardware, this is an item of choice for any Linux programmer.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Pretty good book, unfortunately it has no information on setting up NIS or LDAP. Other than that a solid read.

I found this book very disapointing. My main concern was with the authors decision to base the examples solely on Debian distros of Linux. This is not mentioned in the the books description.

The book also advises that there is a website to accompany the book with examples, tips and new procedures. This turns out to be a one page website with 5 links that refer back to the same homepage with no content.

'Linux System Administration' by Tom Adelstein is a wonderful little book for doing exactly what the title says. For anyone that uses Linux on a daily basis in their jobs or is new to said role, this is a great book/tool for learning and configuring Linux. The only negative that I really have is I usually applaud brevity but in this case I will have to say that this book is a wee bit short. Covering 250+ pages, I felt like for a book to have 'system administration' in the title for such a big topic more content should have been put within the confines of this binding. What is covered is as follows:

01. Requirements for a Linux System Administrator
02. Setting Up a Linux Multifunction Server
03. The Domain Name System
04. An Initial Internet-Ready Environment
05. Mail
06. Administering Apache
07. Load-Balanced Clusters
08. Local Network Services
09. Virtualization in the Modern Enterprise
10. Scripting
11. Backing Up Data

Solid writing, nice layout and good content make this an easy recommendation but limited size also limits how high of a recommendation I can make. Hopefully in the 2nd Edition there is more content covered.

**** RECOMMENDED

I shelled out the full price for this at a local bookstore with the hopes that it could help me setup a new Debian LINUX server. Normally, O'Reilly books have a very high level of accuracy and detail, this one deviates from that standard quite a bit. I used to admin BSD boxes many moons ago and thought this would be the perfect refresher course for me to get back up to speed with the current technology. From the beginning of the book, I started running into problems and was getting confusing errors that were not at all mentioned in the book. For starters, this book is based on older software packages that aren't included in the current distribution, so you have to use your favorite search engine to find out what the current version and installation package names are. Next, the configuration files the authors tell you to modify are in many cases wrong or non-existent. They have you comment out lots of lines in various config files only to discover later on in the book that you have to uncomment them so things like PHP will actually work. On top of that, the ISPCONFIG setup fails, as there is some sort of problem with the PHP installation. AARGH! I think I spent more time playing Sherlock Holmes on the web than I did reading the book. Which, I actually recommend that YOU do if you are in a similar position as me... To add to my frustration with the authors, their website is basically vacant. My opinion is they cashed the check from O'Reilly and forgot about the rest of their commitments to the readers who are spending from $29 to $44.99 USD on a copy of this outdated and confusing waste of paper. There might be a few useful tidbits here and there, but the web is your best resource for this information. I gave it 2 stars because it does point you in a general direction of how you might want to set things up, but the explanation of it all is generally wrong.

First I was a little disapointed in it's Red Hat slant. I'm more of a Debian fan so I was kindof bummed that all the code was in rpm format. After downloading Alian and converting the rpms to debs I then installed the code and had to go through and fix up a lot of stuff. (because they put things in different places)

The book itself is pretty useless, I was hoping for more of a description of how to get certain things done. Mainly I was hoping for a description of how to create a read only filesystem so you don't have to worry about system checks on startup but the author doesn't cover this at all.

Overall there are some pretty neat ideas but I was disapointed that it all revolves around Red Hat and the author doesn't talk about making them work on other systems. He also doesn't talk about how the scripts work, just how to install them (rpm -i...) I thought the book was a bit simple and should have been called "Red Hat Toys"

Well, I am really serious about linux. My career is lowering TCO for small to medium businesses by rolling their M$ servers over to *nix solutions. (Yeah people actually do it... and it's becoming more and more frequent.)

I gave this book 5 stars because:
1) it's remarkably creative
2) it's easy to read
3) FUN and FREEDOM are the backbones of linux, and I think this book will help spread that message.

(It's better then complaining about the book being written for the lowest common denominator, RedHat. I'm a SuSe/Gentoo user BTW.)

Reading this book took me to a place that very clearly reminded me why I prefer linux over M$. FREEDOM to play without rediculous licensing or expensive Hardware.

The book is an easy read (I knocked it out in an evening.) but still worth the 30+ bucks I spent on it. As far as doing the projects?? The picture frame looks like too much fun to passup... I'm searching online for an old laptop tonight... heheh :)

I wish I'd found this book at a retail store where I could have looked at it before I payed for it. I guess I have two complaints with this book.

The first (bigger) complaint stems from that adage that if you give a guy a fish, he can eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he can eat for the rest of his life. I really hoped this book would be more of a how-to approach on how to get the software going. Instead, it came with a CD with an RPM for every project and simple instructions. Most of the projects seemed like nothing more than: "Start with an Athlon 1.8GHz with a half gig of RAM and a big hard drive, install the entire linux distribution of your choice, then run the RPM on the CD in the book. You're done! Now go play!" I was really hoping to see more explanation of what was going on in the guts of the software, and a more minimalist approach to the software and hardware requirements. I can find anything I want on the internet for "build this kernel, re-compile those binaries, and edit the files in /etc to make it work". More often than not, though, most of the stuff on the internet is beyond what most folks that have been using windows all along and are trying to make sense of the internals of Linux are capable of understanding. Unfortunately, this text makes a poor stepping-stone for the newbie to get a good start on learning HOW LINUX WORKS.

My other issue goes back to what I mentioned in the previous paragraph about what I felt were frequently over-the-top hardware requirements. I'd hoped I'd be able to employ my old Pentium III with a 12-GB disk and 256 MB of RAM for some of the projects. Unfortunately, most of the projects were calling for a brand-new machine. For instance, if I recall correctly, the video recorder project asked for hardware that would probably end up costing in excess of $800. Are you kidding me? I'll just keep using my VCR, thus saving me the cost of having to buy a TiVo and pay for the monthly service.

Anyone interested in buying my book? Send me an email.

When I frst saw this book into the store shelf I thought finally a great book about linux projects! Well... it didn't take much time to get back on my feet when I started reading it. I'm not saying it's a ripoff but it's to basic. I haven't learned much when what I
wanted more exactly was to learn much about cool stuff you can do with linux. And also the fact that it is complimentary to R.H. 9 makes it awkward because the point is to run the projects on old computers it would of make much more sense to pack in a small and fast distro that can run better on old computers than Red hat. Finally, don't hope to much about this book except from making your imagination work towards better project than they did. I would not consider every 13 projects in this book "projects", most of them are not projects they just packed them in to make more content! Enough said, don't wasted your money on this if you are at least the intermidiate linux user. Else look other much cooler stuff on the web or mayby some other book. But for the real newbie, it may be a good start... maby

OK. I bought the book, Linux Toys, for one reason and one reason only: Chapter 15 - Digital Picture Frame. There is just not enough info in the book for neophites such as myself. The website: www/linuxtoys.com does not help either.

First, I have to say that I am not usually fond of computer books in the Thompson Course Technology series -- too many of them are NOT really written by knowledgeable people, and it shows in the errors and misguided opinions passed on to students and professors charged using these books.

So, I was pleasantly surprised at the content (of a Linux book in particular) by Thompson. Most of the information is relevant, useful, and introduces students to important skills and management practices when using Linux in a business environment.

I do have some issues with the orders of the chapters -- for example, file and folder permissions vs. users and groups chapters should be back-to-back, and there are a couple errors in laboratory exercises. For example, a couple of the exercises, done in order, are intended to demonstrate the effect of one user assuming another's UID. But the point to be demonstrated doesn't actually happen. New Linux users won't realize there was an error in the thought process of the text, and will think they "just missed the point" due to their own imagined ineptness. There are a few typos but they are minor -- if teachers (and even casual users Linux users) don't catch them outright, shame on them, they are so simple.

I actually have a *couple* of not-so-minor gripes, and struggled with whether to give the book 3 or 4 stars, but then it is so much better than other Linux books in some areas that I couldn't give it a 3.

My first big gripe is that the chapter on so-called "X Configuration" is *NOT* about *configuring* *X*! It is actually about *customizing* the *desktop*, using the desktop utilities, for personal use/preferences (the way you change your desktop properties in Windows). The topic of *X CONFIGURATION* -- one of the first tasks most new Linux users must learn, usually necessary since Linux is not OEM (preinstalled) on most computers -- is actually NOT COVERED AT ALL!

Along the same lines, the *obvious* flow of post-install activities in the book should include taking a Linux distro that boots non-GUI by default, an introduction to the format of an X configuration file, how to research your computer hardware, and how to edit the default X configuration file for all users per hardware requirements and to start the login manager and desktop of choice.

Even in network environments, this is a common task because X can be run as a network application, or for other reasons. Unlike Windows, the OS is more modular; the underlying kernel, the "window server" (X) and the "desktop" (GUI look-and-feel and utilities) are 3 very seperate things and allow freedom of choice.

My second gripe is there is no coverage of package installation! Very, very bad! How can you be certified in Linux without learning to install software on it? One or two chapters need to be added here, covering RPM and TGZ installs at a minimum. Users need background on what is done when software is installed on Linux, the most common ways in which software install locations and config tend to differ among distros, and the most popular package managers out there (brief contrast of strengths and weaknesses).

Ideally, students would actually perform both RPM and TGZ installs, would uninstall them afterwards, would use one or more command-line tools to update a package or two, would use a popular package manager to install a new package and look for updates, and would download source code manually and compile at least one package from scratch, just to get a feel for it. An example is OpenOffice.org, because it is easy to install (few steps needed), and new OO versions tend to change folder names and locataions, (students must deal with this and uninstall the old version and delete remnant folders to avoid confusion before installing the new, then edit desktop shortcuts to point to new executable in new location).

My third gripe is the use of an outdated OS, and one with such a poor installer. I think the author was thinking that Red Hat is popular with commercial enterprises (certainly) and so it would be a good choice. But Fedora Core 3??? C'mon, that's the stone age (at least in PC years)! Plus, this OS boots to a GUI (not a good for newbies to Linux sysadmin who need to learn to manually configure X). Most books will make a better choice of distro or at least customize their own "release" of the distro to match the purpose of the book.

Also, the menu-based installer on Fedora Core 3 is really crap. Though I am a seasoned Linux user who habitually changes partition schemes and multi-boot environments, the menu logic and layout/alignment of selections was so poor that I became confused and had to backtrack/start over several times during my install.

However, complaints aside, this is generally an excellent book. It gives some excellent lessons and examples on using the "vi" editor and using various text-manipulation, file-manipulation, and search tools. The vast majority of non-newbies in this book's audience will learn new tricks for example, grep, dmesg, cat, top. The chapter on boot loaders is excellent, contrasting the functionality of LILO and GRUB, and the optional parameters which can be used in their config files. While this book assumes no Linux knowledge at all on the part of the user, it is in some ways almost a "power users" cookbook. I learned much from this book and use it as a reference.

Some of this book's major strengths are the clarity of the writing, the usefulness of the lessons, and the extensive number of exercises which can be used both in a college course and on your own.

I strongly feel this text is overdue for a revision -- below are some recommendations summing the above points and adding some things that need less explanation:

1) X CONFIGURATION NEEDS A CHAPTER, and soon after install and intro to the file system. (Desktop customization should just be deleted because it's not an administration topic and anyone who's used any OS before can figure it out all by themselves.)

2)PACKAGE INSTALLATION, COMPILATION, AND UPDATING NEEDS A CHAPTER OR TWO.

3) CHAPTERS ON USERS/GROUPS AND FILE/FOLDER PERMISSIONS NEED TO BE CONSECUTIVE. (Chapter 11 is too late to be giving this info.)

4) THE BOOK NEEDS TO USE AN RPM/TGZ-COMPATIBLE DISTRO WITH A DECENT INSTALLER AND MORE APPROPRIATE CONFIG -- either switch distros or customize it for the book, and definitely use something newer. (Why not switch to kernel 2.6 while they're at it?)

5) IDEALLY, THE BOOK AND THE DISTRO WOULD INCLUDE TWO DESKTOPS. At least introduce students to two, even if the majority of the book will use one in particular. I don't even necessarily mean KDE vs. GNOME, could be one of those vs. a much more stripped-down desktop to really contrast. Assuming the text already taught basic X config, including login manager and desktop loading, now teach them the main benefit -- users can tweak their own config, and the first way to do so is choose a desktop other than the default for all users. Which brings us to #6...

6) GIVE A USEFUL EXAMPLE OF WHAT THE "SKELETON DIRECTORY" IS USED FOR, NOT JUST A VAGUE EXPLANATION. Have an exercise where users place a couple default folders and organizational document in here and a copy of the X config, create a new user, log in as that user and view the doc, customize X to start a different desktop, copy the edited config to the correct location, reboot, log in as that new user again -- tada! Skeleton directories are even useful on a home system, but they are mostly used in organizations with many users.

I hated this class. But the book is good.

I bought this book to study for the certification exam and now have to get rid of it after one chapter and find another. This is not my first certification exam and not my first experience with a certification book. I was shocked when I saw that the book had no answers to any of the questions in it, not one! The answers are only available to instructors. What? So the book is really not much use if you aren't taking a class and have an instructor to correct your mistakes. I'd like to ask the authors who decided not to put the answers as every other certification book I've ever used, are certification exams usually taken by ten year olds who don't have enough self control to not look on the answers until after completing the questions? If you just want a book to learn Linux then it might very well be a fine book but to study for and pass the certification exam it's a fat zero unless you like combing through chapters to find the answers to end of chapter questions.

Book came after a few days, was in reasonable condition, I would buy from them again.

I couldn't get more than a dozen pages into this book. The writing is dense and entirely colorless, as if the author wants to punish you for daring to read it. There are serious misstatements about licensing and other subjects. I wouldn't recommend this book to someone unless I *wanted* them to fail.