| Overview
You're about to begin your first Linux installation. Or, you may
have been using Linux for years and need to know more about adding
a network printer or configuring for ADSL. Running Linux,
now in its fourth edition, is the book you'll want to reach for.
Widely recognized in the Linux community as the getting-started
book that people need, it answers the questions and tackles
configuration issues that frequently plague users, but are seldom
addressed in other books. Running Linux has everything
you'll need to understand, install, and start using Linux. The book
doesn't draw the line at the OS, or the shell, or the GUI, or even
at the point of essential applications. Rather, the authors,
experienced Linux enthusiasts, have anticipated problem areas,
selected stable and popular solutions, and provided clear
discussions and instructions to ensure that you'll have a
satisfying experience using Linux. The discussion is direct and
complete enough to guide novice users while still providing the
additional information experienced users will need to progress in
their mastery of Linux. The fourth edition of Running Linux
delves deeper into installation, configuring the windowing system,
system administration, and networking. New topics include
applications ready for prime time, basic security and firewalling,
package management on Debian, sound configuration, ADSL, the GNOME
desktop, the Postfix mail transfer agent, and the popular LAMP
configuration that combines Apache, MySQL, and PHP. A solid
foundation text for any Linux user, the book also includes
additional resources for dealing with special requirements imposed
by hardware, advanced applications, and emerging technologies.
Whether you are using Linux on a home workstation or maintaining a
network server, Running Linux will provide expert advice
just when you need it.
Editorial ReviewsProduct DescriptionRunning Linux has everything you'll need to understand, install, and start using Linux. The authors, experienced Linux enthusiasts, have anticipated problem areas, selected stable and popular solutions, and provided clear discussions and instructions to ensure that you'll have a satisfying experience using Linux. The discussion is direct and complete enough to guide novice users while still providing the additional information experienced users will need to progress in their mastery of Linux. The fourth edition of Running Linux delves deeper into installation, configuring the windowing system, system administration, and networking. New topics include applications ready for prime time, basic security and firewalling, package management on Debian, sound configuration, ADSL, the GNOME desktop, the Postfix mail transfer agent, and the popular LAMP configuration that combines Apache, MySQL, and PHP. A solid foundation text for any Linux user, the book also includes additional resources for dealing with special requirements imposed by hardware, advanced applications, and emerging technologies. | Amazon.com ReviewThe Linux operating system has made a lot of progress in the past few years, and Running Linux has progressed right along with it to remain the single best general-purpose book for curious computer users who want to install, use, and enjoy Linux. The team of authors present a text that's simultaneously detailed and readable. Coupled with an inquisitive and capable reader, that's a recipe for success with the world's most popular open-source operating system. This new edition adds coverage of the GNOME desktop environment, the Apache/MySQL/PHP server suite, and the Postfix mail transfer daemon. It also covers core capabilities and behaviors of Linux through kernel version 2.4. There's better coverage of network security (including firewalling and ADSL link configuration), and coverage of how to set up audio-related hardware and software. Perhaps best of all, this book conveys a sense of the "Linux attitude" as the authors see it. Linux, they say, is largely about experimentation, research, trial and error, and participation in a community. This comes in welcome contrast to books that focus on recipes (follow these steps to accomplish A; do these things to make your system do B). Though the authors of this book provide lots of how-to information, it's always presented with an eye toward further exploration. In explaining how to build the kernel, for example, the authors provide six concise steps as a reference, but then go on for several pages about designing makefiles and how to deal with error messages. This book's a treat. --David Wall Topics covered: Assuming you know next to nothing about Linux, socially and historically as well as technically, this book teaches you what you need to know to make the operating system meet your desktop and server computing requirements. Coverage takes you from preparing to install Linux (in a multi-OS environment if you wish), continues through system administration and the most useful applications (like TeX and Internet clients), and proceeds to cover programming tools and server daemons (notably Apache, MySQL, and PHP). The coverage is mostly generic, but peculiarities of Red Hat, SuSE, and Debian get attention, too. |
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Reader Reviews From Amazon (Ranked by 'Helpfulness') Average Customer Rating: based on 134 reviews. An introduction, 2009-05-21 Reviewer rating: I am neutral about this book. Nothing against it, won't recommend it, either.
Depends on what you already know about Linux, this may be good for you if you are a real beginner. I personally did not learn much from the book. If you need something in depth, you will need to find another book, there is nothing in it.
However, as the title of the book says it, this is only an introduction. | So far, so good..., 2008-06-15 Reviewer rating: BEWARE: Many of these customer reviews are dated. For example, the best and worst cited by Amazon are from 1999 and 2001, respectively. This is the 5th edition, published in late 2005/early 2006. FYI...
I gave it four stars simply because what I did read was very helpful, but I have much more to go. I may give it five later. | My GoTo Book, 2008-05-16 Reviewer rating: I love this book; I recommend it to people at least twice a day when I visit [...]. This book covers every aspect of installing and booting a GNU/Linux operating system, from choosing a distribution, to running specific pieces of software. It includes tangible and detailed, though introductory, material on hardware, networking, software installation, using Emacs and Vi, desktop environments, security, and package management. Many of the topics, such as Samba and networking, focus on making your GNU/Linux installation part of a wider network with a variety of operating systems. Some of it, for example the chapter on TCP/IP is not even GNU/Linux-specific, but is highly educational.
The best quality of this book that makes it my goto book is that it is a good introduction to thinking about things in the Unix tradition, and firmly keeps encouraging the reader to use the command-line instead of steering him or her to GUI tools. That's why I suggest reading the entire book (not necessarily comprehending, but reading) before trying to install a GNU/Linux distribution. | Not helpful, 2007-12-16 Reviewer rating: The back of the book says "widely recognized in the linux community as the ultimate getting started and problem-solving book", "will provide expert advice when you need it" and "one of the ultimate linux manuals". I haven't yet had a problem that this book helped me solve. I understand that it can't and isn't meant to cover everything. But I was annoyed that it's "in case of an emergency" section basically said that users should have a rescue cd with enough tools to recover -- but not much on how to recover. Now, whenever I break something, my recovery is 1) check Running Linux and find nothing helpful, then 2) throw the book into a corner and search the web for people with similar problems. | A truly wonderful intro to Linux all around., 2007-08-31 Reviewer rating: I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is new to Linux and attempting to figure their way around. It's not a great book for those who just want the how-do-I-do-this-without-having-to-understand-anything-under-the-covers approach. If you want that I would recommend going with a book like Spring Into Linux (Valade), which is much more of a get you up to speed as fast as possible without teaching you much.
I like so far how much detail this book gives you, though the reason I haven't given it 5 out of 5 is simply because I feel like it's lacking detail in some key areas (most notably so far for me would be its sparse offerings in the NFS section). However, the book itself does not claim to be exhaustive. In fact, it claims to be just the opposite and admits early on that its goal is only to give you enough information to be dangerous and then point you towards better maps if you so choose. That in itself is one of the reasons I like the book. They really do, for the most part, give you tremendous little intros to topics that help you understand not only how to do something, but also why you're doing it that way, why linux may have been designed in that way, etc. etc.
So, in short, great book for an in-depth intro to linux. However, if you're looking to spend your money for a book that treats any topic very in depth, I would recommend going with any of the other books in this series from O'Reilly, because this book was not designed for that. Good luck with Linux! |
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