You may be contemplating your first Linux installation. Or you may have been using Linux for years and need to know more about adding a network printer or setting up an FTP server. Running Linux, now in its fifth edition, is the book you'll want on hand in either case. Widely recognized in the Linux community as the ultimate getting-started and problem-solving book, it answers the questions and tackles the configuration issues that frequently plague users, but are seldom addressed in other books.

This fifth edition of Running Linux is greatly expanded, reflecting the maturity of the operating system and the teeming wealth of software available for it. Hot consumer topics such as audio and video playback applications, groupware functionality, and spam filtering are covered, along with the basics in configuration and management that always have made the book popular.

Running Linux covers basic communications such as mail, web surfing, and instant messaging, but also delves into the subtleties of network configuration--including dial-up, ADSL, and cable modems--in case you need to set up your network manually. The book can make you proficient on office suites and personal productivity applications--and also tells you what programming tools are available if you're interested in contributing to these applications.

Other new topics in the fifth edition include encrypted email and filesystems, advanced shell techniques, and remote login applications. Classic discussions on booting, package management, kernel recompilation, and X configuration have also been updated.

The authors of Running Linux have anticipated problem areas, selected stable and popular solutions, and provided clear 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.

Whether you're using Linux on a home workstation or maintaining a network server, Running Linux will provide expert advice just when you need it.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 134 Ratings

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.

THe best Linux Book on the Market - 2009-08-15
Reviewer Rating:
This is hands-down, the best Linux book on the Market today...It navigates you easily through an ocean of knowledge when dealing with this operating system. One can quite literally begin at page one and read through the final chapter and have an expert view of Linux Operating Sytems. Highest recommendations.

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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