When I first installed Caldera OpenLinux on my PC, I was a newcomer to Linux and didn't really know my way around. Caldera does provide decent documentation for its product, but the installation and user's guide is a bit spare fora newbie to make much use of. This book is the one that took me from being a wet-eared newbie to a competent OpenLinux user. The book assumes that you know very little about Linux and gives you an introduction to the history of Linux, the open source philosophy, the distributions of Linux and a host of other pertinent information before taking through Star Office, the K Desktop Environment (using and manipualting), the command line, package management with RPM, the file system, configuring the X Server, configuring sound, the file system, networking (including using Samba and NetWare), connecting to the Internet, reading the XF86Config file, tweaking, programming languages, compiling source code, shell scripting, runlevels, troubleshooting, and a range of almost every possible problem that a home user or small office user will run into. This book can get quite in depth, and is suitable for those who want to get into Linux quite deeply, or for simple casual use as a reference guide. This is the one book that should ship with every version of Caldera. With this book, you'll find that Linux really can be quite fun to learn and quite easy as well.

This relates to 5th edition.

The overall content seems valuable for a starter to intermediate Linux user. However, individual chapters are very poorly organised. For instance, text switches from one topic to another, then back to the original one, almost as if points were noted down in the sequence the author thought of them. Typographical and syntactical errors are rife, making it impossible to rely on the information imparted.

Quite obviously, the book has not been proof-read. It is unfortuate really, because it could so easily have been a useful piece of work.

I have accumulated 4-5 Linux books in the past 5 years, so I struggled a long while before I got this book as I am neither a great fan of Que's books, nor the in any way enthusiastic about getting a year-old book (especially in the fast changing world of Linux!) Anyway I got it in the end after browsing all Caldera and general Linux titles in a local bookstore - and looking back I never regretted my decision.

I find this book extraordinary in the breadth and depth it covers. It has very good coverage on a wide range of topics in addition to the usual installation and configuration and common sysadmin tasks that is present in most Linux books, and the authors had a lot of insight into the topics (I was skimming through the sections on pgp, ssh, tcp wrappers and firewalls and learned a lot from it).

It is, at the same time, very well written and easy to read and gave me much less headache than reading the howto's, man pages, RFCs, or my Linux Bible! My only criticism is that it is sometimes a bit application-oriented (e.g. it was focussing mainly on swat in the Apache configuration chapter and did not cover manual configuration nor gave explanation of the Apache directives).

In general I find the book well structured and very well written and I definately hope to see the authors continue to update the with the new features of the new versions of Caldera Linux.

While the back of the book says it is aimed at Intermediate to advanced users, the introduction claims that it is aimed at beginners.

I have never used Linux much, and have recently installed a dual-boot system. The book mentions LILO, but is completely incorrect regarding its installation..actually..it doesn't cover the installation at all.

This book has a very scatter-brained approach, and is incorrect far too often for me.

This book is rubbish. Please do NOT buy it! If I had to rewrite the book, it would have been 40 pages instead of 900! The CD-ROM's that come with the book are rubbish to. You're better off buying Red Hat Linux at your local computer shop.