| Overview
Once a little-known productivity boost for personal computers,
Linux is now becoming a central part of computing environments
everywhere. This operating system now serves as corporate hubs, Web
servers, academic research platforms, and program development
systems. All along it's also managed to keep its original role as
an enjoyable environment for personal computing, learning system
administration and programming skills, and all-around hacking. This
book, now in its third edition, has been widely recognized for
years in the Linux community as the getting-started book people
need. It goes into depth about configuration issues that often trip
up users but are glossed over by other books. A complete,
UNIX-compatible operating system developed by volunteers on the
Internet, Linux is distributed freely in electronic form and at a
low cost from many vendors. Developed first on the PC, it has been
ported to many other architectures and can now support such
heavy-duty features as multiprocessing, RAID, and clustering.
Software packages on Linux include the Samba file server and Apache
Web server; the X Window System (X11R6); TCP/IP networking
(including PPP, SSH, and NFS support); popular software tools such
as Emacs and TeX; a complete software development environment
including C, C++, Java, Perl, Tcl/Tk, and Python; libraries,
debuggers, multimedia support, scientific and database
applications, and much more. Commercial applications that run on
Linux range from end-user tools like word processors and
spreadsheets to mission-critical software like the Oracle, Sybase,
Informix, and IBM DB/2 database management systems. Running
Linux has all the information you need to understand, install,
and start using the Linux operating system. This includes a
comprehensive installation tutorial, complete information on system
maintenance, tools for document development and programming, and
guidelines for network, file, printer, and Web site administration.
New topics in the third edition include:
KDE, a desktop that brings the friendliness and ease-of-use of
Windows or the Macintosh to Linux Samba, which turns Linux into an office hub that serves files
and printers to Microsoft systems PPP, the most popular software for logging into remote systems
over phone lines Revised instructions for installation and configuration,
particularly covering the Red Hat, SuSE and Debian
distributions
Editorial ReviewsProduct DescriptionOnce a little-known productivity boost for personal computers, Linux is becoming a central part of computing environments everywhere. This book, now in its third edition, has been widely recognized for years in the Linux community as the getting-started book people need. It goes into depth about configuration issues that often trip up users but are glossed over by other books. Running Linux has all the information you need to understand, install, and start using the Linux operating system. This includes a comprehensive installation tutorial, complete information on system maintenance, tools for document development and programming, and guidelines for network, file, printer, and Web site administration. New topics in the third edition include: - KDE, a desktop that brings the ease-of-use of Windows or the Macintosh to Linux
- Samba, which turns Linux into an office hub that serves files and printers to Microsoft systems
- PPP, the most popular software for logging into remote systems over phone lines
- Revised instructions for installation and configuration, particularly covering the Red Hat, SuSE and Debian distributions
| Amazon.com ReviewEarlier editions of O'Reilly's Running Linux served as central guides on installing, configuring, and using the OS. The third edition of this guide covers the kernel through version 2.2.1 and will prove especially useful to those with high technical aptitudes and a well-tested willingness to experiment with their computing environments. The explanation of how to rebuild the kernel--a particularly daunting task for many--deserves special praise, as do the sections on configuring network links and servers. Users will find that the informative, prose-heavy style packs maximum information into this book's pages. For example, the purpose of a Linux element is described and then the reader is shown various ways of using it, complete with explicit statements of what you type and what you get in response. Back this book up with a good command reference (Linux in a Nutshell is solid), and you'll be well on your way to Linux mastery. --David Wall Topics covered: KDE and Gnome windowing systems; Samba, file, and system management; shells; windowing systems and networking; installation on Alpha, PowerPC, Motorola 680x0, and Sparc boxes. |
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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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