Acknowledgments

Writing can be a lonely endeavor, but in the course of writing a book like this, there are all sorts of people whose paths you cross and who make the result better. Many thanks to Jenny Watson, my original acquisitions editor, who gave me the chance to do this, and Mark Taber, who allowed me to continue down this road. Also thanks to my agent, Carole McClendon at Waterside Productions. Endless props to Rob Shimonski, who tech edited the bulk of the first edition of this book and to Tim Boronczyk for his tech edit of the entire text of the second edition. Scott Meyers offered excellent advice, Mandie Frank shepherded the review process, and Jill Batistick did a marvelous copy edit.

Special and everlasting thanks to Don Bangs, who got me my first computer and always responds to hardware emergencies.

To all the developers, testers, documenters, and users of openSUSE Linux and all the wonderful applications that go with it: Thank you isn’t enough, but I hope it’ll do for now. To the participants on all the mailing lists: Your helpfulness to me and all the other users should never go unnoticed. To my friends in the Boulder and Milwaukee Linux Users Groups: Couldn’t have done any of this without you.

Finally, to my wife Jeanette, who always believed I was a writer and my two favorite distractions, Hannah and Ben (and their parents, Bev and Bob): May you grow up happy and in a Linux world.