Subscriber Reviews

Average Rating:  Based on 1 Rating

" an above average introduction to the world of Lin" - by ses1984 on 13-JUN-2010
Reviewer Rating:
I read the contents of this book almost cover to cover; I only skipped the multimedia section. I read this because I was interested in reading "Automating Linux and Unix System Administration," and it listed "Beginning Ubuntu" as preceding it in a sequence.

In short, this book is an above average introduction to the world of Linux, but best suited complete Linux novices. There is very little in this book that would be of interest to someone who has basic experience with Linux in general. There were a few bits here and there that were new to me, but it represented the kind of information that I could have absorbed from a man page if I needed to learn more about a particular program.

The book included a concise and clear introduction to the BASH shell, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, pipes and file redirection. I think this is probably the most difficult chapter to right for a book targeted at novices, and it seemed very clear to me.

There are two things I think are missing from this book. One is a procedure for surviving a major upgrade. Every ubuntu user is going to do this sooner or later. A novice could use some advice interpreting the various dialogs that will pop up during a distribution upgrade. Another is a guide about compiling programs from source. Yes, every program will be a little bit different, but there is some basic information that pulls together knowledge of the FHS, what packages are required to compile software, and the like, that a novice would definitely not know if they needed to build a package from source. Oftentimes, the best way to obtain support for a particular package via mailing lists, forums or IRC is to attempt to use the latest version; some communities will refuse to help you unless you are running the latest version. Other communities are even worse, displaying will be openly contemptuous if you reveal you're using the version offered in the ubuntu repositories.
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