Linux Timesaving Techniques for Dummies

Even though it's a bit beyond where I am right now with Linux, I was impressed with Susan Douglas and Korry Douglas's book Linux Timesaving Techniques For Dummies (Wiley). There are a lot of gems found in these pages... Chapter List: Making The Desktop Work for You; Getting the Most from Your File System; Good Housekeeping with Linux; Tweaking the Kernal on Your Linux System; Securing Your Workspace; Networking Like a Professional; Monitoring Your System; Serving Up the Internet and More; Backing Up Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry; Programming Tricks; The Scary (Or Fun!) Stuff; Index In many ways, this reminds me of a Hacks-style book. There are 62 techniques outlined here that you can use to make sure your system is running at peak efficiency or to save you time during normal administration chores. It's targeted for Fedora Core 2, SuSe, and Mandrake, so if you're running one of those distributions, you should be able to benefit from the information. So what are some of the techniques? #44 helps you get a MySQL server up and running quickly. #24 helps you learn how to customize your Linux kernel if you're really into that sort of thing. #22, Spring Cleaning Essentials, is also very beneficial both from an efficiency standpoint (fewer active processes) and a security standpoint (fewer potential paths into your system). All the tips are like this... very practical, and well documented. And if you've had the impression that Dummies titles are majorly dumbed down, this volume will squelch that opinion. There's nothing in this book that pertains to "dummies". I consider this a good read for someone who has a few months of active Linux experience under their belt, and they want to start exploring a few topics that start to wander from just the basic commands. I'll be keeping this one with the rest of my Linux titles, and hopefully about six months from now I'll realize the full benefit from it.

Usually I always walk away from books titled for Dummies. Mostly because I have been using Linux for some time and I do low level linux C programming and sys admin. I have to respect the work of the book's authors, it is neat and very good. I am sure that this book will help a lot of folks to use Linux and realize how powerfull it is. Best of all, doing it without wasting time. If you are a Linux beginner you will find this book quite enlighting, if you are a Linux user chances are you will find usefull stuff inside. Also, this is not an expensive book. Do realize I have never met the authors and I am not associated to them. The other comments before are from the Authors and from a editor. Hey, it is not a crime to vote for yourself, isn it? Kudos to the Douglas!

I was the technical editor of this book and I can say without a doubt that this book is great. I have been using Linux for many years and have written several Linux books so I have a good grasp of Linux. I was amazed at the information I discovered reading this book and how useful it was to me. I have used many of the techniques in this book on my home systems as well as the servers I run at work. Many of the techniques are real time savers for some everyday administrative tasks, while others are useful for maximizing your system's performance. I highly recommend this book!

We use this book almost every day... and we wrote it. It's a compilation of the most useful (and effective) techniques that we know to simplify life with Linux. In this book, we show you simple ways to streamline security, administration, backup, monitoring, and more. The first few sections are dedicated to tailoring your desktop and command-line environment. You'll find out how to use the KDE network protocols and the GNOME virtual file systems (and how to define file associations in either environment). Quick tips on using the bash shell will streamline your work at the command-line. The "Good Housekeeping" sections show you how to get the most from your filesystem, install and upgrade Linux software, and even customize (and build) your kernel. The system security topics we've chosen for this book include PAM authentication, e-mail (and file) encryption, using SUDO instead of su, SSH and SCP. We also cover network and system security tools such as Nessus and Bastille. We've included a whole section on tuning up servers: Apache, MySQL, sendmail, and more. We'll explain how to install and configure SpamAssassin and show you how to keep the rulebase up to date with a daily dose of RulesDuJour. If you use the Evolution e-mail client, you'll want to read the section that shows how to connect Evolution to SpamAssassin. Are you a Hotmail or Lycos e-mail user? Find out how to deliver your HTTPMail accounts straight into your e-mail client without navigating through ads in your Web browser. If you want to try out new software without endangering your system, read the section on building UML jails, with or without the LIDS security system. We cover many more topics in this book than we can mention here - this book is a good addition to your library whether you are a Linux newbie or an experienced administrator. We had a lot of fun writing it and hope you enjoy using it. -- Susan and Korry