Linux Toys: 13 Cool Projects for Home, Office and Entertainment [With CDROM]

Well, I am really serious about linux. My career is lowering TCO for small to medium businesses by rolling their M$ servers over to *nix solutions. (Yeah people actually do it... and it's becoming more and more frequent.)I gave this book 5 stars because: 1) it's remarkably creative 2) it's easy to read3) FUN and FREEDOM are the backbones of linux, and I think this book will help spread that message.(It's better then complaining about the book being written for the lowest common denominator, RedHat. I'm a SuSe/Gentoo user BTW.)Reading this book took me to a place that very clearly reminded me why I prefer linux over M$. FREEDOM to play without rediculous licensing or expensive Hardware. The book is an easy read (I knocked it out in an evening.) but still worth the 30+ bucks I spent on it. As far as doing the projects?? The picture frame looks like too much fun to passup... I'm searching online for an old laptop tonight... heheh :)

When I first read this book, I thought," This is nothing more than a collection of Stuff he pulled off the web." After going thru it a second time I realised that I never would have thought of most of these projects. If I had thought of them, I would have spent tens of hours serching the web trying to figure out how to do them and downloading te software needed. If you like to tinker with computers, buy this book. All of the projects are well documented and the included cd has most of the software that is mentioned in the book. I'm glad I bought it.

Always looking for a something cool to tinker with, I found my perfect match in Linux Toys. My first project this past weekend was to jump to chapter 10 and build the "Digital Receptionist." Using an unused PC (PII 300, 4GB, 128MB) and an old modem I was able to build the project, and I now get my phone messages from home answered by the machine and emailed to me at work - how cool is that?There are 12 more projects in the book, and I will probably do the digital video recorder next.I am not a complete Linux newbie - I have a RH 9 box on my home network, but I am no expert either. However, this is Chris Negus, the same guy that writes the Red Hat Linux Bible (great way to get the CD distro) so I found it very easy to read, and not at all intimidating.If you have an old PC in the closet, or just like to play with Linux, get this book - it's a blast.

I met Chris Negus at a User Group conference in April where he was talking about Linux Toys. I just got this book last week and spent the weekend trying out some of the projects. They are really fun and challenging. If you like to play around with Linux in your spare time or use it regularly, you will really enjoy Chris' book.