Mastering Red Hat Linux 9

Wow! Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge and very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9. It's over 900 pages, and includes the "Publisher's Edition" of RH9 on 2 CD's. It is written in a style which should accomodate Linux newcomers and more experienced users alike. There are a LOT of examples, code snippets, and screenshots throughout the book. In fact sometimes the abundance of these tend to make the material a little long to wade through. Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need though. The book starts out with in an introduction to Linux, and has a good chapter on preparing to install, including hardware checklists. This is followed by a very detailed step by step explanation of installing Red Hat, both locally and via network. A nice part of this is a troubleshooting chapter for solving installation problems. Part Two explains the basics of using the command line, how filesystems work in Linux, and using the shell for various tasks. Part Three includes chapters for administering users and groups on your new system, and how the RPM software package management process works. Other chapters in this part explain the bootup process and how to configure it, various ways to perform system backups, and other common adminstration tasks such as cron jobs and logs. Especially useful should be Chapter 12 which explains how to update/compile your own kernel. There are very good examples of the myriad kernel options, mostly by using the xconfig utility. The next several chapters go over how to configure and use the XWindows display system, including good examples from the XF86Config file. This is followed by detailed explanations of configuring and using the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. The KDE discussion is very good, considering Red Hat is more known for it's use of Gnome as the default desktop. Chapter 18 introduces many of the more commonly used graphical applications in Linux, such as OpenOffice, Gnome Office, and the KOffice suite. Chapter 19 should be very handy for Linux/RH new users, as it outlines the Red Hat graphical configuration utilities which allow customization of the desktop look-and-feel and other system preferences. Chapters 20-22 cover basic Linux networking. The first part of this section gives a very understandable primer on TCP/IP and network terminology. This is followed up by excellent discussions on how to setup and manage networking on your Linux computer, including security recommendations and firewall/masquerading methods. Once you've got your network running safely, there are additional chapters which cover topics such as remote access and xinetd services, and various server applications installation and operation. These include DNS, DHCP, CUPS printing operations, FTP servers (and clients), NFS and NIS, and mail servers (sendmail). Some of these services are probably more than most home users would need, and the sendmail operation in particular is a little diff

I needed a reference to make the transition from Windows to Linux easy and less painful. This book pretty much covered everything from installing Linux to using the command line and the Redhat GUI. The book contained great screen shots to give you a good visual step by step guide to working within the Redhat GUI. Good book that I would recommend to anyone interested in dabbling in linux.

I'm a Microsoft Windows admin, who wanted to learn Linux. A friend told me to pick up this book, and I'm glad. It just amazed me. The other big Linux Bible book has like no pictures showing how to install. This book shows me step by step! I thought I did a stupid thing not backing up before installing Linux on my old D: drive. Not a problem! This book helped me do it easy. Didn't even touch my C: Drive. Kickstart? It's like installing Linux automatically like MSBatch.Others told me that NFS was hard to do. Not if you have this book! The graphical tools that Red Hat got work well for me. What a relief that I don't have to work at the command line - and this book shows me how. I wish it did more of the GUI though.... the coverage of the desktop is like too few words on every last thing in the GUI. Not enough GUI for me. I know, the people in my Linux user group tell me that the command line is better, but I'm just not used to it. Takes time to read through all those commands. But this book is better than the man pages! And hey, I got it working on my LAN easy with Red Hat's GUI network tools. Wish they had a GUI for DHCP though.Next step - I want to see if I can make my Linux computer into a gateway for my network. That Red Hat Security Configurator looks promising. Then I'll be able to run my Web server off of this Linux box. But so far with this book, no problem! And I just found the extra Web material on the Sybex Web site - it's gonna help me figure out what I need to do with all these Linux certifications.

This is a great book for several types of readers--it can help Windows users ease into the Linux world, demonstrate the latest changes for experienced Linux users, and illustrate how the most recent Linux developments differ from familiar Unix procedures. This particular version possessed several major transitions (i.e. Apache and Samba.) Mastering RH9 covers them thoroughly and explains them extremely well. The author provides a practical guide with understandable how-to directions for any reader/user/admin. There is even BONUS material online at the Sybex.com site, which I found particularly helpful.

I've read a number of different books on Red Hat Linux, and this is the best I've seen. The writing style is easy, the server setups work. Yeah, it has it's share of typos, but it's shown me how to recompile the Linux kernel for the first time! Explanations of the kernel in other books confuse the h#(# out of me. Starting with the intro, Chapter 4 helped me set up a network server for installing Linux. Several chapters gave me the courage to use real commands at the command line for the first time. As a Windows user, I wish it went more into the stuff you can do at the GUI. But I've set up FTP and Web servers that work on my home network.