The Linux Book

ReviewI just recently started diving into the Linux waters at work. While I did the Red Hat install without the benefit of this book, it would have helped a lot to have it around. There is so much that is new and unfamiliar...The installation chapters are accurate as to what I experienced. There's more background here than what I deduced from the install screens, so that will help you make intelligent choices. The value of the book comes into play starting in chapter 4. That's where you are looking at your Red Hat desktop and thinking "what now?" There are a multitude of applications you can run under Red Hat that behave very closely to their Windows counterparts, but the power of Linux is being able to get under that UI and work with the Linux command line statements and utilities. This is where you'll have the full ability to manage access to files, write scripts to take care of tasks like moving files, viewing your logs, and other various tasks. The author has a nice blend of showing you the command along with examples of how you would use the command to execute specific tasks.The book does not spend a lot of time covering the different applications that come packaged with the distributions. Don't look for extensive coverage of the different windowing applications, OpenOffice, or any other standard open source software that you'll end up using on a daily basis. Most of the focus is towards being able to manipulate Linux at the command line level or via the command line utilities.If you already have a background of Unix or Linux, this book is probably going to be too simplistic for you. While it could be used as a reference book for certain commands, I think that many users would end up looking for more detail on commands than is offered here.ConclusionIf you are looking at getting into Linux, and particularly the Red Hat distribution, this would be a good starting point. You may outgrow it quickly, but it will give you that first boost of confidence to get things running.

An excellent book, but it is not precisely for user advanced but for those that are begun in Linux. Contain information on the installation, what is essential on configuration and maintenance of the operative system. Has information on the X ++Window. Wimple topics of integration with other platforms as Windows and Macintosh. A good price also if is considered that brings the CD of installation Red Hat 7.0 but something bad for these since serious dates good to have 7.1. But in end for the beginners I recommend this book.