Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux [Paperback]

Manuel Alberto Ricart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 16, 1998 | ISBN-10: 078971826X | ISBN-13: 978-0789718266

There's a part of each of us that likes to head off the beaten path.. take the road less traveled. Sound like you? Maybe you're ready for an inexpensive alternative to Windows? The last thing you need when you're trying to be a trailblazer is to be bogged down with bulky books, piles of manuals, and expensive software. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux is the perfect balance of information and explanation. Here's how to do it. Here's why. (And you get Linux, too!)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If the open-source movement becomes more popular among beginning to intermediate computer users, the Linux operating system may easily emerge as the operating system of choice. However, getting neophytes to jump on the Linux bandwagon is no easy sell unless the new user has access to a dependable and fairly thorough introductory Linux reference. Author Manuel Alberto Ricart supplies a clearly written introduction to this OS in The Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux.

The mark of any truly great Linux reference, whether it is written for the diehard kernel programmer or the new, curious OS explorer, is its documentation on installing Linux. To help get you started, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux includes a CD-ROM with a copy of Caldera's OpenLinux version 1.3. Between appendices A and B, Ricart provides a step-by-step explanation of the Linux OS installation as well as a fairly extensive list of hardware that is compatible with the OpenLinux 1.3. Quick to acknowledge the high potential for frustration during the installation process, Ricart includes helpful tips for getting around the most common configuration pitfalls.

The bulk of the book is distributed across three sections that teach you how to use the graphical interface, called the KDE Desktop; the command-line interface, which should be fairly familiar to anyone migrating from Unix to Linux; and the commands necessary for low-level system administration and maintenance. --Ryan Kuykendall

From the Back Cover

Complete Idiot's Guide To Linux, Second Edition, covers: Preparing to install the system, Using shells and online documentation, The X Windows graphical interface, Networking and Internet, Administration, Configuring Linux for multimedia , and A guide to available software and tools. If you have been wanting to get started using Linux, but are not sure how to go about it or have not made deep inroads into your installed system, you'll benefit most from this book. In addition, the step-by-step guide to standard Linux tasks will satisfy your need to utilize the system's capabilities, especially its Internet functions. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Alpha (December 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078971826X
• ISBN-13: 978-0789718266
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A bit more information and it would have been the best..., July 28, 1999

By 

Georger Araujo ([e-mail]) (Fortaleza, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux (Paperback)

Great book. It takes you through installation, customization and some troubleshooting, and it even manages to explain kernel recompilation in a simple way! If your computer is a simple, bare bones workstation, great. If it's not (and you know it's not) then the book is still great, but not quite complete: a lot of people out there own soundcards, scanners, joysticks and gamepads, and the book says little or nothing about those relevant pieces of hardware. So, it gets 4 stars.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for beginners, too shallow for others, May 1, 2000

By 

Primoz Peterlin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux (Paperback)

Way into late nineties, most books on Linux still read like this: Here is Linux, which is zillion times better than MS-DOS, and here is the command shell, which is so much more powerful than COMMAND.COM in MS-DOS, then here are X Windows, which are like MS Windows in DOS, only better... A reader less acquainted with the history of computing might have asked "Wow, that's cool, but what is this MS-DOS thing you keep mentioning?"

When the first edition of this book appeared in late 1998, Manuel Alberto Ricart was among the first authors to admit that Windows 95 and 98 actually *did* happen. Rather than comparing bare-bones Linux with a historic relic, he chose a decent peer for a modern Windows environment: Linux with a desktop environment KDE.

Mr. Ricart starts with the elements of the KDE desktop, spends considerable time explaining basic operations with it, then proceeds to the programs of KDE base suite: file manager, text editor etc. The inevitable command line only comes in in part two. After explaining the basic commands -- file utilities -- some Unix concepts like pipes and regular expressions are discussed, while the programming in command shell is omitted. The section on programming editors Vi and Emacs is probably too short to be useful. The last part, part three, deals with the system administration tasks. Installation of Linux is added as an appendix.

What is the advantage of using command shell despite the existance of graphical interface? Mr. Ricart unfortunately cannot give a convincing answer, although it is probably clear to every second reader -- command shell contains a powerful macro language, which is superb for performing repetitive tasks. This is a pity -- spending 30-40 more pages on the Bash programming would actually give a meaning for including the complete Part 2. But I guess there has to be something idiotic in each of the books of Complete Idiot's series, right?

Leaving this aside, the book is perhaps the best introduction to Linux for beginners. Of all the distributions, Caldera Open Linux that comes with the book allegedly has the most user-friendly installation program -- unless you have some unfortunate exotic hardware, with which it won't work. Bear in mind though that every Linux CD included in a book is likely to be one year old or more when it arrives in your hands, and one year is a long time in Linux development. So the system you have just installed is already outdated... Watch the Web to find out what is really going on.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT book for the beginner!, February 25, 2000

By 

P. M. Jacobsen (Birkerød, Denmark, Scandinavia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux (Paperback)

I have several books on UNIX/Linux, but this is the one that helped me get up to speed! With the other books I got stuck several times, but this book is very easy to understand, and gives you all the necessary information to get started. If you are totally new to UNIX/Linux this book is a good place to start!