Customer Reviews

Fedora 11 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As always a good book.
However its angling more towards the non expert user and how to use all the excellent packages, rather than a nuts and bolts Linux guide.
Excellent for a starter user and still a comprehensive guide.
A few references to earlier releases that need weeding out.
This replaced my Fed 7 copy of the same book and I certainly needed to update the book.
Recommended for all newbies to linux.

I've bought a number of Chris Negus's books over the years and, until recently, thought he did a decent job of explaining Red Hat and Fedora systems. With his last two "Bible" books, though, he's convinced me to look elsewhere (in particular, Mark Sobell's books) for useful information.

For a book billed as "The book you need to succeed!", it lacks any meaningful troubleshooting tips or any in-depth look at the topics. It is obvious that parts of the Fedora 9 and 10 "Bibles" have been recycled without updating. Many of the online guides do a much better job of walking one through the installation and utilization of the software.

If this is your first time working with Linux, it is borderline acceptable. If you're upgrading an existing installation, look elsewhere.

The Fedora 11 Bible is first and foremost an easy-to-follow hands-on guide for installing and using your own Linux system, but it also serves well as a gentle introduction to Linux system administration. The book doesn't get bogged down with lots of theory, but rather gets down to the nitty-gritty step-by-step details of installing Linux, using desktop applications, performing basic system administration tasks, setting up networking, and configuring different types of servers. Once you've set up your system, I recommend The Linux Administration Handbook for further details of system administration if you decide you want to know more.

Lets start out by saying I bought this book as a required text for a Linux administration course.

The installation DVD that accompanied this book didn't work and froze my machine while wiping the current OS completely in the process. This also happened to other classmates of mine. Luckily we had discs in class burned by the instructor so we used those to reinstall Fedora 11. I took our class copy home after the installation discs also wiped my home box.

After a month of class I have found myself turning to other Linux materials and online forums for help because this book gives very poor explanations of it's own material. Quick one line explanations and small uninformative screenshots are all over this book. Basically I think this book is a huge waste of time and effort. I can just about guarantee it's going to sit on my bookcase at home if I can't re-sell it online somewhere.