Customer Reviews

LINUX: Installation, Configuration, Use

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Very similiar in style to "Running Linux" by O'reilly (3rd edition) - In fact, these two books are complementary. I recommend buying both (I did). Many topics in one are not in the other. Together the make a very good and complete set.

They both share the same writing style - they cut right to the point, tell you exactly what you need to know and cover a lot of topics at a good level of expertise. If you know computers then these books are fine - you won't be wasting your time on general issues (like what a mouse does). If you want to configure SAMBA - Boom, done. If you want to set up lilo, boom, done. If you aren't a reasonable computer user, then you shouldn't be starting with linux.

If you know NT or a little linux, then these two books will cover almost everything just fine. The only thing they don't do is give specific references to each and every shell command or utility. You get a good overview of the important ones, and the man pages will be fine after that, but you could always buy a shell/programming reference.

This book was an invaluable resource as I installed and set up Linux on my 7 year old PC. Despite my older hardware, the book seemed to anticipate each difficulty and quirk I encountered and provided me with the answers I needed.

The book does a good job of providing succinct but relatively complete explanations of common installation and configuration tasks. I have some experience with Unix, although previously had none with Linux. What I greatly appreciated about this book is the degree of description provided. I've generally found many beginner books (such as the "For Dummies" series) tend to be overly wordy and simplistic. Slightly more advanced texts often end up being more complete but often are dry and short on providing a general overview of key ideas. I think this book does an excellent job of holding the middle ground. I was able to both sit down and read entire sections of the book for better understanding of key concepts or use it as a basic resource to answer quick questions that I had.

I highly recommend this book if you're looking for something to guide you through installation and configuration of Linux, especially if you already have some degree of familiarity with Unix or Linux.

I suppose I'm an "intermediate beginner" on Linux: I know a good deal about Windows and have used Unix systems at work. I bought this book to help me set up Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 on my home machine. (Caldera isn't explicitly covered by this book, but I haven't found this to be a problem yet.) The book is well written, internally cross-referneced in an intelligent way, and very informative. I went and got it because I had two problems --- one with Internet access, the other with mounting a hard drive. I browsed the books at the local B&N store for a solution. This was the only one that answered both questions right away, so I got it.

I think anybody who wants to install and use linux from scratch (ie, not just a distro) will get a lot from this book. It starts with info about theory, disk geometry and partitioning, then launches into installation. By the time you've gotten through the first few chapters and have actually installed linux, you'll have a good working knowledge of running linux (including compiling kernels and configuring X manually; and also knowing typical "newbie" FAQs, like how to find "missing" libraries when trying to install a new program).

One gripe: the PPP and internet setup stuff doesn't happen until near the end of the book, for no apparent reason (ie, it could have been in the first part of the book). I think a lot of people would benefit having internet access as soon as linux is installed!

Emacs gets a whole configuration and usage chapter (and there's a good "auto config" file on the cd for those who want to get to work with emacs immediately).

Another chapter is devoted to LISP; and yet another to Tck/Tl. Keeping in mind that whole books have been written on these topics alone, these chapters can prove useful to a linux beginner.

(I recommend Beginning Linux Programming for a better grounding in these topics.)

You won't get much info on X apps, though (Kofler tends to concentrate on outdated and/or console tools: even the emacs info doesn't assume XEmacs), or windows managers (some info there, but I don't think he's a big X Windows fan!).

However, most of what's in this book is stuff you *really* need to know, and you'll appreciate it the first time you trash X and can't get to your spiffy X tools.

I have bought several linux books, and this book is usually the first place I check. It doesn't have answers for a lot of hardware stuff or programming stuff, but it had the best chapter on ppp I'd ever seen. Also, it was the first book I saw that spent a good bit of time talking about applications; news readers, emacs, latex, even a good introduction to gimp, for crying out loud. It had excellent sections on LiLo and other boot related questions. I wouldn't say it was particularly strong on network related questions, but actually most of the other linux books I saw had an opposite problem of talking too much about fancy networking stuff that the home user. This book doesn't spend too much time talking about command line stuff (things that you would find in man pages, for example), but lots of stuff on xwindows, and window managers. nothing on apache or star office. Overall, a nice compact guide geared to the home user interested more in applications rather than networking protocols.

I have just bought this book a week ago (together with the book Linux Complete) and all I can say is "Thank God".

Finaly a buck worth reading. I love the help this book gives and the results. ***Nothing feels better, than to follow well written instructions and see the "working" result***. (please read the last sentence again:)

I whish I bought this one first. It would have saved me hundreds of wasted $$$ (canadian <g>;)

The title says it. Here is 772 pages that will give you control over Linux installation, configuration, and use. It's loaded with insightful tips, useful guidance, and the fruit of years of competent use.

Some computer books and manuals actually are penned by tech writers under the aegis of an alleged expert. Many of these are near useless. Some others are hard to understand not because the subject inherently is so, but because of lack of thorough understanding on the part of the author, or poor writing. Kofler's book is among the few that rise way above this. He genuinely knows this subject, extremely well and with depth, and he knows how to communicate that knowledge in writing. After looking over many Linux texts on the commercial shelf, my picks would be this one by Kofler, and for more detail, the 2000 page Complete Reference by Purcell. Lots of valuable info also on the internet, but this book is a must on my shelf!

I bought this book along with O'Reilly's Running Linux. Between this book and the O'Reilly book, there really isn't any info I can't find. Between these two books, I've got a really good handle on the Linux operating system. I'm running SuSE Linux 7.1 and these two books are more than compatible for this distribution of Linux.

After spending some time with other general Linux texts I found this one to be at the top. It covers the entire range of the subject in enough detail to be very useful. It is a great starting point to the Linux world, yet more advanced users will find it a good reference for the computer shelf. You will still need to buy some other texts to give you in-depth coverage of several Linux areas and programs, such as Samba, but this book gives a great overview that you can understand and apply. I highly recommend it.

I had high hopes for this book, and it certainly contains a massive amount of information. Unfortunately, for the person who is new to Linux, you will easily get lost, as there are few definite directions. What there is, instead, are summaries, histories, and bits of advice, which don't always hang together.

The book does have useful information - but if you're looking for an A-B-C installation guide, this isn't it.