Customer Reviews

Linux Bible

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This book is great! It really is a "bible" as the title suggests.

To be specific, the reasons that I am so impressed are:

1. It is recent. At the time of writing this review, the book has hardly been out a month and the information is as up to date as you can get. This is particularly important in the computer world and when it comes to operating systems, as references are often made to specific pieces of software. With this book you get that software.

2. No other book I have read compares in quality. Recently I bought 2 books on linux (Complete Idiot's Guide, etc.) and these books do not compare in presentation of information nor the quantity (or quality) of information.

3. Well written material. The first day that I bought this book I read more than 250 pages! It has a logical structure and the writer clearly knows her target of both the novice and power user.

4. The software is included with the book. The book contains Red Hat Linux 7.1, at the time of writing the most popular and well documented linux distribution. It is also the latest.

5. The book covers everything you would need to know about linux, from beginner to power user. It is a "bible" in the fact that you can read the book and sit it on your shelf to fetch information later when you need to know something.

This book is for any user who is familiar with an operating system and would like to learn linux, or for people who know linux and would like to learn more. If you are very new to the world of computing, perhaps something such as "Complete Idiot's Guide", or "Linux for Dummies" might be better, but if you are serious about linux, consider reading this book after those.

Well I ended up hitting the bookstore last night looking for a book I heard things about and unfortunately it was not there. I I ended up just taking a stab at it and picked up the Linux Bible as I did not want something that would be based on a certain Linux distribution (like Redhat or Slackware ...). As of picking this book up I new very basic knowledge with Linux. I could get around but I mainly wanted to know the real heavy details as well as why things occurred. This book answered all those questions for me and more. I ended up finishing the book in just 2 days because of the fact that it hits different topics and covers them very well so that you can understand them and immediately jumps to the next so you will always be learning something new.

I would suggest this book to any beginner or intermediate user. As for it being a bible ... well you will probably keep other books at your side for troubleshooting problems but this book is a must especially if you want to get in the field. I purchased this book and it came bundled with Red Hat Linux 7.1 and that may turn people away from it if they are interested in another distribution but do NOT be afraid! In the book whenever it goes over something in Redhat 7.1 it will give you notes on the difference with earlier Redhat versions as well as other popular distributions (slackware, debian, mandrake, and caldera to be exact). I had a friend come up to me who is in a similar field and could easily explain a lot of what I have read and sounded like a true "Linux Techie" which proves a lot for 2 days of reading and made me feel as though I have made a very wise investment. Get this book and just read it through and you will fall in love with all that linux has to offer.

I ended up buying this book for Redhat 7.1 because it was quicker than buying from Redhat directly and the same store was till carrying RH 6.2!! However, this book was too vague on most of the more advanced topics that I ended up spending hours reading the "man" pages to figure things out.

Example, this book is for Linux 7, but it discussed inetd rather that xinetd that comes with RH Linux 7. I also kept going to the store to look at the new book by SAMS by Bill Ball on Redhat 7 Unleased (many other versions out there).

Bottom line, buy the latest Redhat distribution from the company, lets help them out to survive against the Seattle Giant, and buy a book focused purely on Redhat rather than generic Linux.

The book by same company Hungry Minds on RH Linux is good but not as good as SAMS publishing.