31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Still not good enough for Linux Newbies, July 29, 2003
This review is from: Linux For Dummies, Fourth Edition (Paperback)
I read LeBlanc's 4th Edition book to see if it has been improved enough for Newbies. It is not. While including two CDs that have RedHat Linux v8, its installation section is still woefully inadequate with two chapters of 40 pages. For example on p22 the authors say that if you have Dell, Compaq, or HP, you should have no problem. In my experience with Compaq Presarios and HP Vectras, they use custom mobos, BIOSs, chipsets, sound, and win modems that will conflict with Linux. Another example on p31, the authors write 2 inches on video boards and monitors, the Achilles heel for getting the Linux GUI up and running.
The authors' best suggestion (p65) is to get help from a local Linux Users Group; available in large metros; such as Minneapolis which meets monthly at the Univ of Minnesota's renown Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Dept! How can you get better help than that? They also have a daylong Install-Fest twice a year. I agree that this is the best way, but what about the rest of us (p2) which is this book's target audience?
After researching, reading, and buying a half dozen books on Linux installation, I have yet to see a book that shows a cookbook approach for the Newbie. It would be based upon a reference computer hardware set that has been chosen for it's popularity and compatible processor, motherboard, cards, and devices. Since one can easily find and cheaply buy used, legacy components on eBay, used computer stores, electronic swap meets, flea markets, and garage sales, installation procedures could be simplified and would be direct and to the point. And be guaranteed to work! It would avoid the tons of frustration and wasted time by reading and attempting to follow all those books and Linux HowTos which are so generalized that Newbies finds them totally confusing and absolutely useless.
Case in point, almost all Linux authors (p14) pride themselves that Linux will run on older, legacy hardware, probably what is in their DOS and Windows hand-me-down pile. However for a Newbie, they want to use a modern GUI, not type into a CLI. So in attempting to use this legacy equipment, the Newbie will run into the most common problem, which is carefully not mentioned by Linux writers, that the X-Windows probe for video board and monitor is not very robust compared to Microsoft Windows. Visually identifying chipset models on video boards and finding monitor sync information is one of the most critical items, yet it is rarely emphasized with step-by-step explanations and photos of reference hardware. The Newbie is not shown how to decipher the actual spec listings of popular hardware, locating the important parameters, and ignoring all the rest.
Another example is dual boot (p26) Linux along with Windows, a common Newbie configuration. Again almost all Linux authors, including these authors, gloss over the interactivity required on the boot blocks by reconfiguring the MBR with the MSDOS Format command. Wannabe Linux users will find that just because you have a computer working in DOS, WfWG, or Win9X, etc, that it does not translate to a slam-dunk in installing and configuring Linux.
The Newbie just isn't aware of the behind-the-scenes sophistication that Microsoft developed for Windows installs. Overzealous Linux authors don't warn the Newbie that incredibly more work is necessary to technically understand the details of each component. And if that component manufacturer has gone out of business, then avoid it with a ten-foot pole for his first Linux box.
It now comes full circle that a reference hardware installation cookbook is sorely needed. Chapter 4, Installing Other Distributions, includes installation notes for Caldera, Mandrake, SuSE, and Debian, which is superfluous for the Newbie. These 10 pages could have been put to better use with a hardware cookbook because if the Newbie couldn't get RedHat v8 to install, then (s)he certainly wouldn't get the others installed either. The install troubleshooting Chapter 18, of ten (10) pages, is woefully inadequate and full of one-liners (jokes). The CLI log-in screen is here in the back (p296); why not in the install section on p62?
Back to my purpose in reading these authors' book, I was expressly trying to find how to switch to the KDE GUI since RedHat's default GUI install is GNOME. The authors say (p84) that it is easy to switch and they have a Chapter 6 (p86-97) which explains the differences and similarities between the two GUIs. Yet the authors never tells HOW to switch; the Table of Contents, sidebars, icons, 20-page index, were all useless. The RedHat and GNOME Help were useless too.
The critical thing that the authors left out was the GUI log-in screen, which had no pix. Although I discovered the secret with RedHat Linux 9 (March 03, Shrike release), the GUI log-in screen has a "Session" button along the bottom row. I had previously ignored them; but lo-and-behold! It is for the GUI startup selection. A serious omission on part of the three authors.
An important area that the authors discuss adequately is the systems administrator account and user accounts, explaining that Newbies can crash the system (p98) by an inadvertent keystroke (mouse-click). The Linux OS can be pretty fragile as a root user. But further explanation of the superuser, especially application superusers, and users & groups is not well explained. As listed on p286, important applications that attract Newbies to Linux in the first place, such as a Samba fileserver, an Apache webserver, and MySQL and PostgreSQL databases are not covered at all.
And last, but not least, the authors put in another one-liner to install and use a tape backup (p308) because Linux will fail, you just don't know when. The authors omitted installing a tape drive, neither using the Tar nor Amanda tape backup utility, nor explaining the disaster recovery process. From authors who have umpteen credentials, this last omission is almost unforgivable.
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