Customer Reviews

Linux for the Rest of Us

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a great starter book for anyone who's felt intimidated by Linux. It has a clear and logical walkthrough for installing, partitioning hard drives for dual boot (in case you need to keep your Windows), and practical advice on how to use Linux once you have it up and running. Great the quick reference tables. I'm using the book now to get an old HP Vectra configured with Mandrake. Concise and well-written with some tongue-in-cheek humor, definitely recommended for any beginners or anyone who needs a refresher on how Linux works.

I'm actually very pleased with this book. I tend to be a person who learns best with a little hand holding and help, and found this book included a lot of personal annecdotes that helped me.

Being a regular user of Windows, this book made it very easy to understand the similarities and get started with Linux in a very non-intimidating fashion.

It's true that a few things were missing I would have also liked included, but overall it did not waste my time with excess information that is often found in 500 page manuals with lots of white space. Instead, in a refreshing way I found this book to try to gently encourage super brand new users of Linux like me.

I recommend this book to anyone who is trying to understand and learn to use Linux that doesn't have a lot of time to fiddle, but needs the essential information spelled out.

Excellent book and an easy read!

I am very impressed by this book. I read the brief reviews here and thought the price was reasonable enough to try it out. NOW I must say that this book FAR exceeded my expectations for a beginner Linux book.

It includes tips no one ever thought to tell me. For example during installation the author gives his own real world experiences on what are the best partitions to create and how much to allocate. He also includes a lot of tips I've never heard about before, such as how most versions default to netmask 255.0.0.0, when usually an office intranet uses 255.255.255.0 and this saved me a lot of troubleshooting time.

Other personal experience suggestions the author includes helped me to fix problems before they ever became issues such as the excellent details this book includes on using Emacs (the whole problem I got with the "this buffer is for notes" error message was resolved thanks to the tips).

Overall, I have never seen a more compact (just over 100 pages) and yet information rich book on Linux. I own a lot of computer books that are much more expensive and I am thankful to have this included in my library.

One of the best "starter kit books" for Linux I've come across. It takes you smoothly from putting the CD into the disk drive, to setting up a webserver with database functionality. All concepts are described in laymen terms and the compact size is not intimidating to pickup and read. With easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions, you can be up and running within the hour.

The indepth explanation of the disk partioning, and selection of packages was most helpful, and wasn't a daunting task for a novice. The book also contains a very helpful reference section with the most widely used Unix commands, and gives you examples of how to use the commands effectively.

Overall, a great addition to my library and I recommend it to everyone who has thought about getting started with Linux.

This is a great starter book for anyone who's felt intimidated by Linux. It has a clear and logical walkthrough for installing, partitioning hard drives for dual boot (in case you need to keep your Windows), and practical advice on how to use Linux once you have it up and running. Great quick reference tables. I'm using the book now to get an old HP Vectra configured with Mandrake. Concise and well-written with some tongue-in-cheek humor, definitely recommended for any beginners or anyone who needs a refresher on how Linux works.

For a long time I have been interested in learning Linux but have been thwarted by not having a book written for beginers. The learning ladder was missing too many necessary bottom rungs... there was no starting point. Mr. Rais has supplied those missing rungs and has made it possible for me to now profit from those tomes which begin in mid-air. This book has been invaluable to me and I strongly recommend it to anyone else stuck at the starting line.

I read it last night. It is a handy little guide for anyone to have on hand. It provides quick access to command formats, that can be used on almost all Unix based systems, including Sun, Linux, etc. Really enjoyed reading it and can find a lot of good uses for it. Very informative in the simplest terms for setting up your first Linux system, or for someone who is just not quit sure what he wants where. This book can be useful to the novice as well as the advanced user, who may just need a quick reference because he can not remember if the command needs a - in front of an argument he does not use frequently.

I just read the reviews here and having recently gotten ahold of this simple, easy, and actually enjoyable to read computer book! If that's not already telling you something about how useful this book is for beginners I don't know what else can! Technically scarry things put in to simple terms -- that's what I needed and that's what this book gave me.

I'm shocked also by one of the reviews here on amazon that said "its NOT worth every penny!" The fact that the publisher and author have indicated they are donating the proceeds to the poor makes this even better and proves how Linux can help shape and change society not just computer use.

I am all for this book: inexpensive, easy to read for beginners, and YES INDEED IT IS WELL WORTH IT knowing the proceeds will go to good causes not into a rich publishing monopoly pocket.

I rate this 5 stars but would give it a 6 if there was such a rating.

I guess it's hard to find the right mix of ingredients to write a newbie book that's not insulting to the readers while at the same time not requiring lots of experience to understand everything. I have no Linux experience but still thought the book is a bit too "dumbed down". Also the last 30 or so pages are cutesy stories about getting people to use Linux without any real useful info.

Not what i expected.

I expected an overview of Linux aimed at the "Rest of Us":
a. Win Home Desktop/Internet user
b. Win Soho Desktop/Lan market.

What i got was a very thin skimming of the major Components of a Unix/WinNT OS
as implemented by a generic Linux and no coverage (other than Name) of any Linux GUI.

To attempt to introduce and suggest successful installation of the following info into approximately 70 pages is a waste of every bodies time and money.

a. Linux as a Desktop
b. Linux as a File/Print server
c. Linux as a Wep server
d. SQL
e. Telnet
f. FTP
g. Multi OS on same computer
h. 3 different Text Editors

Section 4 "Stories from the field" pp 77 - 96 are superfluous
as you are preaching to the converted.

I can not belive the 4 or 5 star reviewers read the same book as me ?.

I am amazed that this book got a 4 1/2 star average rating.

The argument "You get what you pay for" only strengthens the WIN camp and undermines the argument for open source software.

Jim