Customer Reviews

Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora Edition (DVD): The Complete Reference

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First off, I'd like to give some background on myself. I'm a Linux hobbyist. For fun, I have a Linux server in my house that serves files, ssh, vnc, user authentication, web pages, and ftp files. Books I own on the subject are: "Linux NFS and Automounter Administration", "Red Hat 7 for Dummies", "Using Samba", "Linux Administration: a Beginner's Guide", "Managing NFS and NIS", and this one (my most recent purchase).

Of the "general purpose" books, I'd say that "Linux Administration" is probably the best of the bunch, but "Complete" isn't bad either. Unfortunately, this book contains a lot of fluff. Each chapter usually starts with the history of whatever it's about. Next, it spends a few pages on giving a rough overview the different applications pertaining to the chapter's subject. Half way through the chapter, it finally gets into the actual implementation. Whether or not these pages are useful is very hit-and-miss.

If you want a general purpose book, I'd strongly suggest you get Linux Administration: a Beginner's Guide by Steven Graham and Steve Shah. If you are interested in a certain topic (samba, apache, etc.), I'd suggest you get a book solely on that, and stay away from this book as it doesn't provide satisfactory depth.

One thing I really like about this book is that each section starts off with a little introduction that gives some background on that section. Things like how and why it came about, what it is supposed to be doing. A lot of books start out with something like: To Install GNOME.... This one starts out: GNOME is.... And it gives you a web site where you can go get the latest version. Sure GNOME is on the CD included with the book, but versions change frequently in the open source community and if what's on the CD does happen to be the latest version, it won't be for long.

The other good point about this book is that it is a complete reference. In one book it covers the whole system. This means that it cannot go into as much depth as a dedicated book, but here is at least a start on everything that you're likely to need to know. And if it isn't here, there are references as to where to go get things.