Customer Reviews

Red Hat Fedora Core 6 Unleashed

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Lucky. I use this word in the following sense. If you are using an earlier version of Red Hat Fedora, like perhaps Core 5, then you already will be familiar with many sections of the book. It stands as a pretty complete description of Core 6. The differential with Core 5 is relatively small. Since Core 5 was itself fairly mature and stable.

But what if you are completely new to any linux? Then, if you want to install and learn it, you might as well start with the latest major release, which is covered by the book, at this time of writing. Plus, given the now typical time intervals between major releases of Fedora, Core 6 is likely to remain heavily in use for 2007 and most of 2008. This is the optimal frame of the book.

The book strongly promotes Core 6, and starts off with this remark: "This book provides all the information you need to get up and running with Fedora". Very true. I also certainly recommend you use linux. But there is an ironic counterpoint to that quote, which may be appreciated by some. You do not need all the information in the book in order to start installing and using linux, even if you are completely new to it. The key section on installing linux, be it from the enclosed DVD or downloaded from the web, is thankfully brief. Much effort has been expended in making this as painless as possible, and the brevity of the section attests to this.

Then, when running Core 6, either as a sysadmin or as a user, you can more or less skim various germane sections of the book. Without having to go through most of the narrative. For something like a home computer or a small network of computers, this approach should be adequate. Lessens the formidable length of the book.

The book is good and goes into detail.

It is a great read for someone who wants to venture out into the "Red Hat World".

-C

I find Fedora Core 6 Unleashed, by Paul Hudson, to be a very good companion to CentOS 5.0, which is a community distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, version 5. Indeed, FC 6 and CentOS 5 even both use the same Linux kernel, the 2.6.18 kernel. I've been a great fan of Mark Sobell's books and I still am, but this book is a excellent source, both as an overview and as a reference work. It even has a chapter on virtualization. About the only features of CentOS that are not covered in this book are clustering and cluster storage, but in every other respect, this book really hits the spot. As a Linux user, I consider myself to be at the "intermediate" level, and the book is just about right for this level of expertise.

This is the best book that will take you from the Zero level (actually, i had some good knowledge about Linux administration and programming) to a level that allow you to run some network services (such as; email, shared folders, LDAP, Proxy, DNS ...etc).
I highly recommend to have this book in your home or work.