Customer Reviews

Red Hat Linux 8 Bible

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

 

 

For the half C-note it costs, this book is more than worth it, if only for the included RHL 8 Cd's, which you would pay nearly as much for at your local store, and just for the CD's. Unfortunately this isn't *quite* as 100% comprehensive as the cover claims, what I've noticed missing has been a few minor commands that the average Linux user most likely already knows (and that the beginner user wouldn't need anyway). Although this certainly isn't *specifically* designed for a total Linux newbie, it *is* written well enough that the average person can get up and running without having touched Linux before, assuming they can make a few leaps of faith. I myself have only been using Linux for a few months, and I've already learned more in the past four days with this book than in the precceding months without it. Forget online documentation thats spotty, hard to read or a string of 404 File not Found, this is the way to go.

I've never been much of a fan of large computer books and, to be honest, this one hasn't done much to change my opinion. These large books often seem a little confused about who their target audience. They often cover everything from very basic concepts through to very complex ones and I don't really believe that anyone really needs that breadth of coverage. Or, at least, not all at the same time and from the same book.

This book is a great example of that. It comes complete with three CDs containing Red Hat Linux (which, I assume, are the same as or very similar to the three that come with Red Hat's own shrink-wrapped product) and it therefore starts with installing Red Hat Linux. However, some thousand or so pages later, the same book is talking about some really quite advanced systems administration tasks. I'm really not sure that the same audience will need both of those ends of the spectrum.

Let's take a look at the contents in more detail.

Chapter 1 gives a useful review of Red Hat Linux. It pretty much assumes that the reader knows nothing about Linux and goes into some detail about what Linux is and where it comes from. It even takes time out at one point to explain what an operating system is. The book does score a few early points for knowing the difference bwtween "hackers" and "crackers" and using the terms correctly. This chapter ends with a more detailed look at Red Hat Linux and some of the changes that were introduced with version 8.0. Chapter 2 covers the installation of Red Hat Linux. It does a good job of explaining this in a way that would be clear to someone with no previous knowledge of how to do this.

Chapter 3 is the start of the second major section of the book which introduces the day-to-day use of Red Hat Linux. In chapter 3 we look at logging into the system and get an introduction to using Unix from the command line. Chapter 4 goes into a similar level of detail on using the two GUI environments - Gnome and KDE. For a beginner, it may have made more sense to have these chapters the other way round as most Red Hat installations will boot straight into a GUI environment and one of Red Hat's changes for version 8.0 was to make it far harder to work out how to get a shell window open.

Chapter 5 starts to look at at Linux applications. It begins with a table of common Windows applications and their Linux counterparts. It then goes on to discuss finding, downloading and installing new applications where, to my mind, it would have been more sensible to first look at using some of the pre-installed applications. The chapter also includes details on using the Red Hat Packager Manager (rpm) and running Windows applications using WINE.

Chapters 6 to 9 each look at a separate application area and present a very brief overview of the applications available in that area. Chapter 6 is about producing documents, chapter 7 about games, chapter 8 about multimedia and chapter 9 about the Internet. In all of these chapters the overviews are necessarily very short and it's hard to see how anyone could get much useful work done after reading them. It would be better if the chapters contained references to further reading, but they don't even mention the man pages.

Chapter 10 starts the next section of the book which is about system administration. It contains a useful overview of a number of the most common adminstrative tasks like mounting disk drives, monitoring system usage or setting the date and time. Chapter 11 is about administering users. Chapter 12 looks at automating system tasks. It includes an introduction to shell scripting and a useful description of the start-up and shutdown cycle. Chapter 13 covers backing up and restoring files. Chapter 14 is possibly the most useful chapter in the book for the complete Linux beginner as it contains an overview of security issues. This is particularly important with the increase in the number of people who leave their computers permanently attached to their broadband connections.

The forth and final section looks at networking with chapters on setting up a LAN, a print server, a file server, a mail server and many other shared resources. This section also includes a chapter on getting your network connected to the internet. As with much of the rest of the book, space constraints prevent these chapters from going into a great amount of depth and there are very few references to other material.

So what did I think overall? Well, as I said above, it's too big. But on the other hand it's too small. It's too big in that it covers too large a range of topics that very few people are likely to be interested in all of it. It's too small in that it just doesn't have the space to go into great depth about most of the topics is covers. I think that it would be far more useful if was three books - "Red Hat 8 Linux Users Bible", "Red Hat 8 Linux Admin Bible" and "Red Hat 8 Networking Bible". Each of them could be smaller than this volume, but still cover the material in more detail.

Having said that, the material all seems accurate. The few times I noticed something that I thought was wrong, on checking I found that I was mistaken. So if want you really want is a broad (but in places shallow) overview of Red Hat Linux then this could well be the book for you.

And it's also cheaper than the "official" Red Hat Linux products

This book is quite amazing, very thorough discussion on Red Hat Linux v8.0. It is extremely good for beginners, explains everything very well without boring you to sleep. And it also not a bad beginners book in general UNIX either. I bought it to help me set up my own server, chapters 10-25! helped me with that. My only complaint is that I wish there were more images, but then again its not really needed since most linux users operate via terminal I'm sure.

This book is good if you have a working knowledge of Linux. There are many things that I have learned through studying this book (I am on page 475) but there are MANY things that the author tells you can be done with giving examples or guiding you through the process. So this is not the book for the guy who has never touched Linux. If you know what you are doing in Linux and want to sharpen your skills, this book might be the ticket. For the total Linux Master Tech, this book is probably beneath you. Good only for those of us stuck somewhere in between.

I recently bought this book to manage a linux server. I liked the book for the following reasons:

-- for the most part the tone is serious. The book does not unnecessarily praise linux or takes cheap shots at microsoft. It also does not have many lame jokes that you find in many computer books.

-- A reviewer criticized the book as superficial. I think that is a virtue. Many unix manuals are loaded with information (have you seen the gnu-make manual lately!). Things do not have to be so complex. If I have to parse out two hundred command line arguments to (say) compress a file, there is something wrong in there. For many tasks this book first gives a quick-start method and then goes into reasonable details. Can't beat that.

-- This book has benefited me so many times that I almost owed this review to the author and publisher. My only regret is that I work with RH9.0 and the book is for RH8.0.

-- With software being as dynamic as it is, it is indeed hard to write a book and keep it up-to-date. I appreciate this effort.

-- I used another book from the same publishers (weblogic bible).
I can say essentially the same thing about that book. Absolutely the right attitude! I must not have to read a 1000 page tome to use a simple command.

If you are planning to work on linux, use this book.

This book goes all over the place with what it wants to be, but doesnt succeed much in being a "Bible" for RH8. It goes between being REALLY basic overview and then gives very technical config options. Simple analogy...you are a told a car can drive...then given an engine, steering wheel, a frame, and some tires. Some instructions on how to drive would be nice.

It never goes into any depth on a subject for what someone may really want to do, although it has all sorts of tables and config options that are seemingly complex.

The best/worst example is the Apache chapter which gives you all sorts of methods to configure an Apache server, but very little examples in running it for any type of project. And another thing...RH8 comes with a brand new GUI application Apache Configuration (redhat-config-httpd) which handles most of the config file manipulation, but this author mentions NONE of that and goes in length about the httpd.conf file. Granted that chapter maybe a decent overview of the config file, but I get the impression they just changed whatever was Apache 2.0 relevant from a previously-written chapter about Apache 1.3X in RH7.X, which is a shame, because from my lil experience rh-config-httpd is a pretty good interface for atleast the basic httpd.conf options.

With improved topics that include KD3 and GNOME2, this well-balanced text is a respectable one-stop shop for followers of 'Red Hat Linux 8 Operating System'. The layout of this book is fantastic. Every aspect of the software (including installation and configuration) received generous attention. The overall outlook of the book (and its attached CD-ROM) indicates that a beginner can handle it; although that I would recommend it for an intermediate or advanced user of the software. Most beginners may be weighed down by its extensive details.

Yes, there are better books for virtually every topic.
From apache to sendmail to whatever, you have at least half a dozen 300-1000 pages books that will make you a specialist in that area.
But do you have the time, money or desire to read all that? Do you need to be an expert in this or that? Do you even know what field you need to be an expert in?

Negus' RH Bibles series cover it all. Everything you need to know to get every subsystem working, from email to wireless LAN. It turns a handful of CDs into a full blown server that can do everything short of mixing drinks for you!

And just like good wine, it keeps getting better with time. Actually, it's not that good of an analogy :-) Don't keep your old Bible, buy the new one, the new chapters are worth it.

Thank you Mr. Negus for writing this great reference book!

If you are a patient new or intermediate user this book is for you. If you are an advanced user you don't need an overview text of Red Hat and if you aren't patient get a good book on bowling.

This book covers an amazing amount of material in a format that is very newbie friendly. The author assumes that you know nothing about Linux that wasn't stated somewhere in a previous chapter - something hard to find in any computer book.

From install to configuring various servers in one book - quite a task. The only negative I could see in this book was the author's coverage leaned towards the graphical applications and utilities and so was a little light on coverage of command line environment.

I found some of the more critical reviews unfair. Some bashed the book for being too basic while others claimed it was over their heads. This book is not for everyone. Seasoned users will find this material too shallow in its coverage - this book is not for them. Many new users will find Linux frustrating - THAT'S JUST THE NATURE OF LINUX! - this OS is not for everyone.

I found the Red Hat manuals online were also a good backup reference to this book. At some point users will outgrow this book and have to look elsewhere for more indepth coverage kinda like when you finally took the training wheels off your bicycle.

This book struck me as very superficial. The author attempts to cover a very wide spectrum and, as a result, detail is sorely lacking. One example will suffice. The author describes the purpose of kudzu, ending with "[I]f you like, you can also start kudzu while Red Hat Linux is running" --- and fails to tell you how to start kudzu. Excuse me, but what's the point of failing to provide basic information?

The index is also very weak

On the whole, I think one can do much better than this book.

Jerry