Red Hat Linux 9 For Dummies [Paperback]

Jon 'maddog' Hall (Author), Paul G. Sery (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764539906 | ISBN-13: 978-0764539909 | Publication Date: May 23, 2003

Red Hat Linux, with its splashy brand name and recognizable logo, is undeniably one of the driving forces behind the Linux revolution—and, by far, the most popular Linux flavor. It’s used by businesses, individuals, and governments world wide to cut costs, improve performance, and just plain get the work done. You can use it as a desktop workstation, a network server, an Internet gateway, a firewall, the basis of an embedded system (such as a smart VCR or a robot), or even as a multiprocessor supercomputer. And thanks to the thousands of people who continually refine different parts of Linux, Red Hat Linux keeps getting more flexible and robust with each new release.

Ready to put the power of the penguin in your PC? This handy plain-English guide to Red Hat Linux 9 shows you how—no experience required!  It gets you up and running with everything you need to know to:

• Install, configure, customize, and fine-tune Red Hat Linux 9
• Get connected to the Internet
• Work with Word documents
• Set up a Web server
• Customize your own flexible, powerful workstation
• Connect to a wireless network
• Build a firewall

With world-renowned Linux expert and crusader Jon “maddog” Hall and Paul Sery as your guides, you’ll quickly master what you need to know about:

• Connecting to the Internet via broadband DSL and cable modems or old-fashioned dial-up modems
• Getting connected to your Local Area Network (LAN)
• Building simple Internet and LAN services, including Web pages and print servers
• Using Red Hat Linux to play CDs and MP3s and listen to radio stations
• Using OpenOffice desktop productivity suite, Evolution desktop organizer/and email client, the streaming multimedia player, and other cool applications

On the 2 Bonus CD-ROMs you’ll find:

• Publisher’s edition of Red Hat Linux 9
• Apache Web Server
• GNU compiler
• GNOME and KDE Desktop

This amazing book/CD package is hands-down the quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to put the full power of Linux to work for you.

Editorial Reviews

Review

??entertainingly covers all the essential bases for getting started.?(Linux Format, August 2003)

From the Back Cover

Install and configure Red Hat Linux 9 – no experience needed!

Interface with GNOME,^TM connect to a wireless network, and build a firewall

Put the power of the penguin in your PC with this handy, plain-English guide to Red Hat Linux 9. In no time, you can have Red Hat Linux installed, get connected to the Internet, play media files, work with Word documents, set up a Web server, customize your own flexible, powerful workstation, and do it all for peanuts!

All this on 2 bonus CD-ROMs

• Publisher’s Edition of Red Hat Linux 9
• Includes Apache Web Server, GNU™ compiler, GNOME and KDE Desktop, and more!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 390 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies (May 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764539906
• ISBN-13: 978-0764539909
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #930,534 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You will not be a dummie if you buy this book!! Awesome!, June 15, 2003

By 

Fernando Ramos (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Hat Linux 9 For Dummies (Paperback)

I cannot thank and commend the authors enough (John "Maddog" Hall and Paul G. Sery) for their outstanding job in writing Red Hat Linux 9 for Dummies (RHL9D). I have been looking for a quick and comprehensive book for Linux beginners like this one for a long time. This book may say it's for dummies, but after you are done with this, you will feel like a genius. Trust me, you NEED this book like Osama bin Laden needs a good shower and a fat missile to the arse!

I bought the boxed set (personal ed.) of Red Hat 9, and was able to get by with the manual included there for installing Red Hat (since it is pretty easy), but using the Red Hat desktop features is another story because the boxed set does not give you a user's guide (well, you do get a CD ROM that has the user's documentation, but who wants to wade through that??)! RHL9D will expertly guide you through the install and then show you how to "use" Red Hat 9. After all, if you are like me, the very first thing you want to do after installing an OS is to use music CDs (including burning CD's and watching DVD's), MP3's, games, e-mail, and surfing the Internet. RHL9D does it all and fast too!

Coming from the crash-prone, pay-for-everything MS Windows world, I was very skeptical in thinking RHL9D could quickly replace Windows. Red Hat spanked Windows plus a whole lot more (except crash)! Besides including a myriad of "free" utilities and games, you also get OpenOffice that is the equivalent of MS Office, and it can open your MS documents!! I have been waiting for the day when I could lose Windows for Linux. That day is here and I cannot be happier!

Don't worry, you can still use MS Windows because Linux partitions a section of your hard drive for it's own use, thus giving you a dual-boot system (Windows+Linux). I recommend buying a second hard drive and installing Red Hat there, but you don't have to.

In short, Red Hat Linux is all it's cranked up to be and much more-thanks to this book! This book is worth 3x the asking price for saving me the headaches and frustration of wading through nerdy tomes of Unix/Linux jargon offered in other books just to do a simple Linux task via the dreaded command line! It beats the hell of wading through the Linux CD-ROM documentation or "man" pages too!

I cannot praise this book enough. By the way, before you go out and buy Red Hat Linux 9-DON'T! The authors have also included the personal edition here for free (minus the source code CD's which you don't need anyway unless you are a Linux guru, and if that were the case, why would you be interested in this book??). You cannot ask for more than that! Author's, if you're reading this, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good for partitioning and installing...not a lot of content, August 5, 2003

By 

Gabriel Murray - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Hat Linux 9 For Dummies (Paperback)

This book is great for getting the newest version of Red Hat and getting step-by-step installation instructions, but the rest of the book does not get heavily into using Linux other than for connecting to the internet and using some basic programs. I was hoping for some stuff on shell programming, for example, but nothing at all like that appears in this book. Still, I would've been lost as far as partitioning and installing without this book. It just became a bit useless afterward.

2.0 out of 5 stars Sketchy, full of assumption, November 3, 2007

By 

Robert Suffecool (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Red Hat Linux 9 For Dummies (Paperback)

This started off for the newbie but quickly assumes you have run Linux before. Not a lot of detail in the area of text commands which is like old DOS and the core of the system. It did help in setup of the included CDs which I did not have a problem installing. All of the Linux distributions are quickly being snatched up by corporations making them more controlling just like the Microsoft empire. What every happened to Free or the idea of open source?