Red Hat Linux 9 Unleashed [Paperback]

Bill Ball (Author), Hoyt Duff (Author)

Book Description

Series: Unleashed | Publication Date: May 8, 2003

Continuing with the tradition of offering the best and most comprehensive coverage of Red Hat Linux on the market, Red Hat Linux 9 Unleashed includes new and additional material based on the latest release of Red Hat Linux.

Incorporating an advanced approach to presenting information about Red Hat Linux, the book aims to provide the best and latest information intermediate to advanced Red Hat users need to know about installation, configuration, system administration, server operations, and security.

All chapters concentrate on Red Hat Linux software packages, including up to date coverage of:

• The architecture of the Linux kernel 2.4.18
• USB
• KDE
• GNOME 1.4
• Broadband access issues, routing, gateways, firewalls
• The XFree86 4.2 architecture and features
• Disk tuning
• GCC 2.2
• Perl 5.6.1
• Python 2
• Printing services (CUPS)
• Security

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Continuing with the tradition of offering the best and most comprehensive coverage of Red Hat Linux on the market, Red Hat Linux 9 Unleashed includes new and additional material based on the latest release of Red Hat Linux.

Incorporating an advanced approach to presenting information about Red Hat Linux, the book aims to provide the best and latest information intermediate to advanced Red Hat users need to know about installation, configuration, system administration, server operations, and security.

All chapters concentrate on Red Hat Linux software packages, including up to date coverage of:

* The architecture of the Linux kernel 2.4.18
* USB
* KDE
* GNOME 1.4
* Broadband access issues, routing, gateways, firewalls
* The XFree86 4.2 architecture and features
* Disk tuning
* GCC 2.2
* Perl 5.6.1
* Python 2
* Printing services (CUPS)
* Security

About the Author

Bill Ball is the best-selling author of a dozen books about Linux, including several previous editions of Red Hat Linux Unleashed, Que's Using Linux, and Sams Publishing's SuSE Linux Unleashed. He is a technical writer, editor, and magazine journalist, and has been using computers for nearly 30 years. He first edited books for Que in 1986, and wrote one of the first best-selling Linux books, Teach Yourself Linux in 24 Hours, in 1997. He has authored articles and reviews in Linux Journal, developed technical online content for business Web sites, and has developed and released open source software for the Mac OS and Palm OS platforms. He has been a fan of Linux and XFree86 since 1994, and uses the software on Intel-based PCs, Apple PowerMacs, and MIPS platforms. Bill is an active member of the Northern Virginia Linux Users Group (NOVALUG), teaches Linux courses at Stratford University in Falls Church, VA, and lives in the Shirlington area of Arlington, VA. He can be contacted through http://www.tux.org/~bball.

Hoyt Duff feels that a good word to describe Hoyt Duff's life experience is "former"—former senior vice president and senior commercial loan officer for a bank, former community college instructor, former restaurateur, and former special education teacher. He currently meets the needs of his inner ADD child by spending the summer months tending to his family business, a sport fishing pier (the longest on the East Coast) and playing cocktail piano on weekends.

Hoyt even finds time to write about Linux as a columnist and regular contributor of reviews and tutorials for Linux Format magazine. He has contributed to the Mandrake documentation as an editor for the version 7.x and 8.x releases and has edited the English content of www.linuxnetmag.com, a webzine. Active in the TideWater UNIX Users Group (www.twuug.org), Hoyt enjoys the regular Linux installfests the most and will attempt to install Linux on anything that moves. His computer experiences began with writing college course Fortran programs on an IBM 360/65, Pascal programming on the original IBM PC, and then taking a detour hacking 6502 assembler on a Commodore VIC20. Discovering Linux through an article in Boot magazine, he eventually got his first commercial writing assignment for its sister publication, MaximumLinux magazine. The philosophy that drives his life is "Fix it until it breaks," which is why he enjoys Linux so much.

Hoyt can be contacted at [e-mail].

Product Details

• Paperback: 1056 pages
• Publisher: Sams (May 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672325888
• ISBN-13: 978-0672325885
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,062,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good overall presentation, November 12, 2003

By A Customer

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

Alright, this book has some strong points and some weak points. The weak points are: There are only general guidlines to troubleshooting but nothing else. The reference links work, but some are expired. The coverage is "hasty" and kind of sloppy, but in a book like this that is to be expected.
The strong points are: It virtually covers all the areas. It gives you a solid idea on how Linux works and lets you take it from there. It offers enough support to specialized issues such as networking, scripting, and kernel managing. (Again don't expect any in depth troubleshooting, if any at all).

The message is clear: If you want a most general introduction to ALL areas of Linux, buy this book.
If you want the newbie's guide to Linux, this is not it! Chances are that you'll get stuck booting for the first time with weird messages appearing on your screen and this book will not care less! Stay clear in that case and buy someting more limited to its scope but more embracing to troubleshooting.

On the other hand if you are not experienced yet and you want a thick book on your shelf as a guick reference to kernel compilation let's say, then buy this book. As your experience grows your references to this book will diminish.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Good..., March 30, 2005

By 

James (Hoboken, NJ) - See all my reviews

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

When I had purchased Red Hat Linux 9 Unleashed I had already dived head first into Linux, so I knew some things about the subject. This book is still really good reference when I get stuck trying to do something Red Hat, the sections on the kernel is very well written, but this book isn't a good tutorial on Linux in general. A book I would recommed to the novice and also the power user is "Linux: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition -- by Paul Sheer" its old, but its a classic.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good introductory book, November 10, 2003

By A Customer

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

Alright, this book has some strong points and some weak points. The weak points are: There are only general guidlines to troubleshooting but nothing else. The reference links work, but some are expired. The coverage is "hasty" and kind of sloppy, but in a book like this that is to be expected.
The strong points are: It virtually covers all the areas. It gives you a solid idea on how Linux works and lets you take it from there. It offers enough support to specialized issues such as networking, scripting, and kernel managing. (Again don't expect any in depth troubleshooting, if any at all).

The message is clear: If you want a most general introduction to ALL areas of Linux, buy this book.
If you want the newbie's guide to Linux, this is not it! Chances are that you'll get stuck booting for the first time with weird messages appearing on your screen and this book will not care less! Stay clear in that case and buy someting more limited to its scope but more embracing to troubleshooting.

On the other hand if you are not experienced yet and you want a thick book on your shelf as a guick reference to kernel compilation let's say, then buy this book. As your experience grows your references to this book will diminish. Mind you there are AMAZING online resources about anything you might need in Linux. Some other popular company in PCs and workstations should be ashamed by its database poverty and limited information sharing ;-)