Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Red Hat® Fedora™ 4 Linux All in One

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This book is the best beginner's introduction to Fedora Core 4 that I could find after browsing through the collections of several bookstores.

Fedora Core 4 is one of the easiest to use Linuxes and with the book's instructions I was able to install it and use it without any problems. I almost didn't need the rest of the book because Fedora Core 4 worked great for me right off the bat, I could access my flash drive and home DSL network without needing to learn anything and OpenOffice and Firefox (the web browser, like Internet Explorer) were easy to find in the start menu.

I did learn a lot about using my digital camera in Linux and perfecting my photos with GIMP (also included), and set my computer up as a web server for my son to experiment with so that he can learn to make web pages.

Overall I like this book because it seems to cover a lot of ground, all the way from installing Fedora Core up through esoteric topics like command line programming and scripting and network servers, and it does everything in a step-by-step way, "do this, then do this, then do that" rather than making useless generalizations or giving incomprehensible bullet lists of technical jargon like some of the other Linux books seem to do.

The other reviewer is right in that there are some typos here and there, but none of them make anything in the text wrong as far as I can tell. The book and its examples all work great for me, it's just one of those things, what book doesn't have a few typos?

Linux grows and grows. Perhaps you are pondering migrating to it? To change operating systems can be fraught with uncertainty. Even if you are confident about the new operating system's reliability, how much do you have to learn to be productive in the OS?

Hsiao gives an answer for linux. He chooses to describe what is currently perhaps the most popular version, Red Hat's community-based Fedora. Naturally, the book has copious descriptions of what the desktop looks like, and the common operations you can do using this operational metaphor. You know, all that drag and drop stuff. It's been over 20 years since the Mac popularised the GUI desktop. And the main ideas are now the same across many operating systems. So if you're coming from elsewhere, adapting to the Fedora desktop should not cause any heartburn.

The book also reflects the reality of competition amongst operating systems. Two big reasons that people use computers are for doing office related paperwork and for browsing the Web. So the book (and its enclosed CD) carefully devote time to explaining how to use OpenOffice.org. A suite of applications that is the open source analog of Microsoft Office. Some of you are undoubtedly well familiar with the latter. If you compare that to the book's coverage of OpenOffice, you can see that broadly speaking, OpenOffice can do much the same as MS Office. Though it should be said that OpenOffice lacks much of the specialised commands available in MS Office. If you don't use those, then the book's explanations of OpenOffice should meet your needs.

The other big thing in the book is its description of the Firefox web browser. A Mozilla-derived browser that has won accolades from many for its ease of use. If you want to go beyond the really obvious usages of Firefox, the book can explain more intricate things you can do with it.

If you already know some linux, you might be impressed by the book's treatment of the two most common text editors that come with it - vi and emacs. The book gives a concise walkthrough of both, and a good comparative analysis, without taking sides.

This book simply wasn't adequately proofread before Sams rushed it out the door. I found four errors in the first chapter alone. Not earth shattering ones, but quite annoying. If you're already experienced with Linux there's no reason to buy this book, if you're experienced only with Windows you'll spot the errors quickly enough but the number of them in Chapter 1 doesn't auger well for the accuracy of the rest of the book.

Regardless of your level of Linux and/or Windows experience I'd strongly suggest *Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora* by Bill McCarty, published by O'Reilly, as an alternative. The only advantage that Hsiao's book has is that a more up to date Fedora Core 4 CD is included, and (for the Windows and Linux newbie) a slower paced introduction with more baby talk.