Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself FreeBSD in 24 Hours

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

 

 

The content is good and 5.0 is covered (in passing). The only problems I have with the book could have been dealt with in the editing process.

Example

In the installation chapter - Do not create a user when offered, we will do that later in hour X using the adduser command. In the very next chapter (hour) on shells: "Login using the user account (not root) you created in the previous hour. There are many other examples like this as well.

Also many times words are missing spaces between them.

All in all quite good on content for a new comer like me. It just needs a scrub job on flow and a spell check.

I found several mistakes such as were mentioned by a previous reviewer. Grammar, spelling, and typesetting errors shouldn't have gotten past the editors. Sequencing errors shouldn't happen either. You are told not to create a user during installation and then in the next chapter you are told to log in as that user you didn't create. One or two chapters later you are told how to create a user... the sample in the text didn't look like what was on the screen when I followed the text's instructions and didn't work.

What is even more disappointing is that the store where I bought the book wouldn't give me a refund because I had broken the seal and used the disk. Neither the Canadian distributor for the book nor Sam's Publishing in the U.S. responded to my e-mail when I tried to contact them about the problems.

I think that there may be some good information in this book, however, the number of mistakes I found in trying to install and setup FreeBSD using this book as a guide left me frustrated and without a working system.

Installed and configured FreeBSD for the first time using this book. Very nice and easy to follow. Information goes far enough to allow the user/reader to take things further where needed - from other sources. The book covers the basics nicely. I came from linux and found the change over to be smooth. Nothing bad to say.

As mentioned previously, the most frustrating issue was being instructed not to create a user account at installation and then being told to log into that account in the next lesson.

The book is going to be useful if you have no experience with FreeBSD or Unix because it does cover a lot of basic information without being too overwhelming. A better choice, however, would probably be FreeBSD Unleashed because it covers more material and does not appear to be plagued by the same editorial issues even though it is written by the same authors.

Make it a point to visit the Sam's website and read the Errata for this book.

If your interested in a NIX then this is a great starter book. By no means is this the be all end all. Get your feet wet and USE the OS. You will see that the file structure of NIX is superior to WIndows any day. More logical, just makes sense. Loved the book as I was new to FreeBSD. If you have used Linux or other flavors of NIX then this may be remedial for you. However, I seem to get something out of everything I read.

I do not know if all of the negative reviews are justified or well reasoned. I am somewhat familiar to Unix type OSes and was looking for something fundamental but not overly simple.

This book starts with basic elements (basic commands, concept of user accounts) and lays a good foundation for further study. I very much appreciated the fact that it does not assume to much from its readers with regard to their knowledge of Unix.

The chapters are concise and nicely arranged, logistically speaking. This topics are linear and are do not throw to much info at the reader at once. However the content is not dummed- down to the point of being condescending.

It's not completely useless, I learned a lot from the book but to have so many typos and mistakes in technical reading such as this is completely unacceptable. It includes a CD with FreeBSD 4.7 which is still supported but out of date.