Customer Reviews

Special Edition Using Linux (5th Edition)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Very informative book. I have not yet tried some of the more advanced features like setting up a web server, mail server, ftp, etc., but this book makes getting up and running and performing basic functions a cinch! Book includes ver. 2.2 on CD, but I bought ver 2.3 to work with. Can't tell much difference on the surface. Installed perfectly the first time and detected ALL of my hardware properly and installed drivers right the first time--still waiting on a MS product that will do this. This version is unique in that it has a full-featured Novell Netware client, the setup of which the book explains very well.

I am not sure why others have had problems with this book. This is by far the best Linux distro. book I have used. I went from nothing to a Linux firewall, and web server in one weekend. This book covers all the major aspects of administration in an easy to understand direct way.

The LIZARD install tool is great and autodetects a lot of hardware. Just remember that Linux, by definition, has a larger learning curve than Windows and you are guaranteed to have to edit some text config. files to make it work just like you want it to.

During my second week of use I was able to recompile my kernel and set up modules to do just what I wanted. This book walked me step-by-step through the whole thing

Some of the mentioned gripes could be solved by using other install methods, rather than trying to install from Windows (this is the most likely to fail method). Try the boot disk or boot from the floppy.

I purchased this book per a recommendation and was extremely excited, after reading the cursory synopsis of the book. Upon receipt of the book I first looked at the CD's and found no mention of the Slackware Distribution, Only Redhat's and Caldera's, along with the Star Office. Now perhaps the Slackware distribution is included somewhere on the CD's but it is not immediately evident and will undoubtably lead to confusion. My initial foray into the contents started well, and I was pleased with the explanations of Linux, it history and use. Unfortunately, this is stopping point for, in my estimation, any attempt by the authors at making the subject matter the least bit interesting. It is in the 2nd chapter that the subject matter, while extremely important and manditory reading, as it is dealing with the set up and installation process, becomes painfully dry, an effort to read and definately not for the beginner or casual user. In the 3rd chapter much of the second chapter dealing with set up and installation is repeated verbatum, and again is technically difficult to read. At this point I should say that while not a total computer techniphobe, I do have 10 years of experience with computers, beginning in the days of DOS and continuing into the Windows amd Macintosh families of operating systems. I also over the years have accumulated a certain degree of experience with both hardware and software so I am what I would consider a fairly advanced computer user. I am currently starting into the 4th chapter and will attempt to get some understanding of the Linux OS. I would not however recommend this book to anyone just starting out with Linux, but would only recommend it to those whom already have linux up and running and require a reference book to fall back on. Great for the advanced user , but not for the beginner on thier initiation into Linux. I myself will probably purchase a much more user friendly reference to begin my experience with Linux.

I am new to Linux but have worked on Windows 95/NT for many years. After reading "Using Caldera OpenLinux 2.2," I was able to do just about everything in OpenLinux 2.2 that I currently do in Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. I was able to connect to the internet, create a WordPerfect document, customize the GUI, and install new applications. One downfall to the book is that it often used "print screens" from OpenLinux 1.3 (the previous version of OpenLinux). For my soundcard, the book recommended that I buy a commercial driver from 4Front technologies; I wish the book would have given me instructions on installing the free OSS sound driver.

The CD included with the book is superb. It includes Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 with WordPerfect 8.0 and hundreds of open source applications. KDE, the graphical user interface to OpenLinux 2.2, is better than the Microsoft Windows GUI. "Que Using Caldera OpenLinux 2.2" and the OpenLinux 2.2 distribution of Linux is a must for anyone new to the Linux community.

I bought this book and found it very helpful, but my hardware wasn't supported(Laptop with external CD-ROM) so I had a heck of a time trying to get it installed. The book gives a good layout of how to setup, configure, and administer a Openlinux 2.2 box and I though it was a good deal since it came with the whole dist. on CD. I have bought and tried many dist. of Linux and make it my hobby; this is the first dist. that I would call a serious competitor to Windows 9x and would be great for the beginner, but as an experienced Linux user I find either Slakware or Debian better for the experienced computer user as they present more of a technical "hands-on" experience when using linux. In conclusion, I liked this book and will use it as reference when working with the KDE Desktop environment. For me its a great compliment for a book to say that I use it as reference, it means I actually use it.

Thanks,

I have been fiddling w RH linux for over a year, most books i come across are for the beginner's level, I feel this book (although for Caldera OL)is for more advanced users; intermediate and above.

I felt I needed to voice out that some of the reviews are unfair as it seems those guys are newbies and should be looking for other books. By the way, I got this book from the library : ) I may consider buying a new copy though.

PS: for the newbies, you really have to be patient to get the hang of linux, it helps with an expert around if not borrow books that teach 1. Shell & editor 2. X windows 3. Networking

And of course experiment alot and camp on the usenet.

For ease of installation OpenLinux2.3 is definitely more user friendly than RH6.0, stick with the easy one and change later when your skills have improved

Rgds

This is book attempts to generalize as much as possible about Linux. It summarizes what is installed in a Linux system. However it is not meant for an adminstrator of an existing system. It provides no troubleshooting advice. This book may provide some assistance in studying for certification because of its broad, but not detailed information.

I have copies of the second edition, and the fourth edition, 1999 reprint. The second edition is Slackware oriented, and comes with Slackware and Red Hat on CD's. The fourth edition is supposedly Red Hat oriented, and comes with Red Hat 5.1, and Caldera OpenLinux Lite 1.2, on CD's, as well as a CD with source code for the Red Hat distribution. However, the fourth edition does not come with Slackware. But, for some strange reason, the command explanations, eg, adduser, relate only to the Slackware distribution, and are completely different to the Red Hat distribution. The installation instructions for the Red Hat distribution are poorly written, and miss too much material, skipping over important material. The information is somewhat inaccurate, and this is only discovered when it is too late. On page 33 of the book, it states "For a complete installation of everything in the distribution, 150MB to 200MB is recommended." However, after having repartioned my hard disk with a partition for Linux of 625MB, so I could install Red Hat Linux and Star Office, with lots of room left to spare, when I was installing Red Hat Linux 5.1, from the CD, with all the packages, I found that it required 657 MB. I ended up re-installing, without many of the packages, and cutting the installation to supposedly 500MB, according to the installation information displayed during installation, to leave room for the Star Office installation. But, it took 525 MB of disk space, when the reduced installation copmpleted, so I can't install Star Office, without scrapping the system, and re-partioning the hard-drive again. Also, no explanation is given as to why the df figures displayed don't add up, and why they disagree with the fdisk figures, for free space and usage. The figures mentioned, apart from the 625MB partion, do not include the 35MB swap partition. This is all quite unfortunate, as the QUE Special Edition books have thus far had a good reputation, which this book appears to degrade. It is unfortunate that no-one appeared to really read the book, or check its validity or relevance, before unleashing it on an unsuspecting public. Perhaps Que should hire some proof-readers, and technical advisers, to go through books such as this, before unleashing them on the public. Thus, the future books (and reprints, if any), could be more accurate and reliable.

DON't do it, this book is so confusing, it has a lot of information, but the probelm is that you undersatdn nothing for me it! some of the authors of the book know nothing about teaching Linux, they might be good on linux, but, ha, this jum around from one point to another, man, I had to call one of my friends to help me installing the program, Please, Please, don't wast your money, buy something else. I liked the Que books, but after this one, I will never buy any of their books even if it was for free, no I change my mind, even if they pay me money to read it, I would not :

I have accumulated 4-5 Linux books in the past 5 years, so I struggled a long while before I got this book as I am neither a great fan of Que's books, nor the in any way enthusiastic about getting a year-old book (especially in the fast changing world of Linux!) Anyway I got it in the end after browsing all Caldera and general Linux titles in a local bookstore - and looking back I never regretted my decision.

I find this book extraordinary in the breadth and depth it covers. It has very good coverage on a wide range of topics in addition to the usual installation and configuration and common sysadmin tasks that is present in most Linux books, and the authors had a lot of insight into the topics (I was skimming through the sections on pgp, ssh, tcp wrappers and firewalls and learned a lot from it).

It is, at the same time, very well written and easy to read and gave me much less headache than reading the howto's, man pages, RFCs, or my Linux Bible! My only criticism is that it is sometimes a bit application-oriented (e.g. it was focussing mainly on swat in the Apache configuration chapter and did not cover manual configuration nor gave explanation of the Apache directives).

In general I find the book well structured and very well written and I definately hope to see the authors continue to update the with the new features of the new versions of Caldera Linux.