Customer Reviews

Spring Into Linux®

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There's obviously no lack of books to help you learn Linux. One of the latest entries into the arena is Spring Into Linux by Janet Valade. If your goal is to get up and running quickly, this book will help...

Contents: Understanding Open Source Software; Choosing a Linux Distribution; Getting Ready to Install Linux; Installation; Interacting with Linux; Using Your Desktop; Using the Command Line; Linux Accounts; File Management; Applications and Programs; Word Processing; Spreadsheets; Graphics; Printing; The Internet; Multimedia; Email, Messaging, and News; Editing Text Files; Shell Scripts; Regular Expressions; Command Reference; Index

As with most successful books, this one has a particular style that helps to maintain the focus on quickly getting up to speed. Each chapter consists of "chunks", which are one to two pages of material covering a specific topic or skill. Each chunk starts at the top of the page, so it's pretty easy to find what you're looking for. Also, the chunk titles are also listed in the table of contents, so finding the topic for reference purposes is pretty easy. Due to the space constraints for each topic, there is a higher ratio of text to pictures than you'll find in a lot of other books. So if you want a lot of step-by-step pictures, you might not do too well here...

The distribution coverage, while not exhaustively complete, does hit many of the major ones... Fedora, Mandrake, and SuSE. Again, this will not give you a complete reference to absolutely every option in your distribution of choice, but that's not the purpose of this book. It's enough to get you up and running. From there you can learn more of the details over time. There's a good mix of command line to desktop GUI material here, so you should learn enough in the way of skills to allow you to switch back and forth when necessary. And in addition to the OS material, Valade also covers some of the more significant desktop applications that are needed by nearly every computer user. Applications such as OpenOffice and GIMP will allow you to be as productive on the Linux desktop as you are in a Windows environment.

For the right audience, this is a book I'd definitely recommend. It's focused, concise, and it will get you active with the software in short order...

I liked this book... it is a great reference for getting a handle on Linux in a short timeframe. While it doesn't concentrate on any particular Linux release, it does cycle through various flavors so you get an idea of the look and feel of each. The book is definitely suitable for beginners or intermediate Linux users who are looking for a quick understanding of the installation, configuration and management of Linux. All in all, a good source forthe basics and some previews of more advanced topics.

The front page sums up the "Spring Into" series of books: "..short, concise, fast-paced tutorials for professionals transitioning to new technologies." This particular book, as stated in the preface, is aimed at computer users who are new to Linux, and "just need a quick start guide for working on Linux." The offering is for computer users with some good working experience using either Windows or Macintosh machines, but not necessarily experts. The caveat in the preface is not intended to turn away the novice, however:
It is not impossible to learn Linux from this book without a background in computers -- just difficult. The book assumes an understanding of concepts and computer use that you may not possess. However, if you appreciate a book that assumes you can understand quickly and delivers information in a compact form, without distractions and repetitive explanations, give this one a try. It might work for you.
As far as its goal of delivering the information in compact form, the book certainly succeeds, but not without some repetitive explanations.

In her attempt to deliver simply a quick start guide, the author chose not to focus on one distribution, but to use three distributions: the two primary enterprise distributions, Red Hat/Fedora and SuSE, and a distribution targeted at novice and home uers, Mandrake (now Mandriva). There is an obvious lack of depth, but depth is not the intent of the book. In fact, the default subject is Red Hat, with differences in the other two distros explained along the way. True to the style of "tell them what you're going to say, say it, and tell them what you said", each chapter begins with an "executive summary" and ends with a summary, with the meat in between.

The first four chapters of the book introduce Linux and getting it installed, beginning with a fairly quick explanation of Open Source software and Linux. After briefly covering the three distros used in the book, Valade includes a quick summary of a few other distros, notably Xandros and Mepis. Ubuntu is notably absent from the group.

The installation chapters form the largest segment of the book. Although there are fairly good step-by-step directions for each of the three distros, the directions lack the depth needed for anything but a straightforward install. The pre-install chapter, however, points out some of the potential pitfalls, such as hardware compatibility and partitioning. Although the book is already dated (for example, Mandrake is now Mandriva, Novell now provides SuSE as OpenSUSE), the instructions are still pretty accurate as far as the installation screens and procedures. The reader should at least feel more comfortable about the installation process after reading these chapters.

After the install process, there are several chapters on using Linux with KDE and Gnome. After an initial introduction to both interfaces, the author settles on KDE, as the default throughout the rest of the book, with stops for Gnome when there are significant differences between the two. While trying to keep the introduction to Linux on a graphical level, Valade frequently drops into the command line interface, using bash for the shell. Although the chapter devoted to CLI is light, meatier stuff is available at the back of the book for the more knowledgeable or intrepid.

Finally, about half way through the book are nine chapters on the application programs available, starting with how to get and install them. Mozilla is the featured browser in the chapter on using the Internet, which includes a section on getting connected. Multimedia coverage is light, with a caveat at the beginning of the chapter: "Although working with multimedia files is much easier than it used to be...it can still be problematic on occasion. You are more likely to encounter problems in this area than any other."

The book generally delivers on it's promise, but the style does get tedious after a while. The applications chapters were also surprisingly elementary given the intended audience. But they are mercifully quick reading. Though dated, it is a good introduction to enterprise Linux distributions (and an easy to use personal version) for "busy" professional types.