Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Mandrake Linux in 24 Hours (Teach Yourself -- 24 Hours)

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

 

 

I was used to Windows (and it's 'blue screen of death' too!), but then I heard about Linux Mandrake and this book helped me learn Linux quickly. When i started reading, i had barely an idea of what Linux was, but this system and the book itself took me to a whole new world! I would reccomend this book for the novice to intermediate Linux user.

This is NOT recommended. The book cuts corners, and I didn't appreciate it. The section describing how to install is almost nonexistent. I'm going to look around for a real source to help me just get installed.

I'm a newbe to Linux, and I found this book as if the authorread some data somewhere and got a book out of it. I found that thisbook left to much information out... I used author's method to install linux didn't work. I did not want to partition my drive, so, I used lnx4win (not in the author's book). The book did not give me help for items linux didn't find' ie: modem, soundcard, zip drive. No help in these areas...

Both of the other reviews are right...

1 star because it is very light in most areas...

However 5 stars for the things that I learned in an hour after picking up the book.

So make it an average of 3 stars...

It showed me a few things that I didn't learn in reading a ton of other Linux books... I've run Linux-Mandrake for almost 4 months now. But now I can do more, and it makes Linux very exciting!

The book comes with a CD that contains a full LINUX/UNIX system with all the tools one needs to write high-quality documents on a computer. (1) UNIX/sh/sed/awk ... for scripting, e.g., systematically formatting a pre-LaTeX source to LaTeX. (To learn UNIX, one should buy the book by Kernighan et al., read man-pages plus some free book of mine available for download from The University of Aizu FTP-server.) (2) LaTeX for publishing. (If one wants to learn LaTeX, one should buy Lamport's book.) (3) XEmacs text editor for editing scripts and LaTeX-files. (Just play around with it.) (4) LyX typesetting system, a highest level WYSIWYG LaTeX interface, whose indexing system dwarfs any other product. (Selfexplaining).
The software was easy to install and runs well on an older 233Mhz, 32MB-ram laptop. The book gives enough information in this regard. What makes it valuable is the completeness of the system: one has not to go around and download this and that ...
The system has been used by myself for writing several scientific publications, and by a complete computer novice using LyX to write a M.A. thesis. The book gives enough hints that one can proceed exploring the hugh underlying LINUX/LaTeX/Emacs/LyX system.
School of Computer Science & Engineering.
The University of Aizu. Japan.