The Linux Web Server CD Bookshelf CD-ROM (Paperback)

~ O'Reilly & Associates (Creator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For every Linux consultant who goes to job sites with a four-pound computer and 15 pounds of books, O'Reilly & Associates has a solution: The Linux Web Server CD Bookshelf. It's a searchable collection of six books on the subject of the Linux operating system and its role as a platform for Web sites. The six included books are:

• Running Linux, Third Edition
• Linux in a Nutshell, Third Edition
• CGI Programming with Perl, Second Edition
• Apache: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition
• MySQL & mSQL
• Programming the Perl DBI

It's all there: Linux, HTTP services, databases, and scripting. Linux in a Nutshell ships with this kit in its traditional paperbound form.

Would you want to read a book cover-to-cover on your computer screen? No. Is the formatting as nice here as in the printed versions of the books? No. Are the documents on this CD-ROM designed to be printed? No. But all the information is here, and the CD-ROM weighs nothing. You can copy all 50 MB of its contents to a hard disk easily enough if saving weight is paramount. The money value of this product is high, too. By buying it, you save about two-thirds of what you'd spend to buy the six books separately.

Though O'Reilly deserves praise for amalgamating related books in a compact form, the publisher needs to improve the search utility that ties them all together. As it stands, the unified search feature is a Java applet that does full-text searches on all six books. That's fine, but the results of a typical search aren't well formatted. If you search for pretty much any Linux command--say, diff or pathchk--you'll get a hit on chapter 3 of Linux in a Nutshell, which is a Linux command reference. The hit is on the whole chapter, which is gigantic, and you have to use your browser's text-search feature to find your term again once you've called up the chapter. The search utility would be much more useful if the books' contents were more finely chopped.

For that reason, you'll want to do a lot of your cross-book searching in the combined index (in which you select the initial letter of the term you want, and scan or search through a list of indexed terms from all the books). When you click a link in the combined index, you're taken right to the point in the target chapter at which the term appears. You still have to do a bit of searching around, but at least the software takes you to the general vicinity of where you want to be. What's more, most of the time, you'll know which of the six books contains the answer you want, so you can scan that book's index individually. --David Wall

Topics covered: All subjects (except Internet connectivity beyond the basics) related to hosting a Web site on a Linux server. Databases (under mSQL and MySQL) and programming (with Perl and the Common Gateway Interface) are covered in addition to Linux itself and the Apache Web server.

Product Description

The Linux Web Server CD Bookshelf gives you the information power of six complete O'Reilly Animal Guides covering the best of the open source web platform. Included are unabridged versions of Running Linux, 3rd Edition; Linux in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition;Apache: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition; MySQL & mSQL;Programming the Perl DBI; and CGI Programming with Perl, 2nd Edition. As a bonus, you also get the new paperback version ofLinux in a Nutshell. Never has it been easier to find what you need to know online. Formatted in HTML, The Linux Web Server CD Bookshelf can be accessed with any web browser. The books--all 3276 pages--are fully searchable and cross-referenced, so you can search the individual index for each book or the master index for the entire collection. The CD Bookshelf is a complete library of technical books you can easily carry with you anywhere you need it.

Product Details

• Paperback: 812 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (October 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596002084
• ISBN-13: 978-0596002084
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,991,523 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #13 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Programming > Linux Web
  #58 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Operating Systems > Linux > Servers

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Reference, March 4, 2003

By	Evan B. (Utah, USA) - See all my reviews

Putting aside the CD-Roms, the alpha layout of the book itself is wonderful and just what I was looking for. Very concise and and again the book itself is worth the money. It is made to be used as a resource and a reference. I wish other books were laid out this way. After spending hrs and hrs looking thru books I finally found my first choice.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Linux Web Server CD Bookshelf, April 27, 2003

By	A. Seely (Pensacola, Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Linux Web Server CD Bookshelf gave me everything I needed right at my finger tips. If there was only one major reason that you should buy this Bookshelf it would be the search capabilities alone. This Bookshelf comes with the ability to search all 6 books at once for any subject you want. This was the first type of CD Bookshelf that I have ordered. If it is possible I will only buy CD Bookshelves from now on.

Sean Seely