Rating: 
Summary: Perfect Linux book for novice!!
Review: This book talks about basic things to get Linux work on your PC. It has a section about the history of UNIX and Linux, which you might want to know if you are really interested. I might recommend this book to starters of Linux, but not to people who want to be a power user. And I felt it was little bit out-dated. If you are looking for recent information of Linux, you might want to get other book, but if you have no idea what Linux is but you want to know about it and use it on your PC, this book is what you want to buy
Rating: 
Summary: The book to own for Linux users!
Review: The best of the best! O'Reilly and Associates is the premier publisher in the Unix arena, and Running Linux is their best Linux book to date. Matt Welsh provides a treasure trove of generalized knowledge suitable for all distributions of Linux. No Linux library is complete without Running Linux
Rating:
Summary: A "practical lab" for learning UNIX and X-Windowing at home
Review: After four disk sets and nearly $100 in how-to books on LINUX, I was still stumped on getting LINUX up & running on my system. I had spent nearly two months trying to get the system just to boot! Along came Mat and Lar with the best-of-the-best startup books for LINUX. I'm running X-Windows sessions on Sunday after my purchase on Friday night! Halleluiah! Now I'm a UNIX savy whiz (which isn't bad for a forty-two year old pilot). I now understand what my programmers and operators are talking about at work, I can navigate the shoal waters of our workstations (without help!), and I'm moving into deeper waters with scripting and compiling. These guys were published thanks to the vision of O'Reilly & Associates. "Running LINUX" was my first purchase from O'Reilly and has led to over twenty-five "O" their titles in my library. Check 'em out....
Dave Garten
Rating: 
Summary: If you already know some Unix, forget this book
Review: If you already know a little bit of Unix or Linux or other Unix-variants, this book is way too "introductory" for you. It covers stuff like how to login and run ls, cp and mv. As another example, see the section on backing your computer. It talks about using find and tar, but nothing about dump and restore and backup strategies.Overall, too much scratching the surface and not enough in depth information for real Unix users.
Rating:
Summary: A fine introduction to Linux
Review: The world of Linux is pretty deep and rather disorganized, so as a newbie I was overwhelmed by the amount of resources that will sure help me in the end but did not give me a clue where to start. After all, Linux is not Windows, which all the dummies in the world use.
Running Linux was a very helpful resource for me to get started with almost anything that I know about Linux today. Of course it is impossible for a book like this to be truely comprehensive, and nobody should expect that. It is very hard to go for breadth and depth at the same time when there are hundreds of distributions that are different enough that they have their own how-to's.
What really helped me in this book were rather shallow yet to-the-point references to more in-depth resources about a vast array of essential subjects on how to maintain a Linux box. In the end, you *have* to read distribution- or tool-specific README's or how-to's, so getting the pointers to where I *should* look for really made it easy for me to explore more.
I recommend this book if you wish to go into Linux and already know a bit about how computers work.
Rating:
Summary: There is much, much better available
Review: This book is supposed to serve as a reference, something you keep on your desk and refer to when you want to tweak the desktop settings, make an adjustment to your sound setup, change your boot manager, etc, etc.
It's not. Avoid this book. It is incomplete and shallow. If you need help with your Linux installation, get "Linux in a Nutshell" from the same publisher. It is a vastly superior book. Or just Google for a solution to your question/problem - your chances of success are much better.
The money that I spent on this book was pretty much wasted.
Rating: 
Summary: Only if you are a beginner to Linux/Unix
Review: I bought this along with "Linux in a Nutshell" when I decided to look into Linux. I've got a 20+ year background with Unix. I'm sorry to say I never found this book useful! Between my experience and the modern Linux installers (I've got Mandrake) this book is redundant. That hasn't been true for the Nutshell book.
I gave this book two stars because for beginners it offers a decent introduction to Linux.
Rating:
Summary: If you already know some Unix, forget this book
Review: If you already know a little bit of Unix or Linux or other Unix-variants, this book is way too "introductory" for you. It covers stuff like how to login and run ls, cp and mv. As another example, see the section on backing your computer. It talks about using find and tar, but nothing about dump and restore and backup strategies. Overall, too much scratching the surface and not enough in depth information for real Unix users.
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: well written with worthwhile info contained, which is typical of an o'reilly book. This book isn't a system administration book, it is more of a "beginner linux" book that explains much of how the various linux components function and work.
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