Rating: 
Summary: Terrific even for non-standard distributions
Review: I run Slackware 7.1. Although Slackware was the first distribution, it has not been as popular as Red Hat, Suse or Mandrake. But while other books seem to assume that you are running one of the popular distributions, I never felt excluded by Running Linux. Every time I hit a roadblock, Running Linux gave me concrete answers. It was especially good when I had problems installing X-Windows, a sound card, and Samba. It also gave me a good starting point in understanding what tools were available to me as a programmer under Linux. I wish that I had had this book from the very beginning-- much better, for example, than "Slackware Linux Unleashed".
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for beginners, and a great reference
Review: Matt Welsh's "Running Linux" is part of that breed of O'Reilly books that made them famous. Too bad O'Reilly seems to be going downhill in the quality of their books.The book is gentle in introducing free software movement, the unix culture and other things that are difficult for the GNU/Linux beginner coming from a Microsoft world to grasp at first, but that give him/her the necessary understanding of why things are the way they are on GNU/Linux. The book also covers a wealth of related topics (like shell and scripting programming) a little bit, which I think is a plus. My first "Running Linux" was the second edition, that I bought way back in 1998. It still serves me and has served several friends who I lent it to. The second edition is a nice refreshing and update.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent general reference for Linux
Review: While I do agree with some other reviews that an absolute beginner would probably find this a little overwhelming, someone who has spent a few weeks playing with Linux and is ready to start getting serious will find this a good place to start. If you can't locate a really good book on your specific flavor of Linux (best, because each distribution has its quirks), this is a solid and well-organized substitute.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for Newbies
Review: This book is not for newbies and most certainly not for home users. All through the book the author keeps saying " see your system administrator"! Hey guy, thats me, not a lot of help. Also, I found no help in it for two minor(?) problems I had with my installation of Redhat Linux 7.2 - no sound and no printing capability. I'm sure that when I become accustomed to Linux - if I haven't thrown it out before that - this may become a good reference book. But a guide for newbies it aint!!
Rating: 
Summary: A bit disapointing
Review: This is the first and only book I bought so far on Linux.
While I have now a good overview of what Linux can do and how he can do it, I have no true knowledge and no practical knowledge on Linux works.
Thats why I am disapointed about this book. U cant learn anything only from this book...It's just about an overview.
So I think its a good book for someone who dont know if he wants Linux or not and wanna see how it is or for someone with very good knowledge in OS and not at all with Linux(rare I suppose)
If u are a newbie like me dont buy this book untill u will learn a lot from the net too or/and u plan to buy other books in the same time.
If u are a more advanced user don't even look at it. I still give him 3 stars cuz he is well written and in making an overiew of Linux its the best possible book around. I just cant see the purpose of an overview ;)
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction for the Technically Proficient
Review: Typical of O'Reilly books, Running Linux was written with the intelligent reader in mind. This is not a book "for dummies"; it is a thorough and respectful introduction to the Linux operating system. With that said, the authors use their seven hundred pages wisely, covering nearly every aspect of Linux in some level of detail. Despite its breadth, Running Linux does not gloss over the details, but rather, to use the authors' words, looks at "what goes on under the hood" and "behind the scenes". Their step-by-step coverage of the boot process is particularly detailed and precise. As with any introductory text, individual readers with their differing backgrounds will have contradictory opinions as to what degree each topic should be covered. In my opinion, the authors used excellent judgment and showed remarkable restraint in their writing. Furthermore, readers with an appetite for detail will find solice in the categorized and selective bibliography Quite simply, Running Linux is both a definitive guide and an excellent reference. tpm
December 26, 2001
Rating:
Summary: THE Linux Book
Review: If I could only have one Linux book, this would easily be the one I would keep. I have a shelf full of them, and this is the one that sits dog-earred on my desk.
Rating:
Summary: This book works for me!
Review: As starting learning linux, this is the book i first borrowed from school library. I would say it worked (still works) great for me, as a beginner. I had no basic knowledge of linux and it got me step by step fumbling into it.
This book touchs mostly everything you need to understand and deal with. chapters such as "Essential System Management", "Managing Filesystems, Swap, and Devices" "Upgrading Software and the Kernel" and so forth are clearly addressed. But...( not as the bad things are gonna happen :)) this book did not touch everything so deeply and if you wanna get advanced, go seek more. As the conclusion, This book is great for Beginner. go get it started !
Rating: 
Summary: Best possible overview of Linux...
Review: No one book could cover all the aspects of Linux 1 person might be interested in. There are just too many uses, applications, contexts that relate to Linux. This book does the best job possible, though, to give you a good overview with just enough details to get you up and running. Its a great reference book, especially once you start learning to read man pages and the internet as an accompaniment to the book...
Rating:
Summary: Good Set Up and Maintenance Guide
Review: As the title suggests, this book is primarily geared towards users wishing to install and implement Linux on their systems from scratch. Although newer flavors of Linux include more robust automation interfaces in their installs (eliminating many of the more cumbersome and time consuming elements of set up), readers can still benefit from this book's extensive exploration of operating system configuration and administration. One catch 22 with "Running Linux" is that it tries to cover a lot of different topics in a single tome. The third edition now includes snippets introducing software packages such as SAMBA and KDE which, while welcome, actually have separate titles devoted to them that may better serve the needs of some. Overall, with its discussions of such topics as kernel compilation, file management, and dealing with device drivers, this book is still a worthwhile purchase as a reference tool for both beginners and system administrators alike.
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