Rating: 
Summary: Recomended
Review: A lot of effort went into compiling this book, and it shows. Virtually all aspects of FreeBSD administration are touched on. It is well written and concise (no fluff). Finally, a single source. No more scouring the web and newsgroups for answers on the basics. Well done.
Rating:
Summary: Very Very Very Good
Review: A lot of effort went into compiling this book, and it shows. Virtually all aspects of FreeBSD administration are touched on. It is well written and concise (no fluff). Finally, a single source. No more scouring the web and newsgroups for answers on the basics. Well done.
Rating:
Summary: An essential instructional reference
Review: Absolute BSD: The Ultimate Guide To Free BSD by computer expert Michael Lucas is a thorough and comprehensive user's guide to FreeBSD, the versatile and free Unix-based operating system that many choose as their preferred server. Individual chapters address installation, debugging, setting up web and ftp services, Microsoft's Shared Source .Net Implementation for FreeBSD, and much more. Highly practical, and deliberately written to be accessible for users of all skill and experience levels, featuring straightforward text and numerous examples, FreeBSD is an essential instructional reference for anyone who relies on FreeBSD.
Rating:
Summary: An Extremely Useful Tool
Review: Great Job! What a great tool. It helped me to make sense of my needs and issues--I even decided to change my OS.
Rating:
Summary: Absolute Excellence
Review: I am comfortable with Linux and very much enjoy it, but I am by no means a pro. I was looking for an alternative that was sleeker, cleaner, and would run on an older system with a smaller hard drive. I found FreeBSD and really liked it, but there are some small differences between FreeBSD and Linux, and I thought a book would help.
I did some research and decided on "Absolute BSD" and was going to order it when I returned from my vacation. The day before I went on vacation, I stopped at a bookstore to get something to read on the plane. I picked up this book and was blown away. It was exactly what I was looking for! Not so simple that it went over basic Unix commands, and not too complex where I would have been lost.
If you are looking for a sleeker alternative to Linux, and especially if you're looking to run internet services - this is the book for you. In fact, I purchased the book at the bookstore at list price! Order this book at amazon before you look at it at a bookstore or you might find yourself out 12 extra bucks like me! (It was worth it!)
Mike Pinnella
email: /mushen620$NOSPAM-AT$YAHOO.com\
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: I bought this book because I was having so much trouble understanding the online documentation. I had tried unsuccessfully to install and setup FreeBSD for my webserver. The step-by-step approach works well for me and made the Unix-type OS less intimidating. I was able to set up not 1 but 2 FreeBSD web/database servers, one for myself and the other for my job!
It IS a beginner's book, so doesn't have everything, but it gave me the basics that I needed to set the boxes up, get them running, secure and in production. It also gave me the confidence to keep going with the OS when I was ready to throw in the towel (after 5 unsuccessful installs). The only thing I was slightly disappointed in was the binding. I use my book heavily and the binding started breaking after the 1st week. If/when the author decides to reprint, I suggest he insist on better binding.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I have FreeBSD Corporate Netwoker's Guide, The Complete FreeBSD and this Absolute BSD. This one is the absolute book to have for learning FreeBSD.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I haven't finished the book yet, but the conversational style of Lucas' book make this a "cover-to-cover" read instead of JUST a simple reference book. This applies to his articles too, he regularly writes columns for the "Big Scary Demons" section on O'Reilly dot com. It'll probably make a great reference book after the cover-to-cover read. I get information that I can immediately put to use (new commands or new ways to use old commands) each time a read a section of the book. This book is well worth the bucks.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Disappointing
Review: I love FreeBSD, and have been looking forward to a successor to Greg Lehey's most excellent _Complete FreeBSD_, now getting a little dated. My own copy is now well-worn and ugly, a broken spine held together with duct tape. So, I had high hopes for a replacement. Since Michael Lucas' book promotes itself as "the ultimate" guide, I expected to find a thorough treatment of FreeBSD, a guide that I could suggest for new users just getting started, as well as a manual of "insider" tips and tricks for experienced administrators. Instead, this book offers little value or substance for any category of FreeBSD user. I actually don't know how it is possible for a book of over 500 pages of rather small print to be so empty. For example, here is a brief (and incomplete!) list of essential topics that are either not covered at all, or mentioned only in passing: * no network address translation (NAT) coverage * no PCMCIA configuration or wireless networking coverage, even though the author mentions several times his use of FreeBSD on a laptop * no printer daemon setup/filter coverage * no user PPP coverage, a glaring omission as user PPP is a significant advantage of *BSD systems for those needing PPP * discussion of ssh doesn't even mention ssh-agent, ssh-add * no multi-boot coverage; even a production server will often have multiple boot partitions, to facilitate testing, backups and upgrades * no shell coverage, such as how to set up your environment with a few simple settings to be more user-friendly * useless short discussion of X11 * useless short mention of email clients (along the lines of "I use mutt, my wife uses pine", but no discussion at all of configuration for either) * postfix discussion erroneously disses qmail, goes on to fail mention of Maildir mailboxes at all * generally poor treatment of network configuration, including no discussion of DHCP setup * etc. It is really hard to fathom where the author is coming from in all this. For example, you would think that the chapter titled "Desktop FreeBSD" might describe how to set up a workstation to be comfortable and efficient for work. But you would be wrong, this is not covered at all. Instead, this chapter leads off with a discussion on how to access Windoze file shares! This is the only book I have ever returned in my life, and I am not a young person. I regret this book is even out there, because this kind of lame, inadequate material could actually turn people away from finding out what a great OS is in FreeBSD. The author is evidently preparing a similar book on OpenBSD, another fantastic OS. Let's hope he will do a better job next time, though there is no evidence in the present work that he is capable.
As for FreeBSD, I can only suggest sticking with Lehey's book and _The FreeBSD Handbook_, regularly read the Daemonnews ezine and Dru Lavigne's columns on O'Reilly, and hope that Lehey's book will appear in an edition updated for FreeBSD 5.0 in the near future.
Rating:
Summary: absolutely terrific
Review: I'm sorry, just need to response to W. Marshall's comments. Either he's reading a completely different book or reading this one backwards. Lehey's book is fine, and has been fine, as far as it goes, but Absolute BSD is a great edition to the body of work about BSD. There's got to be a reason why Jordan Hubbard wrote a foreword to this one :) There is no book on the planet that isn't missing something or other. The most important aspect about this book by Lucas is that its clear, complete, and readable. Buy it.
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