Practical Guide to Red Hat(R) Linux(R) : Fedora(TM) Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, A (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Don't be put off by the heft
Review: Excellent reference book, well suited for the sysadmin of a linux cluster, or the owner of a PC contemplating installing a recent stable linux. Don't be put off by the daunting heft of the book. Sobell has striven to be as inclusive as possible, in trying to anticipate your system administration needs.

It should be quickly said, and he does so, that actually installing linux is easy. Out of the 1090 pages, a scant 50 pages deal with the install. If you have never installed this linux version, hopefully this will reassure you.

After installing, the book's bulk can be digested on an as-needed basis. You don't need to understand the other 1000 pages to start doing useful work on your computer. Sobell seems to have spent some time crafting a well defined contents and index, so that you can find what you need.

As an aside, it is remarkable how much free material is in the Fedora Core. The book provides 4 CDs for this!

Rating:
Summary: My opinion as a Linux newcomer
Review: I am an IT professional and would consider myself a master within a purely Windows based enterprise (MCSE since 1997). That being said - after my last job was outsourced I found that every position I wanted to apply for required some Linux experience and I had never used it. Enter this book.

Linux is not a very intuitive OS. Many commands have names or switches that barely resemble what they do making it difficult to remember or learn. This book is remarkable. It starts out assuming you know nothing and helps you install Linux. It then presents an overview of the different Desktop Environments (GNOME or KDE) and how to navigate / customize them to your taste. This is probably the first 100 pages.

Linux was designed to be more functional than easy to use. This book does a great job of balancing how to perform an operation via the GUI or the command line. After reading this book, it is obvious that the GUI was an afterthought to Linux and the command line is where it's true strength lies. The Author gives you the most commonly used commands in a logical order along with examples to follow to help understand variations like redircting output from one command to another and achieve a result that is much more useful than the desktop environment can currently present. As a total beginner to Linux, I appreciated that he spent just enough time on each section to explain what it is and how to use it but didn't run it into the ground making me feel like I had to skip a section to keep it flowing. Each section & chapter is divided up into task oriented modules allowing you to jump anywhere in the book and get a quick primer on a topic like apache server or directory structure.

This book is not a bible - if you need extensive information about a specific topic you will want to look elsewhere. This is a wonderful resource for beginners who want to learn Linux and decide where they want to go with it or intermediate users who want a task oriented reference. Starting as a total novice, I now feel I have a solid working knowledge of Linux which is exactly what I was looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Tome that covers every possible aspect of Linux
Review: I can't fault this book for how big it is. I usually find super huge tomes to be of inconsistent quality across the chapters, but this book has consistently high quality organization, text and use of graphics across all of the chapters. As you would expect the book starts with installation, it then covers use of the operating system from the desktop level. After that it goes into the file system using the shell, and ends up with the with shell programming.

All of the code and shell stuff is hilighted for clarity. The text is not stiff, but isn't so loose as to be annoying. This isn't a reference, it's an end to end walkthrough. If you are looking to use Linux at the end-user level this is a well balanced book that will familiarize you with all of the basics.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent coverage of all that is Fedora/Red Hat Linux...
Review: If you're looking for a very comprehensive guide to running the Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise distribution of Linux, you'll want to check out A Practical Guide To Red Hat Linux by Mark Sobell (Prentice Hall). This book is packed with information...

Chapter list: Welcome to Linux; Installation Overview; Step-by-Step Installation; Introduction to Red Hat Linux; The Linux Utilities; The Linux Filesystem; The Shell 1; Linux GUIs: X, GNOME, and KDE; The Shell 2: The Bourne Again Shell; Networking and the Internet; System Administration: Core Concepts; Files, Directories, and Filesystems; Downloading and Installing Software; Printing with CUPS; Rebuilding the Linux Kernal; Administration Tasks; Configuring a LAN; OpenSSH: Secure Network Communication; FTP: Transferring Files Across a Network; sendmail: Setting Up Mail Clients, Servers, and More; NIS: Network Information Service; NFS: Sharing Filesystems; Samba: Integrating Linux and Windows; DNS/BIND: Tracking Domain Names and Addresses; iptables: Setting Up a Firewall; Apache (httpd): Setting Up a Web Server; Programming Tools; Programming the Bourne Again Shell; Regular Expressions; Help; Security; The Free Software Definition; The Linux 2.6 Kernel; Glossary; Index

At nearly 1100 pages, this isn't a small book. But as you can see from the chapter list, it packs a lot of information inside. The content is predominantly targeted at the Linux server and network environment, so getting the book to learn how to run the Linux desktop may not be the best idea. If you're looking to set up a Linux network and learn how to effectively work with the command line interface, this book works.

Interspersed throughout the chapters that contain numerous figures and code snippets, you will find a number of sidebars. There are cautions, tips, and security sidebars that add flavor to the core information. On top of that, you'll feel like you're back at school with the exercises at the end of each chapter to test your comprehension. If you go to the website www.sobell.com, you'll even find the answers to the even numbered questions. I haven't been through that process (looking in the back of the book for answers) in years!

I was really impressed by the book. As a Linux newbie, there's a lot here for me to learn from. But it isn't so simplistic that I'll outgrow the book in six months. This volume will reside on my bookshelf for a long time.

Rating:
Summary: Mark Sobell as always
Review: Mark Sobell has always been easy reading for the most complicated technological tasks. His first book still sits on my book shelf and is still used even to this day. No book can be compleate in the subject matter of Linux because Linux is always changing. This book involves the Linux kernal 2.6 and as such will become outdated. But the book is compleate as far as the 2.6 kernal is concerned. The book is written in a terse easy reading style that is a Mark Sobell trademark. This book has excellant refurals throught out refuring you to different sections or other parts of the book for more information on the same subject matter.

Rating:
Summary: An exhaustively comprehensive fountain of information
Review: Now in a newly updated and expanded second edition and enhanced with the inclusion Fedora Core on 4 CDs, A Practical Guide To Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core And Red Hat Enterprise Linux by UNIX/Linux expert Mark Sobell is an in-depth reference, instructional, usage guide and resource for users, administrators, and programmers of Linux. An exhaustively comprehensive fountain of information A Practical Guide To Red Hat Linux includes everything from deep coverage of GNOME and KDE, tips on file sharing with Samba, NFS, and FTP, a practical introduction to writing "bash" shell scripts, thorough instructions for assorted problems and tasks from rebuilding the Linux kernel to tracking doman names and addresses, a 500+ word glossary and comprehensive index, and much more. If you only have the budget for one Linux book, A Practical Guide To Red Hat Linux is the book to get because it leaves nothing out!