Description:
The No B.S. Guide to Red Hat Linux 6 is a clear, easy-to-follow guide to installing and learning to use the most popular commercial distribution of the Linux operating system. Meant for Linux novices with Microsoft Windows experience, this book provides procedural information about installation and configuration. It then conveys orientations to the Linux way of thinking about problems and the tools used to get work done, mostly with the Bash shell. After walking the reader through Red Hat installation, Bob Rankin provides a quick introduction to Gnome. Mostly, this is a tour of the obvious: He introduces all the standard utilities and some of the games. There's a speedy introduction to setting up a PPP connection with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Rankin's introduction to the file-management capabilities of the Bash shell is the most valuable aspect of this book. He lists scores of tasks, ranging from copying a file to concatenating multiple files, and provides clear statements of the syntax used for each. He explains Linux features, such as piping, which aren't widely seen in Windows and MS-DOS environments, and shows how to use utilities that improve Linux's ability to work with Windows data and software. The No B.S. Guide to Red Hat Linux 6 ships with its eponymous operating system and a bunch of other software on CD-ROM. For that reason, it's a decent deal--but most new Linux users will soon want a richer guide. --David Wall
| 
