Red Hat Linux 8 Bible 110
| Red Hat Linux 8 Bible | |
| author | Christopher Negus |
| pages | 1062 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| rating | 6 |
| reviewer | davorg |
| ISBN | 0764549685 |
| summary | Wide but shallow overview of Red Hat Linux 8.0 |
This book is a great example of that. It comes complete with three CDs containing Red Hat Linux (which, I assume, are the same as or very similar to the three that come with Red Hat's own shrink-wrapped product) and it therefore starts with installing Red Hat Linux. However, some thousand or so pages later, the same book is talking about some really quite advanced systems administration tasks. I'm really not sure that the same audience will need both of those ends of the spectrum.
Let's take a look at the contents in more detail:
Chapter 1 gives a useful review of Red Hat Linux. It pretty much assumes that the reader knows nothing about Linux and goes into some detail about what Linux is and where it comes from. It even takes time out at one point to explain what an operating system is. The book does score a few early points for knowing the difference between "hackers" and "crackers" and using the terms correctly. This chapter ends with a more detailed look at Red Hat Linux and some of the changes that were introduced with version 8.0. Chapter 2 covers the installation of Red Hat Linux. It does a good job of explaining this in a way that would be clear to someone with no previous knowledge of how to do this.
Chapter 3 is the start of the second major section of the book which introduces the day-to-day use of Red Hat Linux. In chapter 3 we look at logging into the system and get an introduction to using Unix from the command line. Chapter 4 goes into a similar level of detail on using the two dominant GUI environments -- Gnome and KDE. For a beginner, it may have made more sense to have these chapters the other way round as most Red Hat installations will boot straight into a GUI environment and one of Red Hat's changes for version 8.0 was to make it far harder to work out how to get a shell window open.
Chapter 5 starts to look at at Linux applications. It begins with a table of common Windows applications and their Linux counterparts. It then goes on to discuss finding, downloading and installing new applications where, to my mind, it would have been more sensible to first look at using some of the pre-installed applications. The chapter also includes details on using the Red Hat Packager Manager (rpm) and running Windows applications using WINE.
Chapters 6 to 9 each look at a separate application area and present a very brief overview of the applications available in that area. Chapter 6 is about producing documents, chapter 7 about games, chapter 8 about multimedia and chapter 9 about the Internet. In all of these chapters the overviews are necessarily very short and it's hard to see how anyone could get much useful work done after reading them. It would be better if the chapters contained references to further reading, but they don't even mention the man pages.
Chapter 10 starts the next section of the book, which is about system administration. It contains a useful overview of a number of the most common administrative tasks like mounting disk drives, monitoring system usage or setting the date and time. Chapter 11 is about administering users. Chapter 12 looks at automating system tasks. It includes an introduction to shell scripting and a useful description of the start-up and shutdown cycle. Chapter 13 covers backing up and restoring files. Chapter 14 is possibly the most useful chapter in the book for the complete Linux beginner as it contains an overview of security issues. This is particularly important with the increase in the number of people who leave their computers permanently attached to their broadband connections.
The forth and final section looks at networking, with chapters on setting up a LAN, a print server, a file server, a mail server and many other shared resources. This section also includes a chapter on getting your network connected to the internet. As with much of the rest of the book, space constraints prevent these chapters from going into great depth, and there are very few references to other material.
So what did I think overall? Well, as I said, it's too big. But on the other hand it's too small. It's too big in that it covers such a wide range of topics that very few people are likely to be interested in all of it. It's too small in that it just doesn't have the space to go into great depth about most of the topics is covers. I think that it would be far more useful if was three books: Red Hat 8 Linux Users Bible, Red Hat 8 Linux Admin Bible and Red Hat 8 Networking Bible. Each of them could be smaller than this volume, but still cover the material in more detail.
Having said that, the material all seems accurate. The few times I noticed something that I thought was wrong, on checking I found that I was mistaken. So if want you really want is a broad (but in places shallow) overview of Red Hat Linux then this could well be the book for you.
And it's also cheaper than the "official" Red Hat Linux products.
You can purchase Red Hat Linux 8 Bible from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Ugh (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does anyone buy the "Bible" series?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The web rendered these books obselete circa 1995.
good point (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems they're trying to make a book where you can "grow into". By the time you grow into some of the advanced concepts, you'll probably need a new book anyway..
Bibles are good (Score:3, Insightful)
What I want (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure it's a great book (Score:3, Insightful)
Large books should be used as a reference tool and not a novel. I rarely read an *entire* 1000 page book... Skip the newbie chapters. Read the important ones and reference the odds and ends when necessary.
Re:Why does anyone buy the "Bible" series?? (Score:3, Insightful)
- Many absolutely hate trying to read (let alone find) information on the web.
- No workstation in the crapper, just a dumpsite.
- Cheaper than the time/money/hassle involved in finding all the info online, printing it out, and binding it in some sort of conveniently readable manual. A hundred 8.5x11 printouts stapled together is an unweildly read.
I'd pay 20 bucks for book that consisted of nothing but all the HOWTOs and docs floating around, just stuck together in one easily readable format.
its all about the audience (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not all of the book may be useful to you in your application of RH8. But, if they wrote this book specifically to your needs, then this book would not have broad appeal. Its all about the audience. You use a small portion of the book, other people use other portions. But in its entirety, it should appeal to a broad range of RH8 users.
Even if you don't use a lot of what is covered in the book, its still beneficial to read up on the more complex topics. At least be informed -- then less will be mysterious to you in the future should you need to apply more diverse skills.
In defense of "24 Hours" Re:people are idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Another nice feature of the "24 Hours" books is the authors. Sams has brought in some really great authors over the last few years, and most of the new books are written by accepted experts, not just some guy with a certification.
I think you can put this to almost any book. (Score:3, Insightful)
Any book that has "complete reference", "BIBLE", or "Everything" in the title is just cliff notes.
You can be a neophyte to all, or a master of one. Pretty much goes for books on large subjects as well.
I read it, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
This book sadly, is not it. The reviewer is actually quite generous in his review. I found the book to be convoluted in its arrangement with repeated early referrence to commands that were not explained until after the tenth chapter. It did not flow well which made it all the more difficult to read its copious 1000 pages.
As the reviewer stated it tries to cover the full breadth of a subject from very basic to very advanced but in both cases it simply touches on each topic without any real depth. For instance, after adequately explaining the installation steps, it describes recompiling the kernel in less than two pages with no real explanation or what or why. Hardly something necessary for new users or people who may never have compiled a program before, and really no information on the ins and outs of the kernel for advanced users.
Basically, the book is adequate for a referrence if someone needs to get a new service up and running quickly. If you've never setup MySQL or Sendmail the book will walk you through installation and basic configuration, beyond that, you're on your own. Read the Man page and check the news groups, as the book says repeatedly.
I'd rate this book as a 5 out of 10.
Re:people are idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure Wrox has plenty of books that suck, as any publisher does, but both of the ones that I own (Michael Kay's "XSLT Programmer's Reference," and the collaborative work "Professional Java Servlets 2.3") are first-rate, best-of-breed books. I wouldn't lump them in with the "24 Hours" folks at all.
> Or pretty much any non-O'Reilly book.
Here I'm really going to argue with you. O'Reilly really used to be the cream of the crop, but they peaked some time ago. They're publishing as much crap as crop these days. Meanwhile, stalwart Addison-Wesley and relative newcomer Manning Publications have been producing books of unimpeachable quality.
Re:I read it, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
As you and others have stated, there is little depth to subjects, yet it covers a broad group of subjects; and there in lies the key. This book allows a user to start with absolutely no understanding of linux and grow into various subjects. This allows for me to see an overview of the core subjects involved in linux and allows me to gain at least some advanced use of each. It also allows me to choose which areas i want to develop my skills in more. For example, the books shows how to set up a fileserve, which ended up interesting me. Though the depth was not great, i now have a foundation on which i can build more knowledge.
And that is what the bible is all about. it allows a newbie to enter the linux world with some knowledge of most of the important topics. Later on, the reader can decide which subjects they wish to expand their knowledge of.
So for someone like you, who is obviously a seasoned linux user, the book holds little value, but that is no reason to rate this book as a 5 out of 10. Instead, it should be judged on whether it does what it inteds to do. And I feel that this book suits its purpose well. 9/10
They listen to what they buyers of books want (Score:3, Insightful)
All those of you who bitch about these books aren't going to buy them anyway so you are irrelevant.
As in everything, if you don't like it you don't buy it and you stop bitching. This book is likely or sell like hotcakes and increase the use of Linux.
As an experienced Linux user I still like those books as a reference. Memory is a faculty made to forget and it is nice to have a reference books that can browse thru to refresh your memory.
It's like a dictionnary, why would anyone put in the dictionnary just the words that you don`t know about?