English Translation of Debian Administrator's Handbook Available

After a successful campaign to liberate the English translation of the French Debian Administrator's Handbook, Roland Mas and Raphaël Hertzog announced its availability under the Creative Commons BY-SA license. You can read it online, download it for free, apt-get install debian-handbook if you're using Debian, or buy a physical copy (or donate for an electronic version). I skimmed through it, and discovered a few debconf and libvirt tricks I hadn't known about within a few minutes.

Re:

[Forty Two Tenfold]

It'd be beating the dead horse.

Re:Ordered my hardcopy

[Qubit]

Very few comments on an article... fp is a troll... second post is simultaneously relevant and pokes fun at the trolls... It's like a time warp back to slashdot of 1999!

(we're grievously low on mentions of hot grits and cowboy neal, but I'm sure someone can provide the necessary fodder)

Good news about the handbook. I'm hoping to get a chance to read through it sometime, and it will be much easier in English than in the French.

Re:Ordered my hardcopy

[anakha]

I'm waiting for a the video, narrated by Natalie Portman - naked and petrified, covered in the aforementioned hot grits.

Re:Ordered my hardcopy

[EdIII]

Sounds like a Kickstarter project ready to get funded.

Plus she did Your Highness so I think she is flexible on the types of projects she will do.......

Re:

[Genda]

pourquoi

Re: achetez une copie durable

[Qubit]

pourquoi

Parce que je parle anglais comme un ange, et francais comme un singe.... ou peut-etre un enfant, mais je ne me souviens plus quelque chose qu'on pronounce avec la meme sond de << enfant >> en francais, sauf << mechant >>, et ca ne me plait pas bien!

et la prochaine fois, citerez ce dont vous repondez, ou je me trouverai avec un p'tit casse-tete que je devrai resoudre apres que je peux comprendre ce que vous disez!

(en verite, la raison pourque je ne veux pas lire ce livre en francais est completement au cause du poisson dans l'oreille -- je l'ai coupe avec le rasoir il y a une semaine, et il ne fonctionne pas beaucoup. Je n'ai pas d'autre, et...voila... que dois-je faire quant aux langues des pays etranges?)

Great to see

[Trogre]

Props to the authors and translators for this effort. I'm off to order my hard copy now...

Re:

[stephanruby]

Don't be so quick to spend your money, there are most likely better books on this topic. The book was never a "bestseller" even in French (except for a very brief window of time on Amazon.com when the author had his entire family and all his friends buy the same book at the same time). And the stellar reviews found on the author's web site certainly didn't come from the one less than luke-warm review that can be found on amazon.fr [amazon.fr]

Re:

[pnot]

Don't be so quick to spend your money, there are most likely better books on this topic. The book was never a "bestseller" even in French (except for a very brief window of time on Amazon.com when the author had his entire family and all his friends buy the same book at the same time).

I don't really have a vested interest in this (don't do much system administration these days, little time or inclination to read the book). But it seems that this book has been through five editions in the past eight years. I don't see why the publishers would agree to print a new edition unless they'd made money on the previous one -- or are Hertzog and Mas getting their friends and family to buy up the entire print run of each edition?

Still, now that the whole thing's online, I suppose everyone can try b

Re:

[stephanruby]

Five editions? Of course, it's an ebook, they can claim it's a new edition every time they make an edit and press the save button. Considering that they call their book a bestseller (during a tiny little period of time on amazon.fr), I wouldn't surprised if they would stoop to that level of exaggeration when it came to numbering their editions as well.

And who is their publisher [debian-handbook.info] anyway? Lulu [lulu.com] is a print-on-demand outfit for self-publishers. My understanding is that you just need to sell one book, in order for

Re:

[pnot]

Five editions? Of course, it's an ebook, they can claim it's a new edition every time they make an edit and press the save button.

Huh? Are we talking about the same book? As is clear from the very Amazon page you linked to [amazon.fr], the French editions were old-fashioned dead-tree books.

Considering that they call their book a bestseller (during a tiny little period of time on amazon.fr)...

As I understand it, their characterization of the book as a "best-seller right from the start" wass mainly based on the fact that the first edition sold out in four months. As for being the top seller on Amazon.fr, the Ulule page says "It was even the most sold book on Amazon.fr for an entire morning." So they're entirely upfront that the top ranking was only f

One language to another...

[Auroch]

So, the book was written in one language, translated into another, just so that people can use a third language effectively?

Sounds like the year of the linux desktop has arrived.

On a more serious note, it's kinda sad that you could probably have learned a second language (adequately for reading) faster than the translation took...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between "adequately for reading" and "adequately for reading technical jargon". The technical world is absolutely full of idiom, and a careless translation won't do anyone any good.

Re:

[Alioth]

"Adequately reading for technical jargon" actually comes before "adequate reading in general" if you're a native English speaker and the foreign text is on an IT subject. Certainly in Spanish, I could adequately read Spanish computer manuals before, say, a novel. Much of the idiom is neologisms imported from English, so if your native language is English you have a good head start already.

Heavily pixelated icons

[tyrione]

Don't go all out there Debian. Nice Handbook sans the icons that look scaled up and thus pixelated.

Re:

[X0563511]

Look fine for me. You sure you don't have your browser zoomed?

Re:

[rubycodez]

that's been done, it's called the man pages.

Re:

[Raenex]

I can't tell if this post is intended as sarcasm or not.

Re:

[X0563511]

Maybe I'm being thick....

Where is this download hiding?

apt-get install debian-handbook

[G3ckoG33k]

# apt-get install debian-handbook
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package debian-handbook

Hmmm. The pdf from the web page is already downloaded.

Excellent installation manual for new Debian users

[G3ckoG33k]

I skimmed it through and found what I needed to know right now.

There is an excellent installation manual for new Debian users!

I was just about to write a short text (1 page) but this pdf will give a friend a much better overview.

He got a CD with netinst three days ago. This pdf will probably make him actually do the installation too.

_
G3ckoG33k, The Evangelist

Re:

[felixdzerzhinsky]

# apt-get install debian-handbook Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package debian-handbook

Hmmm. The pdf from the web page is already downloaded.

I believe it is only in Sid at the moment.

Re:

[mvdwege]

Correct. It showed up two days ago in aptitude.

Archaeologists Find Oldest Known Mayan Debian

[sfjohnso]

... Administrators Handbook I'd order a translation, but I'd have to go to Guatamala and prize it off the wall of a buried Sysadmin's residence to take delivery!