Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Initially I thought this would be an excellent book which I desperately needed to convert from Windows to Linux for a LAMP build.The more in depth it became the more obvious it became that I was going to have to google for the answers.In some places it appeared as if Sobell plagerised from the help install notes and even then I found those more helpful in places like dealing with vsFTP which should be a simple task to explain. I've never bothered with a book review before but considering the price and the size of the book you would expect it to have more information than linux's man pages. My recommendation is to look else where like O'Reilly books where they don't have great big swathes of information on how to install using KDE and Gnome or using the yum installer but how to perform compiled installs.

covers nearly everything about linux (4/4 people found this helpful)

This book is probably everything you need to keep your box up and running.
The title does not really reflect the contents of the book. Troughout the chapters we find instrutions to handle the tasks using RH's tools, but the in depth description is made using each service's own tools, which are standard and can be used on any distro. There aren't boxes explaining differences between Enterprise Linux and Fedora, these differences are 99% the difference between "system-config-..." and "redhat-config-..." command names.
Chapters are covered in a logical manner. We start with a brief introducion to the Linux World, followed by a chapter dedicated to instalation, including hints for using LVM. Througout the book there are not many pictures, only in two chapters about the Graphical interface. Configuration and administration tasks are performed on the command line and there are chapters for everything, from user managment to kernel recompilation. It covers the most commonly used servers, I could post them here but it's better to look at the TOC on the editor's site, it's all there.
It is easy to read and handles greatly avoiding computer jargon.
It has nearly 1200 pages, and manages seamlessly to include information of how to work with linux.
To advanced users this isn't the best choice since it can't cover all aspects in depth only in 1200 pages. Anyway, if you look for advanced usage instructions about some subject you are likely buying a book totally dedicated to that subject.
It serves specially as a user manual, and a very complete one. Where it doesn't include everything that there is to know about something there are links to resources online or other books that have further detailed information about that subject.
It brings Fedora Core 2, the full version, not an editor's truncated edition.
Together with Fedora installation CD's it makes a bundle well worth its price.

Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Mark G. Sobell

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Not what it seems (0/0 people found this helpful)

covers nearly everything about linux (4/4 people found this helpful)

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