Product: 1418837237

Got this for a class in college. The text seems to be well done, augmented with a ton of screen captures. But there is a lot of incorrect info that no longer applies to any distribution of Linux. Rather, the text even admits it in a few places, that the operating systems it comes with (Fedora and Knoppix) don’t support some of the functions in the exercises it WANTS you to do. This is impossible, of course. It is really weird to be told to do a command or procedure that the text admits WON’T work in the distributions of Linux in includes. Worse, even UNIX terminal emulators online won’t support some of the antiquated commands any longer. Some of the directories, libraries, and files referenced in some of the exercises are actually obsolete such that even a UNIX system won’t recognize them these days. But as the goal was to learn Unix by using LInux, this is especially stupid and clumsy. Also, in MANY cases, it will take a very steep learning curve to an ultimate goal. That is, you will get some explanation for WHY a command does what it does, but eventually the author just decides to forget about explaining a function or command and just blasts through a ton of them without any context. This makes it hard to learn the commands (which is always WAY easier if you know WHY the command does what it does). By Chapter 5 you are already likely lost, just entering the commands it tells you to without any knowledge of what you are actually doing or why it gets the results on the screen that it does. The approach is also a bit lame, considering a lot of what it wants you to do is database comparison and script building, neither processes of which are done in a UNIX terminal any more. With software and GUI, no professional in IT does either database creation or script building in the ways this book instructs the student. It is like learning how things were done in the 90’s, ignoring all the progress software engineers in the last three decades have made that make such mundane tasks so much simpler. I have asked around to various IT professionals, asking if they every use Vi or Emacs and NOBODY has said they have ever had a need to do that.
Rating: 3
1418837237
Count: 5