Product: 0131470248

If you’re looking for a very comprehensive guide to running the Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise distribution of Linux, you’ll want to check out A Practical Guide To Red Hat Linux by Mark Sobell (Prentice Hall). This book is packed with information…

Chapter list: Welcome to Linux; Installation Overview; Step-by-Step Installation; Introduction to Red Hat Linux; The Linux Utilities; The Linux Filesystem; The Shell 1; Linux GUIs: X, GNOME, and KDE; The Shell 2: The Bourne Again Shell; Networking and the Internet; System Administration: Core Concepts; Files, Directories, and Filesystems; Downloading and Installing Software; Printing with CUPS; Rebuilding the Linux Kernal; Administration Tasks; Configuring a LAN; OpenSSH: Secure Network Communication; FTP: Transferring Files Across a Network; sendmail: Setting Up Mail Clients, Servers, and More; NIS: Network Information Service; NFS: Sharing Filesystems; Samba: Integrating Linux and Windows; DNS/BIND: Tracking Domain Names and Addresses; iptables: Setting Up a Firewall; Apache ([…] Setting Up a Web Server; Programming Tools; Programming the Bourne Again Shell; Regular Expressions; Help; Security; The Free Software Definition; The Linux 2.6 Kernel; Glossary; Index

At nearly 1100 pages, this isn’t a small book. But as you can see from the chapter list, it packs a lot of information inside. The content is predominantly targeted at the Linux server and network environment, so getting the book to learn how to run the Linux desktop may not be the best idea. If you’re looking to set up a Linux network and learn how to effectively work with the command line interface, this book works.

Interspersed throughout the chapters that contain numerous figures and code snippets, you will find a number of sidebars. There are cautions, tips, and security sidebars that add flavor to the core information. On top of that, you’ll feel like you’re back at school with the exercises at the end of each chapter to test your comprehension. If you go to the website […] you’ll even find the answers to the even numbered questions. I haven’t been through that process (looking in the back of the book for answers) in years!

I was really impressed by the book. As a Linux newbie, there’s a lot here for me to learn from. But it isn’t so simplistic that I’ll outgrow the book in six months. This volume will reside on my bookshelf for a long time.
Rating: 5
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