Product: 1430219122

Turnbull, Lieverdink & Matotek should do a public service to PRO Linux Administrators and possibly drop the Pro from their Pro Linux System Administration book. For once I totally agree with all the other reviewers (never mind there are only two) of this book in the fact that this is NOT an advanced server title. That is about the only serious complaint I have since accidentally enough since I am not anywhere close to being a seasonal Linux user, much less a PRO.
Now lets suppose I managed to liquid-paper those three words from the cover: I have got the BEST RH/Ubuntu_LTS beginners administration and setup book available; do mind that before purchasing this title. By the way, those are the only two flavors of Linux Server covered in the book which is very fine to me: One paid one free.
In my case I did my homework while looking to replace my previous Linux books: Red Hat Bible and Amazon’s bestselling Linux Server book (titles and authors intentionally incomplete.) I have read both of them AND 80% of this one so far.
What I am surprised about is the fact that I did not know there was a student course in Linux book writing, complete with a very strict TOC and Topic coverage. I have come to believe that ALL THE authors of Linux books, at least those available at my local book store, did attend. If you read most Linux Server books or at least browse through their TOC-even regular Linux flavor titles-they cover THE SAME TOPICS: Firewalls, DHCP/DNS/Apache, Networks, SSH, OpenLDAP, etc. I spent a couple of afternoons flipping through pages of these titles and I was very surprised that the topics were not really similiar; THEY WERE THE SAME. My question at that point was: Is there any difference in the book you buy besides the amount of coverage to each topic?
Then I found this book which is not at first sight much more different than the rest. But what sets this title apart is the fact that apparently Mr. Turnbull & company did go to my imaginary Linux Book Writting 101 crash course, but decided to attend some advance courses as well. I found that, at least in the relevant chapters, this book goes the extra mile and provides some fairly interesting material related to it. Chapters like MySql/Ldap/Apache/Mail servers, among others provide interesting examples and sometimes complete follow through of real life applications you can use. The book finally hits a nail in this ‘plus’ thing with a complete chapter on a collaborative Open Source suite (Zimbra) which was the main reason I was setting up Linux in the first place. After a quick look up, there are no other books that cover this and in my limited knowledge open source groupware is very limited.
I ended up with a server that provides local secure IMAP/Groupware/Time Server services all using this book with minimal references to other books or the internet. For a beginner Linux user setting up and even connecting to the box remotely that IS a big deal.
The errors on the book are very scarce (at least in the relevant chapters I used) but by no means is the book perfect. The utility that is supposed to update the free Antivirus engine still has not updated anything (no coverage on how to check this either), the ClamAV file checker for some reason started to work after a couple of days (it was written by Mr. Turnbull himself??), and for God’s sake; WHAT IS IT with these Linux authors that cannot EXPLAIN IN SIMPLE WORDS how to setup remote GUI access? Please! Enough with SSH, half the setups in Linux CAN be done via GNOME or other! Me to ALL Linux Authors: INCLUDE A CHAPTER ON VNC SERVER, NOMACHINE, OR ANYTHING that begins with an X and comes free; PLEASE.
I guess references on the internet were more common that I care to recall.
Anyhow very good book, I’ll try and revise this review when done with the book, and thanks for reading this review. If you want to set up a box for home/small or even medium size server load, for nothing more than the cost of the box AND this book, this will get you a pat in the back from your users.
Rating: 4
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