A Practical Guide to Linux(R) Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming

Linux Pocket Guide

Red Hat Fedora and Enterprise Linux 4 Bible (Bible)

RHCE Red Hat Certified Engineer Linux (Exam RH302)

Distributions

A Practical Guide to Red Hat(R) Linux(R) : Fedora(TM) Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (3rd Edition)

Format: Paperback
Author: Mark G. Sobell
ReleaseDate: 27 June, 2006
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Rating:

Belongs in the Linux for Dummies line of publishing ...
Page after page is burned on such trivialities as 'ls', and 'cat' commands; even how to delete a word or a line using an editor. With all due respect, this is trully a waste of your time if you are expecting to get info on Fedora Core. In reality, this book has very little to say anything specific for Fedora. It may have a redeeming value as an intro to Linux for newbies. . . but flops in this respect as well; newbies will look at the title and continue browsing for other books. You can have mine for free if after reading this you are still considering buying it.

Everything you every wanted to know (and more) about RHL
Usually the books leave out some important topic, while others go too deep in some areas and must skim lightly over the others. I keep searching for books that collect everything you want to know about a subject in one place, and keep getting disappointed. A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Second Edition) (APRtRHL) is one of those rare books that actually pulls it off. Mark G. Sobell has created a single reference for Red Hat Linux that cannot be beat!
I will admit that Mark did not, nor could not, go into excruciating detail about every single aspect of Linux and the more common applications programs. For example, the Sendmail book by Costales/Allman covers just one application, and it's 100 pages longer!
Mark has written APRtRHL with exercises at the end of each chapter. This way, the book can be used as a text in a course on Linux. Many chapters include a JumpStart section to get you going quickly. In addition, he has included many, many cross-references throughout the text. This makes the book as close to "hyper-linked" as print media can get.
After the obligatory history of Linux, Mark propels the user into Part I of the book, and through the exercise of planning the installation and acquiring a copy of Fedora Core 2 (included with the book). He then takes you through the installation process step-by-step. Now that you have Linux installed, you need to know what you've got to work with.
Part II covers the basics of using Linux. After spending time showing you around the KDE desktop (GNOME is also reviewed), Mark gets you acquainted with the standard command line utilities, the Linux filesystem, and the shell.
Part III digs into the nitty-gritty of using Linux. He discusses the X Window System, GNOME, KDE, and then BASH (Bourne-Again SHell) is re-visited. He concludes by talking about Networking, distributed computing, and the web.
In Part IV, Mark details the various administration tasks a typical user needs to know. The core concepts chapter is rather lengthy, as he discusses the various run levels, rescue mode, and how to set up and secure a server. Software downloading and installation with rpm, yum, apt are covered, printing with CUPS, rebuilding the Linux kernel, boot loaders, user management, backups and restores, and configuring a LAN complete this part of the book.
Part V is constructed with nine "roll up your sleeves and get started" chapters on using clients and setting up servers. We start with OpenSSH, move to ftp, and configure a secured ftp server. We handle sendmail, Spam Assassin, Webmail, IMAP/POP3 servers, and KMail. Next Mark teaches us about NIS (Network Information Service), NFS (Network Filesystem), and SAMBA, the three main file-sharing *nix applications.
The last three chapters of Part V cover more Internet-oriented subjects: DNS (BIND version 9 particularly), firewalls (iptables), and web servers (Apache).
The penultimate part, Part VI, starts with a chapter that uses a sample C program, tabs. c, to show how to use make to build application binaries, how to tackle debugging problems with gdb, and how to manage source code with cvs. The other chapter delves into the programming of the Bourne Again SHell. Part VII is actually a set of five appendixes covering regular expressions, help, security, the Free Software Definition, and the Linux 2. 6 Kernel.
If you've never read any of Mark Sobell's other books, you're in for a treat. His 25+ years of experience in the Unix/Linux field have given him a depth of knowledge that is evident by the way he writes. This marvelous text (with a 4-CD set of Linux Fedora Core 2 included) is well worth the price. This is as close to an "everything you ever needed to know" book that I've seen. It's just that good and rates 5 out of 5.

My opinion as a Linux newcomer
That being said - after my last job was outsourced I found that every position I wanted to apply for required some Linux experience and I had never used it. I am an IT professional and would consider myself a master within a purely Windows based enterprise (MCSE since 1997). Enter this book.

Linux is not a very intuitive OS. Many commands have names or switches that barely resemble what they do making it difficult to remember or learn. This book is remarkable. It starts out assuming you know nothing and helps you install Linux. It then presents an overview of the different Desktop Environments (GNOME or KDE) and how to navigate / customize them to your taste. This is probably the first 100 pages.

Linux was designed to be more functional than easy to use. This book does a great job of balancing how to perform an operation via the GUI or the command line. After reading this book, it is obvious that the GUI was an afterthought to Linux and the command line is where it's true strength lies. The Author gives you the most commonly used commands in a logical order along with examples to follow to help understand variations like redircting output from one command to another and achieve a result that is much more useful than the desktop environment can currently present. As a total beginner to Linux, I appreciated that he spent just enough time on each section to explain what it is and how to use it but didn't run it into the ground making me feel like I had to skip a section to keep it flowing. Each section & chapter is divided up into task oriented modules allowing you to jump anywhere in the book and get a quick primer on a topic like apache server or directory structure.

This book is not a bible - if you need extensive information about a specific topic you will want to look elsewhere. This is a wonderful resource for beginners who want to learn Linux and decide where they want to go with it or intermediate users who want a task oriented reference. Starting as a total novice, I now feel I have a solid working knowledge of Linux which is exactly what I was looking for.