Vous voulez voir cette page en français ? Cliquez ici.

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Learning Red Hat Linux: A Guide to Red Hat Linux for New Users
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

Learning Red Hat Linux: A Guide to Red Hat Linux for New Users [Paperback]

Bill McCarty (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.


Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Paperback --   -- --
Paperback, Jan 8 2002 --   -- --
There is a newer edition of this item:
Learning Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora Learning Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora 4.0 out of 5 stars (5)
CDN$ 36.31
In Stock.

Product Details

Product Description

From Amazon

The economics of the free software business has taken another football bounce with the release of O'Reilly's Learning Red Hat Linux, a guide to the most popular distribution of the freely redistributable operating system. The bounce is this: for the typical tech-book list price of $35, you get Bill McCarty's beginners' survey and Red Hat 7.2, a $60 value at Red Hat's own retail price. McCarty's introduction claims that the two-CD set, printed with the O'Reilly logo, contains "everything you need to install and configure your own Red Hat Linux system." But is it really Red Hat 7.2? Yes, according to one Red Hat official, but like batteries, support is sold separately for $20 a month. Economics militate in favor of purchasing the book as well as a separate support contract from Red Hat, if needed. The book is, then, the freebie, and consequently a good deal.

McCarty follows his nose through the installation procedure and annotates each step with do's and don'ts; e.g., do use the "custom" install mode rather than "server" or "workstation" if you don't want to lose existing data on the hard drive. He intuits just what the new Linux user will want to do: configure X11, connect to ISP over a modem or LAN, use e-mail, run Samba over the network to read a PC hard drive, configure and start an Apache Web server, and configure a basic firewall. His chapter on RPM, the Red Hat Package Manager, is brief but useful, and his one-page discussion of the Red Hat Network $20-a-month support option is far too brief to be useful, but contains enough hints to allow a new member to keep expectations modest.

Brevity and velocity are the book's strengths, as McCarty glides from the highlights of one configuration protocol to another. Error recovery is ignored in favor of tips and hints on error avoidance. Larger issues in system administration strategies are unevenly treated: partitioning theory, dual booting, and backing up are skipped. Loading kernel modules dynamically is not discussed, and neither is kernel compiling, and the ubiquitous DHCP client is introduced only after the rather advanced DHCP server is discussed. To round out the knowledge base, I recommend Matt Welch's peerless Running Linux as the entry point for serious Linux system administration.

In his hurry, McCarty blurs distinctions between Linux distributions, leaving the reader wondering why Red Hat is singled out for book-length coverage. But his single biggest omission is an introduction to linuxdocs.org and the indispensable world of HOWTOs. Rather, reference to HOWTOs is relegated to an appendix on the boot process.

Ultimately, Learning Red Hat Linux should be viewed as an inexpensive way to obtain legitimate CDs of Red Hat 7.2, with installation documentation that exceeds the norm. Once the installation has either succeeded or failed, however, readers will want to move along to linuxdocs.org or Running Linux. --Peter Leopold

Review

For those of us who need our hands held, so far this is the best basic book I've seen. -- A.T.Connellan, Write.net online
See all Product Description

Tag this product

 (What's this?)
Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.
Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags
 

Customer Reviews

13 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most helpful customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars for the uninitiated, Jan 21 2004
This review is from: Learning Red Hat Linux: A Guide to Red Hat Linux for New Users (Paperback)
If you are new linux or are thinking of building out a linux box then this is a decent place to start. The basics of unix style administration are explained about as plainly and simply as possible. One short coming of the book is the lengthy discussion of installation which admittedly used to be a harrowing experience 5 or so years ago (seemingly the main argument against the adoption of linux by microserfs), but in the hands of Red Hat has become nearly as painless a process as any windows install and therefore is not that necessary. The only other problem with this book is that the version of Red Hat is 8.0 (3rd edition) i believe and only has some middle variant of the 2.4 kernel (2.4.17 i think), this is not necessarily bad but the 2.6 kernel is out and Red Hat has a new approach to the desktop with its Fedora build. Only buy this if you are completely new to linux and want to learn the basics.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent how-to oriented, bare bolts book, May 6 2003
This review is from: Learning Red Hat Linux (Paperback)
Excellent O'Reilly how-to oriented book containing the bare
bolts on installing Red Hat 8 with lots of pointers to more
information on hardware compatibility, additional software
packages, etc. It is *not* an in depth tour of Linux, rather,
it's a "how to get started" oriented book for those familiar
with Windows (or other OSes) but not necessarily with
Linux.


Included freebie: The book bundles Red Hat 8 on two CDs,
so you'll have the media in hand to get started quickly.
Also has an appendix on boot loader issues (useful if, as
many of us will want to do, one needs to dual boot Linux
and some other OS).


BTW, be sure you purchase the latest, 3rd edition (just
out this month). Among other updates, it includes R.H. 8 CDs
and information instead of the previous edition's R.H. 7.2
media and info.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


1.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy unless you want an expensive, basic install guide, Feb 17 2003
By 
Andrew R. Robinson (Lone Tree, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Learning Red Hat Linux: A Guide to Red Hat Linux for New Users (Paperback)
This book is no different from RedHat installation manuals/information that can be read on the web for free. Horrid as a reference manual. Buy 'Running Linux' instead. ISBN 156592469X. Regret that I ever bought this book. In addition it is old (RedHat 7.2 and not 8.0).
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
› Go to Amazon.com to see all 45 reviews  3.8 out of 5 stars 
 
 		 Most recent customer reviews











Only search this product's reviews


Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject




















i.e., each book must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?