Sat, 02 Sep 2006
Ubuntu
The Official Ubuntu Book
Benjamin Mako Hill and Jono Bacon, et al., Prentice Hall
This book is attempting to provide several things:
A description
of the Ubuntu distribution and philosophy
A set of instructions
for running Linux on Ubuntu
An introduction to Linux for those who
haven't ever run it.
For the first of these, the authors are
handicapped a little by not wanting to trash other Linux
distributions. So they can't say, "Use Ubuntu, because if you use
Debian, you will be either too out of date to use any recent version
of fast-moving software, or so bleeding edge that you don't dare
upgrade your system." Instead, they say, "The first technical goal of
the project, and perhaps the most important one, is the coordination
of regular and predictable releases." If you know enough about recent
linux history, these two statements are similar, but you can't find
out that history by reading this book.
The second goal is pretty
well realized, but it's not clear that you should buy this book
instead of just using google. The fact that there's no index (although
there is a quite detailed table of contents) limits the book's
usefulness as a reference.
I've been using Linux almost
exclusively since 1996, and participated as a developer and tester on
several projects, so I'm the wrong person to judge how well they
succeed on the third goal. I did loan the book to a friend who keeps
asking me, "How did you learn all these Linux shell commands?" It
hasn't yet inspired her to install Ubuntu and see that she too could
learn them, but she's a busy woman. As far as I can tell, this is as
good a book as any I've seen to give someone like that.
Laura
Conrad
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here