|
|
| Linux news | Newbie's Linux manual | Linux links | Link us | ||
| The Linux columns | Book reviews | ||
| DistroWatch + TuxReports | November 7, 2002 | |
by Michael Stutz, No Starch Press
ISBN 1-886411-48-4
The Linux Cookbook gets its name by containing what the author calls recipes: or as the cover says, tips and techniques for everyday use.
The book's aimed at two categories; beginners and users, with little to no focus on system administration. Which is fine for say students learning the ropes for a class using Linux, or employees that again need to promptly learn the ropes.
The book starts out well, explaining much of the Linux jargon and the core commands needed to cope with the bash prompt. The author does tend to focus way too much on Debian GNU/Linux, which is fine if you're a new Debian user, but it inevitably leaves the other more popular Linux distribution beginners like Mandrake, Red Hat, and SuSE feeling a little left out.
My copy being published on August 2001 talking about the ageing FVWM window manager, with barely no mention of the hugely more popular KDE and GNOME, briefly mentioning that they, "at the time of writing are not ready for widespread, general use (and they can cause your system to crash)," either suggests to me the author wrote the book and left the manuscript to gather some dust, or that he needs to get a bit more with the times, and into the fast lane of development that is Linux. The command-line coverage of the book is reasonably fine, but less talk of FVWM and more on GNOME and KDE, the two far more likely, to be being used by the reader.
Like I said, the book starts out well, it's just a shame it promptly deteriorates in general overall usefulness in the last three fifths of the book.
The Linux Cookbook is a good book to get from the library for a few nights to read some of the chapters at the start, but I can't recommend it for much more than that. It's laid out well, and I like its recipe format, it's just a shame the content doesn't fair as well.
57%
| About us | |
| Latest stable kernel: 2.4.19 | Latest development kernel: 2.5.46 Copyright © 1998-2002 Linuxdot.org. Linux ® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. |
|