[ Thanks to David
Culp for this link. ]
“Writing book reviews can be a chore, believe it or not.
Sometimes its just hard to find things to write about, its not that
the book is bad, just that its nothing to get excited about and so
you can be at a loss for words. Really bad books and really good
books are easy to write about, fortunately this book falls into the
really good category. Inside Linux attempts to cover Linux from all
angles, from installation, configuration, networking and system
administration. The book is also fairly distribution agnostic and
most of the information presented is valid across all Linux
platforms. Specific distributions covered are Red Hat, SuSE,
Slakware, and Caldera. However, only in a few places does the
author revert to distribution specific material.”
“The writing is clear and concise, in fact it is very
straightforward and not dressed up any. The author takes a hands on
approach to teaching Linux, he basically says “This is what needs
to be done, here is how we do it and this is why.” Anyone should be
able to follow the examples in the book with little trouble as very
little of the book gets very technical. The only section of the
book that is a bit confusing is the sections on the Linux boot
process which I feel could have probably been left out and not
affected the book at all.”
“The book starts with an excellent discussion of Linux, what it
is, why you would want to use it and where to find further
information. Installing Linux is covered next and most of the major
distributions are covered. Excellent coverage is given to what I
consider the most important aspect of installing Linux, system
requirements and hardware compatibility. I cannot count the number
of questions I receive from people having trouble installing Linux
and the problem turns out to be a hardware compatibility problem.
Each major piece of hardware is discussed and recommendations are
made where appropriate….”