[Tutor] OT: Book(s) about linux

[Jonathon Sisson]

Hello Bernard...

Just to give you a pointer about Linux:  If you're new, Fedora and
Ubuntu are both relatively easy to learn, but powerful (I've never used
Ubuntu (or Debian, for that matter), but I hear that Ubuntu is a really
great distro).  Stay away from Slackware and Gentoo, at least until
you've had the chance to familiarize yourself with Linux.  I made the
mistake of attempting a stage 1 Gentoo install on a PII machine with
hardly any experience.  (Fortunately, the PII was so slow that I had
time to read the manual completely before each step).  It booted up fine
when I was done, but it was rough (even with extensive documentation ).

I'm not saying that Slackware and Gentoo are useless, as both are
*extremely* powerful OS's (Gentoo is my favorite OS other than OpenBSD).
 They do require quite a bit of knowledge just to get them installed,
however, and therefore are not good choices for someone just beginning
with Linux.

Jonathon


Python wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-10-05 at 11:33 -0400, Bernard Lebel wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Sorry to use this list for such an OT subject. But I want to get hands
>> down with Linux, and am looking for a book or two on the subject.
>>
>> I'm looking for information about installation, configuration,
>> optimisation, and management of the Linux OS.
> 
> If you are new to Linux, you're likely to be best helped by a book that
> matches your distribution, e.g. "Ubuntu Linux" or "Ubuntu Unleashed".
> (Not to push you to Ubuntu; I'm running Fedora myself.)  These books
> provide shallow coverage of everything and will give the background
> needed to make good use of the system documentation.  They will also
> point you to yum, synaptic, smart or whatever package management system
> makes sense with your chosen distribution.  The package managers greatly
> simplify system administration.
> 
> There are books devoted to packages: SSH, Sendmail, DNS/Bind, Apache,
> Samba, etc. so you may need to get additional books depending on how you
> use your computer.  "Linux in a Nutshell" (mine is 5th edition) provides
> a useful reference.  There are also books like "Linux Debugging and
> Performance Tuning" which are more system oriented.  "Moving to the
> Linux Business Desktop" is useful for finding your way among all of the
> available desktop applications.  Linux is a pretty broad subject so
> there's a huge range of books from which to pick.
> 
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>> Bernard
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