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Beginning Ubuntu Linux
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Mar 29, 2006 01:20 PM
from the start-to-finish dept.
from the start-to-finish dept.
Ravi writes "Anybody who have heard about Linux would be aware of Ubuntu which is a very popular flavor of Linux created by the South African firm Canonical founded by the space tourist Mark Shuttleworth. In fact, they set the precedent of supplying free CDs of this very popular OS to any one interested in installing and trying out Linux on their machine. Recently, I got hold of this wonderful book named "Beginning Ubuntu Linux - From Novice to Professional" authored by Kier Thomas. Being a Ubuntu user myself, I was pleased to see a Linux book specifically concentrating on Ubuntu, finding its way to the book stores. This book is aimed at people who are new to Linux and who wish to start their Linux journey by installing Ubuntu on their machines. Read the rest of Ravi's review.
The book's 600 pages are divided into 7 parts each concentrating on a particular topic. And there are in total, 34 chapters and 4 appendices.
The first part of the book concentrates on giving a firm foundation to the readers as to what Linux is all about, its history and the benefits of using Linux over any other operating system.
From here, the author moves into explaining how to install Ubuntu on ones machine which forms the basis for the second part of this book. This part is divided into 3 chapters, one each dealing in pre-installation steps like partitioning ones hard disk, the actual installation steps and the equally important part of the most common issues faced by users before, during and after the installation and their solutions. In fact, the author lists over 18 problems that any user could encounter and gives their possible solutions.
The third part of the book which contains 6 chapters focuses on giving a fly-by tour of different aspects of Ubuntu Desktop, its various elements like menus, panels, virtual desktops and applets. I especially liked the section which listed the Microsoft Windows desktop functions and their equivalents found in Ubuntu. There is a special chapter titled "Ubuntu replacements for Windows programs" which could be an eye opener for any one interested in embracing Linux. In fact, the whole book is geared towards neophytes who are hoping to take their first steps in Linux.
Part 4 aptly named - "The Shell and Beyond" - contains 5 chapters where the author gives a sound introduction to the shell in Linux as well as takes the reader through the most useful and commonly used commands which would help a user save time. This part of the book contains a chapter on the Bash shell where the author explains the uses of the command line and how one can benefit from it. I really liked the table giving the DOS commands and their equivalents in Linux and also the section on how to disable the graphical desktop and boot into the console. And surprisingly the author explains how to do it the command line way which I found really interesting. This section is full of useful tips for people who have an affinity for the command line - like creating aliases, getting more help on the command usage, the file hierarchy in Ubuntu, file permissions and much more. The icing on the cake is the chapter named - "Cool Shell Tricks" - which contains many command line gymnastics that showcase the true power of the console in Linux. But what is amazing is that the author explains all these topics in a very simple and lucid manner which makes it easy for even a lay person to understand.
The fifth part of the book deals entirely with the topic of digital music, movies and image editing and is spread over 3 chapters. Here one gets to know the various software used to play different media formats as well as an introduction to the fine art of image manipulation using Gimp. One of the biggest drawbacks for Linux users is the lack of out-of-the-box support for popular media formats due to license restrictions. The author explains how one can enable the media players bundled with Ubuntu to play most of these media files including the ever popular mp3. By going through the chapters in this section, one gets to know more about the different audio and video formats which could be an eye opener for any tech neophyte.
What is the use of a desktop if it does not suit an office setup right? The next section comprising of 8 chapters cover how one can use Ubuntu at one's work place. The author takes the users on a trip of using OpenOffice.org office suite to create documents, spreadsheets, presentations as well as configuring an email client to send and receive emails. The last chapter in this section is exclusively dedicated to installing and running Microsoft Office in Ubuntu using Wine.
Till now if the book was dedicated more or less to new users of Linux, then in the seventh and final part of this book, the experts among us have something to look forward too. This part of the book covers the finer nuances of maintaining the Ubuntu system which includes installing and updating software, managing users and groups, ways of backing up data, and most interesting of all, steps to make the system more responsive which includes disabling unnecessary services, optimizing the hard disk, the concept of prelinking and much more.
The inclusion of 4 appendices which contain among others a glossary of Linux terms, the bash shell command index, information on getting further help online as well as a synopsis of the different flavors of Ubuntu makes this book a perfect guide for new users in Linux.
Having said that, even though at first glance, a person who is well versed in Linux might be tempted to pass it on as a book for newbies; on close scrutiny, one will find interesting nuggets and tips which even an expert would not have known. One example of this is the part where the author explains how one can configure Ubuntu to communicate and transfer data with one's bluetooth enabled cell phone. And it is to the authors credit that all these technical topics are explained in clear and simple language. The book is interspersed with images and screen shots making it easier to visualize the steps being explained. All in all a good book which is both informative and entertaining at the same time, and which would appeal to anybody interested in installing and using Ubuntu Linux on ones machine.
The author, Keir Thomas has been writing about computers, operating systems,and software for a decade. He has edited several best-selling computer magazines, including LinuxUser & Developer, PC Utilities, and PC Extreme, and worked as part of the editorial staff on a range of other titles. He was formerly Technical Group Editor at Live Publishing. Throughout Keir's career, his aim has been to explain advanced and confusing technology in ways that the average person can understand. Keir works as a freelance editor and writer. He lives on the side of a mountain in England, and his pastimes include hiking and playing musical instruments.
Ravi Kumar is passionate about all things related to Linux and likes to share his experiences through his blog on Linux."
You can purchase Beginning Ubuntu Linux - From Novice to Professional from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:3, Funny)
Ooh! Ohh, ooh! Cue the Randroid flamers!
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:2, Interesting)
I never really exists sepratly from anything else though. What is my keyboard? My finger comes down and intersects a peice of plastic... there is an edge where the keyboard ends and the free space begins...
The keyboard is not the edge, it is not the free space above it, but it never exists as a seprate entity from those things.
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:2)
Not completely arbitrary. If asked, "Where are you?" you can answer "So-and-so from that other point." If they ask "Where is that other point?" you can say "So and so from where I am." It is circular. It is no different from saying "I yam what I yam." True, but devoid of really useful content.
However, I do agree that we are not 10
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:2)
Thats interesting. Seriously, becuase I really dont think about that. For me, it often makes more sense thinking about who I am in the context of my personal accomplishments and failures, dreams and aspirations, and all of my past experiences. Family and Society only come in loosely, but dont really affect how I think about myself.
Spea
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:5, Funny)
Ubuntu is an ancient African word, meaning "can't configure Debian"
Parent
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:2)
But then, if society is an illogical, random, unreasonable conglomeration of nonsensical ideologies, beliefs and traditions.... what would that make me?!
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:2, Funny)
Ubuntu actually is "an ancient African word for I am sick of compiling Gentoo".
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:4, Interesting)
I do know what you're getting at, but the reality is that there are concepts that are fairly ubiquitous across most of Africa, so it's not unreasonable to describe a particular word or concept as "African" just as there are words and concepts that are particularly "European" despite the size of my continent (I'm British). In fact, there are concepts that are distinctly "Western" (covering, I suppose, Europe, North America and arguably Australia and NZ) for instance the idea that every bad event must be blamed on a named individual.
Parent
Re:Meaning, for those who are curious. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not the idea. The idea is that in an organised effort to achieve an objective (run a restaurant for a night, put a man in space, create a piece of software), there should be responsibility allocated for the different kinds of risks which might derail the effort. When the effort is in fact derailed in an uncontrolled manner, either the individual with responsibility for mitigating the causative risk is to blame, or the person with resp
Free CD's (Score:2, Insightful)
sure, Ubuntu is a wonderful project, and the purpose of making Linux easier for humans is an admirable and honorable effort. But, these 'new-generation Linux distros' getting all the credit for what has been a 'traditional activity' among the Linux crowd rankles a little ire
Re:Free CD's (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Free CD's (Score:2)
Re:Free CD's (Score:3, Interesting)
We were doing this for the SME Server (http://www.contribs.org/ [contribs.org]) back in 2000, when it was still owned by e-smith, inc. We shipped one CD free of charge to anyone who filled out a request form on our site.
The effect was quite positive. It helped to build awareness of the software at a critical point in its life, and we went from a few hundred servers installed in the wild to a few thousand. Not huge, but still enough to build a really dynamic community. The server's onto version 7 now, and the community i
Need something more general (Score:2, Insightful)
I still have the feeling that an IT specialist writing a book about Ubuntu or Debian or Gentoo is just like a sexologist writing a book about making love with his wife Jenny...
Beside that, can someone recommend a good book about Linux / Unix in general? People ask me for this and frankly I don't know a printed book to recommend to them. For some time I recommended Tannenbaum's "Operating Systems" series.
And I'm still planning to write a book on Gentoo tho - I'll just send all the logs from stage 1 ins
Re:Need something more general (Score:2, Funny)
As long as Jenny is available to anyone who wants to try her out, placed on the open market, and comes free of charge, you're absolutely right. Well, provided Jenny has some unique features none of the other girls on the street corner have.
Re:Need something more general (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Need something more general (Score:3, Informative)
Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!
By Marcel Gagne
ISBN 0321159985
Publisher Addison-Wesley Professional
It even comes with a version of knoppix so people can try before the
Using Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Using Ubuntu (Score:3, Interesting)
She isn't incredibly computer literate and she enjoys it so far.
I enjoy it too. Very easy to use sets up nicely off the bat.
ubuntuforums.org and ubuntuguide.org are mandatory references.
Also, on the coincidence side of things, I just bought this book today for my girlfriend. She prefers the dead tree stuff to online references.
Re:Using Ubuntu (Score:3, Interesting)
Ubuntu just rocks (Score:3, Interesting)
I had an old laptop that i recently fixed (it just needed to be taken apart and have some connectors reseated). I had been running Debian on it, but I have a new job, and a new work issued laptop...so I didn't need it.
So my sister, who is one of those people who "knows how to use word". Thats right, she could type up a report for school, and browse the web, but that was about it. Complete novice.
So I didn't have a copy of windows to install (though since there was a product key attached to the laptop I technically could have, if I had install media)... anyway... so I installed Ubuntu and said "If you want windows, you have to have it put on, but heres this" (she lives too far away for me to get media and drive out to her). I showed her how to log in and pointed at open office and said "that works like word" then pointed her at firefox and said "heres your web browser".... litterally all of 2 minutes.
She called me 3 days later to tell me how great it was working and ask why she was able to get on the internet last night, but not today... turns out she just randomly had picked up someone elses wireless and got on, never even realised it... whoever it was must turn off their access point when they are not home, she never saw the signal again.
Point is... she never even needed to ask a question beyond that. I have had less problems giving her an ubuntu box, than giving people with similar experience levels windows boxes...she has been usign it and happy with it (I talked to her the other day) for several weeks now.
Man... who ever would have thought Linux on the desktop would really get there for us non-geeks? I always said it would, but I have to admit, I always had some doubt in my mind.
Hell as it is I have completely switched over to ubuntu myself. Its a fresh debian! Yay! Its what i have wanted for years now... a debian stable thats less than 6 months old! (and more often than for 6 months out of every 3 years)
-Steve
At the risk of "me-too"-ing... (Score:2)
I have a laptop (IBM 1200i series), and XP was running into problems. Also, the laptop was mostly being used in conjunction with our stereo (playing MP3's and Shoutcast) with very limited browsing. I had a PCMCIA card with 2 USB 2.0 slots, and both of them were filled - one with a portable hard drive, the other with a Zydas 1211-based wireless
I got a new blank hard drive for the laptop, and after trying other systems, installed Ubuntu 5.04 (it was the CD I had
Re:Ubuntu just rocks (Score:2, Informative)
1) stick in CD
2) see icon appear on desktop
3) right click on icon, select Eject
4) CD pops out.
Oh? You want a book? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wanted to migrate away from Windows.
I am sorta tech savvy - I know the different parts of a computer, I can trouble shoot some basic problems, and I can type "getting your printer to work in ubuntu' into google.
My point is, instead of paying 40 dollars for a book, here is what you do:
1.Go download the Ubuntu ISO
http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs/5.10/ ubuntu-5.10-install-i386.iso [anl.gov]
Re:Oh? You want a book? (Score:2)
Did it play mp3s?
Re:Oh? You want a book? (Score:2)
Well first was "Where are all my files?" since we setup dual boot. But the web was good and helped her map her ntfs drives in a couple minutes. Then xmms was installed and all was well.
She thinks apt-get is the hottest thing alive right now.
How similar is Kubuntu? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I'm looking to upgrade, and I was planning to use the next version of Kubuntu when it released next month. I have used KDE for some time and I think I prefer its interface to that of Gnome.
My question is, if I choose Kubuntu, would I get anything at all out of this book? Or is it so different as to be not worth the purchase?
I'm an electrical engineer, but I do hardware design. I have little interest in being an expert in operating system configuration. I like the concept of Linux, but I want easy-to-follow instructions to set up what I need, with a minimal amount of fiddling in
Re:How similar is Kubuntu? (Score:4, Informative)
As a matter of fact, you can change an Ubuntu install to a Kubuntu install with one command:
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
I think you can even change back by using the above and "ubuntu-desktop" instead.
Parent
Re:How similar is Kubuntu? (Score:3, Informative)
It's easy to keep your Kubuntu fresh by going to kubuntu.org and following the simple directions every time a new KD
Re:How similar is Kubuntu? (Score:2)
Judging from the review:
1st Section: Linux History
2nd Section: Installing Ubuntu
3rd Section: Ubuntu Desktop / app comparison to windows
4th Section: Linux Command Line.
Of these sections, the 3rd is almost useless to you, 2nd should be reasonably useful, the 1st & 4th useful - but available from any book describing a linux distro.
In short - the book will be useful, but not alot more then a book describing any other debian b
Save $6.80! (Score:2, Informative)
MOD AC PARENT UP (and then some) (Score:2)
Yes, I concede the A9 thing was annoying, but let's try
Why so easy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Take me to the Mountain (Score:2)
Keir is the one you seek...a sage, a traveler, adventurer, musician, writer and master of all things technical. He has the amazing ability to explain even the most complex of things in a manner we can all understan
What a name.. (Score:3, Funny)
RedHat - now that's a Linux distro name. But at $150 a seat they can shove the hat...
Mandrake - another good name but it's gone
Mandriva - border line bad oh the the company is going down like a whore at the prom
Debian - solid name too bad it's maintaind by relinux zealots
SuSe - kind of lame, kind of free, Yast is very hand for lazy people
Fedora - border line good name, just don't install it on any hardwars older that last week
CRUX - CRAP
blag - all I can think of Barf-Bag
SLAX - Trousers (Pants! Pants! Pants! to you limey's)
Slackware - Old Navy's new clothing like for the unemployed
Gentoo - more junk but the name's ok
Xrandos - cool name it's too bad this distro costs money and sucks donkey snot
MEPIS - Me Piss
Damn Small Linux - That's not a name that's an in-complete sentence
KNOPPIX - good name now if it were only a real distrobution
PCLinuxOS - just in-case you don't know Linux is an OS that runs on PC's
Kubuntu - really?
Frugalware - again really?
Puppy Linux - hahahahahaha when it becomes v2.0 will it be renamed to Dog
Linux XP - Sure I'm running XP.
Turbolinux - now that's a name. Too bad this distro sucks and it's not FREE
oo-boon-too (Score:2)
Now, say Ubuntu using the lowest range of your voice.
That was fun, wasn't it?
nice distro (Score:2)
Need a book to install Ubuntu? (Score:2)
Contents page (Score:2, Interesting)
What makes Ubuntu so popular? (Score:2, Insightful)
Principles of Ubuntu (Score:2)
Thomas should respect the principles of Ubuntu and release this book for free and license it under Creative Commons to allow mashups and external improvements so the book can become more helpful over time.
Shuttleworth? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've always wondered:
Shouldn't he change his name to "Soyuzworth?"
Re:Canonical's not South African (Score:4, Informative)
Many people who have never been to the Isle of Man are not sure exactly where it is! The answer is that it lies in the Irish Sea, between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, less than 60 miles west of the Lancashire coastline http://www.isleofman.com/about/ [isleofman.com]
Parent
Re:Canonical's not South African (Score:3, Funny)
In other words, South African.
Re:Canonical's not South African (Score:5, Informative)
For those who are wondering what the hell AC is talking about (I know I was):
1) Manx means 'native of isle of man' (Like the cats)
2) Isle of Man is an Island between the British Mainland & Ireland - its neither part of the UK or the EU & certainly not british (although Britain represents them to some extent)
3) Canonical is registered as a company there.
I'll leave it the reader to judge whether Canonical (founded by a South African, employing people all over the world, with a heavy South African presence, but registered in a tax haven) is South African or Manx.
Parent
Re:Why are COBOL programmers so sad? (Score:5, Funny)
Seems nobody can capitalize COBOL correctly anyway. Morons.
I think CoBoL Programmers are so sad because people cant capitalize their title properly.
Manager: "Hi Rob, this is the CEO"
CEO: "Nice to meet you Rob!"
Rob: "Hi!"
Manager: "Rob here is one of our top Cobol Programmers!"
Rob: ":( YOU DIDNT CAPITALIZE IT PROPERLY"
CEO: "YOU CANT SEE CAPITALIZATIONS IN SPOKEN WORD, YOU'RE FIRED!!!"
Rob: ":("
No wonder they are so sad.
Parent
Re:Why are COBOL programmers so sad? (Score:5, Funny)
There, there. I know it's hard. Kids can be so case insensitivite at times.
Parent
Re:Ubuntu is Open (Score:2)
I really have a discrepency with the fact that an author is attempting to profit off sales of an Ubuntu book..
I've never really understood why there are some who have a problem with this.
I, like the majority of people in the world, grew up being both educated and entertained by books and personally still find them much more convenient, enjoyable, and easier to read than electronic texts despite having used computers for over thirty years now.
Besides, trees are renewable resource unlike the petroleum product