A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux

r3lody writes "Finding a single book that encompasses what you want to learn can be difficult. Most cover a few portions of a subject in depth and skim over (or omit) others. Other books will cover each topic at about the same level: high enough to give an impression of what can be done, but not with enough depth to do it without a lot of effort. In A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux, Mark G. Sobell has created a single volume that gives the reader enough information to effectively install, configure and run workstations and servers using Ubuntu Linux. He has come the closest I have seen to containing all of the necessary information without being too shallow. Granted, to include everything you would want to know about Ubuntu Linux would take several books of this size, but this particular one provides most users the best bang for the buck. A DVD with the Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu in a directly bootable form is included with the book." Read below for the rest of Ray's review.

A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux
author	Mark G. Sobell
pages	1200
publisher	Prentice Hall PTR
rating	10/10
reviewer	Ray Lodato
ISBN	013236039X
summary	A complete guide to installing and running Ubuntu Linux for beginning to intermediate users

With over two decades of experience related to Unix and Linux, Mark G. Sobell has authored almost two dozen books on the subject. I had previously read and reviewed his book A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Second Edition) and found it the highest quality book I had yet read on Linux. This, his latest book, bears many similarities to the other text, including its high quality. The overall structure is like that of a textbook, providing a summary and exercises at the end of each chapter, as well as copious cross-references.

A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux is broken up into five parts containing 27 chapters in all. After providing the now obligatory history of Linux and the GPL, Part I uses two chapters to provide an overview of, and step-by-step instructions for, installing Linux. The overview provides information about the process including how to try Linux with the Live DVD supplied, planning your hard disk layout, acquiring a newer version of Ubuntu, and the install process in general. The step-by-step chapter goes into great detail on each step of the process, using both the graphical and textual installation paths. It also throws in additional detail on how to configure the X server.

Now that you have Linux in a runnable form, Part II provides higher-level information that shows newer Linux users what they can do. Four chapters serve to introduce basic Linux to the user. Topics include how to update, install and remove program packages, how to use the command line (and some basic utilities such as cat, ls, more, less, etc.), how the filesystem is laid out, shell concepts such as pipes and job control, and where to find additional documentation.

Part III uses another four chapters to dive deeper into the Bourne Again Shell (BASH), the GUIs, and networking. First the X Window System is described, followed by the GNOME and KDE desktops. BASH is covered in two separate chapters, inexplicably separated by the chapter on networking. The first BASH chapter provides the reader with information on startup files, command history, redirection, etc. The other BASH chapter goes into depth regarding programming BASH scripts. The intervening networking chapter provides a basic understanding of network protocols and some utilities such as ping, traceroute, host and dig.

Up to this point, Mark has been showing the user how to use Ubuntu Linux with little modification. Starting with Part IV, he describes how to perform the more common configuration tasks. Using seven chapters and over 200 pages, Part IV provides a great deal of detail regarding system administration. Starting with some core concepts (running as root, sudo, startup scripts, wrappers, recovery mode, etc.), Mark then leads the reader into the nooks and crannies of the filesystem. The following chapter shows how to add and remove applications using apt, aptitude, dpkg, wget and BitTorrent. Printing using CUPS is given its own chapter next, as is the (at least to me) daunting task of rebuilding the system kernel. The last two chapters in Part IV cover the miscellaneous administration tasks of adding, changing, and deleting users and groups, backing up and restoring files, managing the various logs, and setting up your network connections (both wired and wireless).

The final section, Part V, uses nine chapters to go into depth on set up various servers and use their clients. OpenSSH, FTP, exim4 (for mail), NIS, NFS, Samba, DNS/BIND, the firewall (firestarter and iptables), and finally Apache. Each of the chapters provides Jumpstart sections to help you install and configure each server quickly, and enough detail to handle the more common configuration changes.

There are five appendices covering regular expressions, where to get help, general security considerations, the Free Software Definition, and a bullet list of major items added to the 2.4 kernel to form the 2.6 kernel. These are followed by a fairly comprehensive glossary and index.

Overall, A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux by Mark G. Sobell provides all of the information a beginner to intermediate user of Linux would need to be productive. The inclusion of the Live DVD of the Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu makes it easy for the user to test-drive Linux without affecting his installed OS. I have no doubts that you will consider this book money well spent.

You can purchase A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Don't underestimate the value of a plain unix book

[uigrad_2000]

Often, someone who is new to linux looks for all the books they can find with "linux" in the name.

Generally, if you are new to unix in general, you should get a good unix reference. I'd suggest Unix Power Tools by O'Reilly.

If you are an experienced unix user, and want to learn the specifics of Ubuntu linux, then this book seems very useful. It has both the gory details of the inner workings, and a guide to some of the application candy you may install for home use.

Re:A book?

[Digi-John]

1. Insert disc and hit "Enter" until things stop happening
2. Clean drool from keyboard
3. Post on Ubuntu forums

Re:Ubuntu

[dvice_null]

You won't always get help as some problems are just too difficult to solve from remote location, but in most cases you get help and save yourself several hours of work if you just ask. So I strongly suggest you to ask help (if you already have not) as solving your problem in here is much harder than it is in a forum dedicated to solve your problems with Ubuntu:

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=132 [ubuntuforums.org]

Re:Why Gutsy?

[webmaster404]

# Paperback: 1200 pages # Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 1 Pap/Cdr edition (December 28, 2007)

From http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Ubuntu-Linux-R/dp/013236039X [amazon.com] considering that Ubuntu 7.10 hasn't been out until October of 2007 and when this was published in December it was only out for 2-3 months, that's still 3 months till Hardy stable comes out. This is just a late review of it.

Got the book

[OldChemist]

I've got it and it is a great book. Anyone who knows Sobell's work would tell you that his stuff is of keeper quality. I think I first ran into one of his Unix books around 1990. Why would you want a book for Ubuntu? If you are a little more into it than the casual user, it will make your life a lot easier in terms of networking, etc., etc. Of course you MIGHT find the info on the web but this will save you a lot of time. If your time is worth $25/hr and this saves you a couple of hours, it's worth it. Someone mentioned that Hardy might be in business longer than 7.1 about which this book is written. If that is true you might want to wait for a version that goes with Hardy, but I doubt that much at the fundamental level will change. Recommended if you are a member of the target audience.

Re:Oddly enough, this info is hard to find

[uniquename72]

I had the same problem as gp when I first installed Ubuntu (1st time using Linux). Synaptic IS dead easy, but a Windows user isn't going to have a mental model of using a repository, so any description of it is fairly nonsensical (usability is also somewhat poor -- you click Mark in Synaptic and nothing is actually marked.)

And apt-get? HTF would this make any sense to the average Windows user. Get what? From where? And what does 'apt' mean? It doesn't take special empathic abilities to see where people who grew up in a Windows-centric world would have serious growing pains adopting even the easiest linux distro.

I honestly don't see how "apt-get install program" is master hacker like or complex in any way.

And therein lies the problem with linux adoption.

Re:A book?

[darkonz]

try this: Installing ATI Drivers [ubuntuforums.org]. It is a post I made a LONG time ago, since i had the same problems (and graphics card) as you :)