| The economics of the free software business has taken another football bounce with the release of O'Reilly's Learning Red Hat Linux, a guide to the most popular distribution of the freely redistributable operating system. The bounce is this: for the typical tech-book list price of $35, you get Bill McCarty's beginners' survey and Red Hat 7.2, a $60 value at Red Hat's own retail price. McCarty's introduction claims that the two-CD set, printed with the O'Reilly logo, contains "everything you need to install and configure your own Red Hat Linux system." But is it really Red Hat 7.2? Yes, according to one Red Hat official, but like batteries, support is sold separately for $20 a month. Economics militate in favor of purchasing the book as well as a separate support contract from Red Hat, if needed. The book is, then, the freebie, and consequently a good deal.
Ultimately, Learning Red Hat Linux should be viewed as an inexpensive way to obtain legitimate CDs of Red Hat 7.2, with installation documentation that exceeds the norm. Once the installation has either succeeded or failed, however, readers will want to move along to linuxdocs.org or Running Linux.
--Peter Leopold
With roughly 20 million users worldwide, Linux is the most talked about success story of open source and free software. Even devotees of Microsoft Windows and Apple's Macintosh are attracted by the unsurpassed stability and flexibility of Linux, but learning a Unix-style operating system can be a daunting task. The second edition of Learning Red Hat Linux gives newcomers exactly what they need to get started.
The book includes a complete Linux system CD-ROM from Red Hat Software, one of the most popular distributions of Linux in the U.S. Once it guides beginners through the process of installing and configuring this software, the book offers a thorough but gentle introduction to the basics of using Red Hat Linux. This new edition has been "upgraded" to cover installation and configuration of Red Hat version 7.2, with improved sections on how to use the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and how to use the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM). Highlights of Learning Red Hat Linux include:
- How to prepare your system for installing Linux
- How to install and configure Linux
- How to install and configure the X Window System
- How to use X and the GNOME and KDE desktop environments
- How to obtain and set up Linux applications
- How to set up a Linux system for networking, either on your local area network (LAN), or via a dialup connection to the Internet
- How to install and configure Linux-based servers, including the Apache web server and Samba for integrated file and print services with Windows-based networks
- How to understand and write shell scripts to extend the power of Linux
- How to install, upgrade, and remove packages using RPM
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