• Print

1. Moving to Linux 2nd Ed.

1.1 4/5 Recommended for the newbie

Marcel Gagné
2006, Pearson Education, Inc, ISBN 0-321-35640-3
$39.99 USD

1.2  The First Few Chapters

Walk into a computer software store and you'll see copies of Mandrake, SuSE, and Red Hat ... you can buy Red Hat personal or professional edition.

Simple mistakes, but ones that should have been caught. It's Mandriva now. It's SUSE now. And Red Hat, well, you do not see their boxed version often, and when you do, they will be the Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS or Red Hat Desktop editions. These are the kind of things that have changed from the 1st edition to the 2nd edition. Somebody should have caught this. In all fairness, Marcel does mention that he intentionally chose to use the name Mandrake throughout the book, even though in one aside he speaks of the merger with Connectiva and the new name. I'm not sure I believe that was the actual reason (it is not convincing to me). On that same page with the aside, SuSE is correctly represented as SUSE ... again, I think some items were simply missed.

Another minor nit is the font used on the start page of each chapter. It is hideous. Fortunately, it's usually just a small paragraph. But this is something easily changed and in my opinion should be changed. Maybe I'm just looking at things through 40 year old eyes.

I like the fact that the author points out that while Linux may not support all hardware devices, it does come with drivers, something that other operating systems cannot do. On Windows for example, you buy hardware and install the vendor's driver. On Linux, the driver is usually either there or not there. You seldom have to go and track down drivers in Linux.

I also liked the fact that he directs people to get involved with a local Linux User Group (LUG). You local LUG is truly your best source of support for Linux.

This book comes with a Knoppix variant live CD. It's called WFTL Knoppix after Marcel's local LUG, WFTL (Writer and Free Thinker at Large). He also has a website that might help with some things. It is at http://www.marcelgagne.com .

He recommends younger wines over older ones. While this is generally true, it is also true that last week's wine may be much, much better than this week's. Sometimes, last year's wine is better. When I give talks on wine, I warn people that it is very much like real wine. Some vintages are excellent. Age is not the best indicator.

1.3  Dirtying Your Hands

After talking about logging in and doing a cursory walk around KDE, he discusses a little about package installation. I can appreciate the fact that he covers things like YaST and urpmi, but once again, like so many others, he tells you that Debian packages and the urpmi installer handle dependencies ... and he implies that YaST does not. However, YaST does do dependency checking and will install dependent packages. Apart from this, I found most of the introductory information very accurate and useful.

When talking about networking applications, he makes a plea for jabber! How refreshing. It's nice to know that the author knows why open standards such as Jabber are better than the countless other instant messaging (IM) servers. Good job!

1.4  Productivity Applications

When going through OpenOffice Writer, Marcel mentions the fact that the book itself was written using OpenOffice. That should speak volumes for those wondering if OpenOffice can handle "real" work. In fact portions were written with a beta 2.0 copy. Very nice.

About the only problem I found here was with regards to gimp. Gimp is a vector drawing package and the author does a great job of helping the new user to know the basics of this very powerful package. Gimp is such a powerful and complicated tool, I'm not sure if I would have attempted this in a beginner text. I guess I should not be so critical. He actually does about the best job I've seen in trying to make a complicated tool simple and immediately useful.

1.5  Games

Personally, if you own a computer and do not use it for games, you are wasting money. I'm glad that Marcel ended the book with a sizable chapter on games for Linux. Nice, large screenshots give you a good feeling about the games he mentions in the book.

1.6  End Matter

The appendices are great! Includes a copy of the GNU Public License (GPL). Has a large appendix covering some shell basics. A brief one on editors... where he says the most important word, "vimtutor."

1.7  Recommended for Beginners

This is not a bad book at all for beginner's. In my opinion the 3rd Edition could get perfect marks with just a few corrections here and there.

Back to Review View Today