Rating: 
Summary: Waste of time and money
Review: I'm profoundly disapointed. I thought I'd be able to install Linux on my old beater machine, hook it up to my router and use it as a server/workstation. This book was very inadaquate for this purpose.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a new edition - ignore the bad reviews!
Review: I recently "upgraded" and bought the newer edition of this book, since the previous editions are horribly outdated. And I'm surprised that Amazon is including on this page the reviews for those older editions, because they don't even apply to this edition! Ms. LeBlanc (any relation to Matthew?) has outdone herself (and has especially outdone the other authors who wrote the earlier editions) and has written a highly useful book that anyone interested in Linux should own.
Rating:
Summary: From the author: About the 5th Edition
Review: Linux for Dummies has followed a long and rocky road. The first two editions were done by one group, then the last 3 (including this) by another after completely rewriting it from scratch--and unfortunately Amazon refuses to detach the old reviews that have nothing to do with this version of the book. It's gone from trying to cover everything (impossible to do well!) to trying to focus on the desktop.Don't expect Linux for Dummies 5th Edition to tell you how to set up a server! This book is exclusively for those who want to master the desktop and simple system administration (like user account creation) tasks. Fedora Core 1 is a powerful new desktop offering and I think you'll find that it's an exciting evolution in desktop Linux. A new chapter focusing on multimedia galore will especially knock your socks off! Thanks for reading!
Rating: 
Summary: 'Installing Linux for Dummies' is a more apt title.
Review: As the subject line suggests this is a great book for getting Linux set up on your system. Linux setup can be a pain, but having a guide like this is a good idea. However, beyond the installation the author covers very little. The is absolutely very, very little on Linux networking. Frankly that's the main reason someone may want to deal with Linux. The enclosed CD has an antique version of RedHat. Also, in a desperate attempt to be trendy some of the side bar articles are completely useless (ie 'Polish Connection', 'Alternative CD uses', etc.) They were out of place and a complete waste of time. The standard 'For Dummies' jokes are fine, but it should at least have something to do with the subject. There are a few technical errors, such as claiming NT isn't a multi-user OS (!) and a few minor hardware misprints. Bottom line: Great book to get you installed and started. Not a book to get for a serious reference.
Rating:
Summary: This is a new edition - ignore the bad reviews!
Review: I recently "upgraded" and bought the newer edition of this book, since the previous editions are horribly outdated. And I'm surprised that Amazon is including on this page the reviews for those older editions, because they don't even apply to this edition! Ms. LeBlanc (any relation to Matthew?) has outdone herself (and has especially outdone the other authors who wrote the earlier editions) and has written a highly useful book that anyone interested in Linux should own.
Rating:
Summary: Five pounds into two pound bag
Review: /
I never got farther than the second chapter.
My system looks at the CDROM drive first when booting up, however for some reason I was unable to boot from the CD no matter what I tried.
If unable to boot with the CD, you might have noticed that the boot.img that you need to put on a 1.44MB floppy is 1.74MB.
I wonder how the authors did it.
My point is that if you can't load the OS, the rest of the book is worthless. I've noticed that the authors have written a 4th and 5th edition. I wonder if they give a clue to the floppy trick.
Rating: 
Summary: Still not good enough for Linux Newbies
Review: I read LeBlanc's 4th Edition book to see if it has been improved enough for Newbies. It is not. While including two CDs that have RedHat Linux v8, its installation section is still woefully inadequate with two chapters of 40 pages. For example on p22 the authors say that if you have Dell, Compaq, or HP, you should have no problem. In my experience with Compaq Presarios and HP Vectras, they use custom mobos, BIOSs, chipsets, sound, and win modems that will conflict with Linux. Another example on p31, the authors write 2 inches on video boards and monitors, the Achilles heel for getting the Linux GUI up and running. The authors' best suggestion (p65) is to get help from a local Linux Users Group; available in large metros; such as Minneapolis which meets monthly at the Univ of Minnesota's renown Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Dept! How can you get better help than that? They also have a daylong Install-Fest twice a year. I agree that this is the best way, but what about the rest of us (p2) which is this book's target audience? After researching, reading, and buying a half dozen books on Linux installation, I have yet to see a book that shows a cookbook approach for the Newbie. It would be based upon a reference computer hardware set that has been chosen for it's popularity and compatible processor, motherboard, cards, and devices. Since one can easily find and cheaply buy used, legacy components on eBay, used computer stores, electronic swap meets, flea markets, and garage sales, installation procedures could be simplified and would be direct and to the point. And be guaranteed to work! It would avoid the tons of frustration and wasted time by reading and attempting to follow all those books and Linux HowTos which are so generalized that Newbies finds them totally confusing and absolutely useless. Case in point, almost all Linux authors (p14) pride themselves that Linux will run on older, legacy hardware, probably what is in their DOS and Windows hand-me-down pile. However for a Newbie, they want to use a modern GUI, not type into a CLI. So in attempting to use this legacy equipment, the Newbie will run into the most common problem, which is carefully not mentioned by Linux writers, that the X-Windows probe for video board and monitor is not very robust compared to Microsoft Windows. Visually identifying chipset models on video boards and finding monitor sync information is one of the most critical items, yet it is rarely emphasized with step-by-step explanations and photos of reference hardware. The Newbie is not shown how to decipher the actual spec listings of popular hardware, locating the important parameters, and ignoring all the rest. Another example is dual boot (p26) Linux along with Windows, a common Newbie configuration. Again almost all Linux authors, including these authors, gloss over the interactivity required on the boot blocks by reconfiguring the MBR with the MSDOS Format command. Wannabe Linux users will find that just because you have a computer working in DOS, WfWG, or Win9X, etc, that it does not translate to a slam-dunk in installing and configuring Linux. The Newbie just isn't aware of the behind-the-scenes sophistication that Microsoft developed for Windows installs. Overzealous Linux authors don't warn the Newbie that incredibly more work is necessary to technically understand the details of each component. And if that component manufacturer has gone out of business, then avoid it with a ten-foot pole for his first Linux box. It now comes full circle that a reference hardware installation cookbook is sorely needed. Chapter 4, Installing Other Distributions, includes installation notes for Caldera, Mandrake, SuSE, and Debian, which is superfluous for the Newbie. These 10 pages could have been put to better use with a hardware cookbook because if the Newbie couldn't get RedHat v8 to install, then (s)he certainly wouldn't get the others installed either. The install troubleshooting Chapter 18, of ten (10) pages, is woefully inadequate and full of one-liners (jokes). The CLI log-in screen is here in the back (p296); why not in the install section on p62? Back to my purpose in reading these authors' book, I was expressly trying to find how to switch to the KDE GUI since RedHat's default GUI install is GNOME. The authors say (p84) that it is easy to switch and they have a Chapter 6 (p86-97) which explains the differences and similarities between the two GUIs. Yet the authors never tells HOW to switch; the Table of Contents, sidebars, icons, 20-page index, were all useless. The RedHat and GNOME Help were useless too. The critical thing that the authors left out was the GUI log-in screen, which had no pix. Although I discovered the secret with RedHat Linux 9 (March 03, Shrike release), the GUI log-in screen has a "Session" button along the bottom row. I had previously ignored them; but lo-and-behold! It is for the GUI startup selection. A serious omission on part of the three authors. An important area that the authors discuss adequately is the systems administrator account and user accounts, explaining that Newbies can crash the system (p98) by an inadvertent keystroke (mouse-click). The Linux OS can be pretty fragile as a root user. But further explanation of the superuser, especially application superusers, and users & groups is not well explained. As listed on p286, important applications that attract Newbies to Linux in the first place, such as a Samba fileserver, an Apache webserver, and MySQL and PostgreSQL databases are not covered at all. And last, but not least, the authors put in another one-liner to install and use a tape backup (p308) because Linux will fail, you just don't know when. The authors omitted installing a tape drive, neither using the Tar nor Amanda tape backup utility, nor explaining the disaster recovery process. From authors who have umpteen credentials, this last omission is almost unforgivable.
Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed ... more beer coasters !
Review: I'm still waiting for Dr. Laura to pen "10 Stupid Things People do to Obtain & Learn Linux." Buying this book was somewhere around number 3 on my list. The next "dummies" book I might buy will be "Dummies Books for Dummies" (but only if it is a total spoof of the genre). Actually, I bought the book for the accompanying CD's, and my disappointment ties back to the fact that they did not boot up as advertised and the utitilies that were supposed to help around that didn't seem to be there. Having gone through that, I actually browsed through the book itself, and it turned out to border on worthless, except for the linux command appendix, which makes for a good reference tear-out for whatever "piker" version of linux you ultimately do not want to pay for. The CD's make for decent beer coasters ... You could find cheaper, but think of it as your patriotic duty to keep the Dummies who write this stuff tied down here lest they branch out to other topics where they could do real harm.
Rating:
Summary: Makes installation painful!
Review: I just bought a cheap computer to exclusively run the Linux OS. After about six hours, I finally finished it. Xwindows looks beautiful and I am quite happy to say that no Microsoft software is presently on my hard drive. Unfortunately, this book succeeded in doubled my time in getting Linux installed. The most useful parts of the book were just reproductions of the Red Hat installation guide that walks you through installation when you boot up the first CD! The book made it seem like I needed to do all sorts of research and voodoo before engaging in such a software-guided installation, but in the end I junked the book and let the Red Had installation software be my guide. Perhaps the authors are Microsoft plants who want people to fail in switching over to Linux. Since half the book is such redundant installation 'help', I can't recommend buying it, with one exception. I give the book two stars because of the CDs: they contain full documentation and source code for Red Hat Linux 7.0, which is very convenient. On the other hand, you can burn all that stuff from the web: this is the land of Linux where everything is free!
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, but the CD's are a gimmik...
Review: So you have decided to plop down some cash and get a reference book. I hope thats all you want from this, because like many other books, the software that comes with it may or may not be worth it. As the other reviewers stated installing linux can take a little patience. My best advice would be to find the right distribution of Linux. Mandrake came highly recommended to me and it has worked from the getgo, so please, if your just starting out ignore the CD's that come with this book.Now that I'm past the warning, I want to let people know that I found this book to be a good reference. For one, it doesn't give you too much information. When your just starting out, you don't need to have a bunch of useless information shoved at you. Also, I'd like to point out that if you are new to Linux, that you shouldn't expect to learn everything all at once. Yes MS Windows is easy to use, and most people can pick 75% of it up in one sitting. Linux is another story, and will take a little more time, but will offer a degree of flexibility and superior performance over MS Windows that will put you in awe.This book covers the basics, and by no means will make you an EXPERT. It will on the otherhand give you a springboard to new things, and with time it will help give you a greater understanding of Linux, and what you can do with it. Unfortunately the book is geared towards a specific Red Hat version, and as most people know, each version will be a little different, and distributions can differ greatly. Using this book in combination with the User Guide, for each respective distro you plan to use, can help ease you into the great world of Linux.
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