Rating:  Summary: Excellent. Review: A definite must have. The layout of content was pretty standard. The topics pretty standard. But the authors did a good job at keeping it simple and not assuming anything. They defined issues, concepts, and explained various ways to accomplish specific tasks. They did not try to impress / aneshetize me with over the top verbage or 1001 ways to use the ls command. They told me what I needed to do, why I need to do it, where everthing is, and how to go about doing it. Within a few days i was shell scripting, building kernels, loading ports and packages, configuring my network, configuring my mail server and web server, and a lot of other fun stuff. Hope you enjoy this book as much as i did. Take it easy.
Rating:  Summary: Excellent. Review: A definite must have. The layout of content was pretty standard. The topics pretty standard. But the authors did a good job at keeping it simple and not assuming anything. They defined issues, concepts, and explained various ways to accomplish specific tasks. They did not try to impress / aneshetize me with over the top verbage or 1001 ways to use the ls command. They told me what I needed to do, why I need to do it, where everthing is, and how to go about doing it. Within a few days i was shell scripting, building kernels, loading ports and packages, configuring my network, configuring my mail server and web server, and a lot of other fun stuff. Hope you enjoy this book as much as i did. Take it easy.
Rating:  Summary: 90% of FBSD related question answered! Review: An awesome book, absolute must read. I've been working with FreeBSD now for a few years and i love that Operating System. I got this book, because it was interesting for me what i might not know about FreeBSD and it most of my questions when i reached page 942. However i have a feeling that something is missing in the book. I mean, for some people FreeBSD might be just another Operating System, but for some people it means a lot more. So if you are ever into FreeBSD this is a book you should get first. That's about all i could say about it, one more time, i personally recommend it to anybody, from a beginner to system administrator.
Rating:  Summary: A good book for the Unleashed Series Review: As a FreeBSD enthusiast I could say that everything is on the handbook, but I'd be a liar. Everything about FreeBSD is on FreeBSD.For all those who have heard about FreeBSD and desire to start from scratch (i.e. moving from Windows), you'll need all the help you can get: you'll have to look for the Complete FreeBSD book, the Handbook (printed or online) and will be surfing the FreeBSD man pages after the instalation... and then you'll have to use your own creativity imagination and all the internet search engines available to understand and implement this beautiful OS. But the results are excellent, the stability and security that FreeBSD offers are outstanding. FreeBSD Unleashed is certainly a book which has many updated information and shares many common points with the books mentioned above, however, all of them complement each other. I certainly recommend this book for everyone who needs a good reference book for FreeBSD and already owns the others mentioned. Good Luck!
Rating:  Summary: Good mid-level book Review: As has been said by another reviewer, this is a Swiss Army knife type book. At the same time, it isn't overwhelming. I haven't encountered the errors, but then again I haven't used all of the examples or checked the publication date of my copy (so I may have a later version). What I like about this book is that it covers enough of everything to get a system up and configured with the essentials for Internet computing. I used to be a regular UNIX user, but haven't done much of it for over 6 years, so the general UNIX sections were good refreshers. The product and application specific areas were invaluable Overall, tremendous value.
Rating:  Summary: Generally good Review: For absolute newcomers to the operating system, I would not recommend this book. I'm somewhat familiar with FreeBSD/Unix and I knew some of the items/text in this book is wrong. Most notibly are typographical errors (typos). Examples are OK, the in-depth instruction is quite well. All of the documentation I've seen (printed, online, handbook excluded) seem to be dated. FreeBSD 4.3+ is current, and all the examples talk about FreeBSD v2, v3 and some v1. In hopes for an "all-around" solution, I would take this book with a grain of salt.
Rating:  Summary: I love FreeBSD, but this book needs work Review: I am a senior engineer for network security operations who uses FreeBSD daily. I want to encourage other authors to write FreeBSD books, since documentation helps administrators adopt unfamiliar operating systems. Unfortunately, "FreeBSD Unleashed" suffers too many flaws to warrant more than an average to below-average rating. The book suffers from three major weaknesses. First, my 'First Printing, August 2001' edition contained typos on pages 357, 358, 363, 364, 378, 435, 730, and others. FreeBSD newbies may not always recognize these mistakes. Second, the book makes numerous references to scripts on an accompanying CD-ROM, but the discs sold with the volume only offer FreeBSD 4.4 RELEASE and FreeBSD 5.0 CURRENT. I could not find the missing scripts at the publisher's web site, either. Third, several sections refer to missing content. For example, chapter 14 apparently should have contained guidance on automating processes using 'periodic'. It's difficult to implement later recommendations that cite this missing documentation, such as pages 426-7. Beyond these three flaws, the book does not suit its intended 'Intermediate-Advanced' audience. The material appears to be aimed at users trying to migrate away from Windows or perhaps Linux. 'Intermediate-Advanced' users do not need lessons on fundamentals of networking like hardware and protocols. I was also frustrated by the inclusion of a chapter on 'Perl Programming' which was too vague to be helpful. If the authors couldn't do anything useful with the 23 pages allotted to the topic, the chapter should have been dropped. (In contrast, I found the shell scripting chapter more practical.) I really hoped to give this book a glowing review. My company's FreeBSD servers routinely exceed 100-plus days of uptime, and I believe the OS is an incredible platform for servers. While I found sections of "FreeBSD Unleashed" useful, they were not sufficient to make me overlook the book's weaknesses. Strangely enough, it's probably still a good idea to buy this book if you're a FreeBSD system administrator. It's important to collect and support documentation for this robust, powerful OS. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the book that does it justice ...
Rating:  Summary: Not for the intermediate to advanced user Review: I bought this book to increase my FreeBSD knowledge and skills as this book is listed for intermediate to advanced level users. That is not the case. The book focuses only on the specific preferences of it's authors, ignoring many important aspects of the OS. For a person new to UNIX who doesn't have a prefered shell, editor, X client, etc, this would be a decent book to begin with, however for those of us who have those preferences get ready to read about Authors' bias against them. Further, there are several places where information is not correct at all. The index is horrible, making FreeBSD Unleashed unusable even as a reference guide. Save your money, and buy a book written by someone who knows what they're doing.
Rating:  Summary: Best book ever writeen for FreeBSD. Review: I have been using FreeBSD for about 2 years now, I have about 7 different books in my shell. I have to tell you the truth, this is the best, detail, organized, professional book I have ever read of freeBSD, not even the handbook give you so much detail as this book. If you are a begineer and want to really learn this OS, but this book. It is the best you can get.
Rating:  Summary: Generaly good, but with many unnessary chapters included. Review: I think it is very good introductory book for freebsd expect the fact that there is a great amount of pages spent on the X windows system and its utilities. My opinion is that the title 'unleased' doesn't feet with aspects such as 'how to start mozilla and print' , 'gnome' , etc. I can understand the need of presenting the X window system as an important piece of the whole presentation of freebsd but I think that reference was too long to focus with. So , only for the freebsd-related staff that help me a lot I put 5 starts, and as for the complete book I put 3 stars. If those "lost" pages where filled with useful content and secrets about freebsd I would definitly put 5 stars.
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