Rating: 
Summary: Strong Mid-Level Reference
Review: I've been casually using FreeBSD for about a year now and wanted to make it my primary workstation OS. After paging through all three books on FreeBSD at my local bookstore, I bought a copy of Unleashed. The biggest reason I bought it was that it covers FreeBSD 4.5 (the RELEASE version at the time of my purchase). It also has a lot of information on 5.0 CURRENT.The strength of the book is its breadth. It's pretty much a Swiss Army Knife book. You could literally start with only a little knowledge of UNIX (or multi-user OSs) and build a rather complete server to host all kinds of services for a web site, or a local network using this book. (I recommend you DO build a hobby server to try out some of the examples in the book.) There are several glaring problems, though. The biggest being technical errors strewn throughout the text. If you're entirely new to UNIX, you'll probably run into a few problems if you type in the commands exactly as listed. I'm a technical editor myself, so my "edit daemons" are always running in the background and pointing out problems while I read anything. I would say that the book has no less than 20 errors (either in command statements or technical theory) that are large enough to cause you problems if you're not sure what you're doing. Be careful when you're reading and if something looks a little odd, it probably is, so look it up somewhere else. I would also say that it would have been nice to see some of the examples on the CDs that were promised in the text. (My CD-ROMs came with FreeBSD 4.5 RELEASE and FreeBSD 5.0 CURRENT.) The "phantom references" to the section on periodical service configuration would have been nice to see. If you use or plan on using FreeBSD, either as a production-grade server or a stand-alone workstation, this book should be on your shelf. This either means that the book is really useful in spite of its problems, or that there just isn't enough choices when it comes to up-to-date books on the coolest OS out there: FreeBSD. (Help me, O'Reilly.)
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the intermediate to advanced user
Review: Of all the books out there on FreeBSD, this one is probably the most authoritative. This has sections on configuring SAMBA, Print Sharing, Apache, Sendmail, and BSD administration. The only other book out there of this quality is "Absolute BSD" by No-Starch Press. However, that one has a few misprints in the Crontab section that can be confusing.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Reference
Review: Of all the books out there on FreeBSD, this one is probably the most authoritative. This has sections on configuring SAMBA, Print Sharing, Apache, Sendmail, and BSD administration. The only other book out there of this quality is "Absolute BSD" by No-Starch Press. However, that one has a few misprints in the Crontab section that can be confusing.
Rating:
Summary: does not live up...
Review: The back title states that it will show how to harness the power of FreeBSD. It does not do much regarding that. There is a lot of time spent explaining things like the difference between a hub and a switch. It also does not go into depth into many areas such as recompiling the kernel. It makes a recomendation to use StarOffice, but does not even mention many of the problems with trying to get this installed. The book jumps around, and there does not seem to be a good cronological structure for the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for installing
Review: The CD that was supplied with the book has a disk error. I'm sure if I contacted the publisher, they'd send me another but I just used a friend's copy. I recommend this book to help you get an installation done. Its also great for becoming dangerous. As with any computer book, it can't teach you everything or purport to provide every solution to your specific problems. You will get a good understanding of FreeBSD from this book. You will not become a system administrator by reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: I like it, but I don't love it.
Review: The CD that was supplied with the book has a disk error. I'm sure if I contacted the publisher, they'd send me another but I just used a friend's copy. I recommend this book to help you get an installation done. Its also great for becoming dangerous. As with any computer book, it can't teach you everything or purport to provide every solution to your specific problems. You will get a good understanding of FreeBSD from this book. You will not become a system administrator by reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: The most comprehensive FreeBSD book available
Review: There is nothing left to desire after this book. It has everything you could ask for in the most profound FreeBSD reference guide available. Its true that some information is available online (great many thanks to the FreeBSD doc. team), it is nowhere near this extensive. All subject matter is explained with enough detail and troubleshooting information that I find it invaluable.
Rating:
Summary: Good for installing
Review: This book does do a great job of walking you through the rather complicated process of installing freeBSD and it gives you enough of an idea of how to get a couple of basic services configured. However, it is woefully inadequate when it comes to administering the system once you've got it running. The section on configuring security and firewalls is surprisingly limited and many of the sections are so generalized that they're useless for trying configure anything but the most basic services.
Rating:
Summary: An invaluable resource to a great operating system
Review: This book is an absolute must if you're considering a FreeBSD installation. Although FreeBSD has many great features, ease of installation is not one of them - it's about where Linux was 2 years ago. I found this book to be invaluable in getting past installation glitches. In addition, it has very good advice about system configuration. It assumes a fair knowledge of Windows, but also points out differences with Linux that are helpful to experienced Penguin heads. I was particularly pleased with the book's sections on common *nix applications such as Gnome and Samba. I found it significantly more comprehensible than the Linux books I've used. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Good book but typos
Review: This book was great. I have never really been big on the Unleashed series of books, but this was a really good book. I should give this book 5 stars, but the typos are really bad. Fortunately, they're small enough typos that they do not take away from the technical content. I really should stop subtracting a star for typographical errors because it seems every book I've ever read has many of these. I started out not knowing anything about FreeBSD. Now, I could call myself a beginner/intermediate user. I am now using it as an SMTP/IMAP4 and HTTP server. Get this book it's worth the bucks. Well written, and a lot of the points on the book are centered on how it differs from Win2k. That's good for those who know only Win2k, thus they have a point of comparison/reference. In conclusion, it's a great book. Get it.
| 
