Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux

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Summary: This book was a great resource on Linux.
Review: This book is good for someone who just wants the basics. If you really want to get into detail get "Special Edition Using Linux," it is published by Que.

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Summary: An excellent book for the beginner!
Review: This book is very well-written, and easy to follow. For a beginner into Linux/Unix it is a good book to start with. I also am studying Unix Users Interactive Workbook, and for actually using Linux I find myself again and again returning to Ricart's book. A note for laptop users: If you have a laptop with a Neomagic graphics card in it, you might want to to buy Caldera's Open Linux 2.2; the version included on the cd-rom, Open Linux 1.3, does not seem to support this graphics card.

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Summary: Fantastic!
Review: This book is, in one word: F A N T A S T I C !

It is well written, well organized, and useful (this is more that can be said on many of the other books on the topic). It is not "Geek" oriented and warms you up to such topics with good motivation and instruction.

Highly recommended.

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Summary: For a beginner using Caldera it good.
Review: This book would be a good choice for someone new to linux. Most of the information is introductory and oriented towards the Caldera distribution. It lacks severely in the description of the installation procedure. It is patchy and vague about repartitioning your Hard Drive. It does offer a good summary of many of the important commands that you will need, and how to do the very basics in the KDE window manager. If you want to try out linux, it would be a good book to start, because of the enclosed Caldera distribution. It isn't the newest, but offers and inexpensive way to try it out. In summary this book is only for beginners.

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Summary: Great introduction to Linux for Windows users.
Review: This books is good for several reasons. First its packaged with Caldera OpenLinux 1.3 (and includes the KDE Desktop and Star Office 4.0). Second, it is well thought out. I liked the idea of starting with Xwindows and KDE then working into the shell. The other books that I read started right into the Linux shell -- which, I suppose, is fine for those coming over to Linux from UNIX but a bit "geeky" for those of us who are moving over from DOS/Windows. The author can communicate and he's found the right balance between the extremes of techno-babble and talking down to his readers. I think the KDE Desktop is going to make a lot converts to Linux from the Windows world and I think Mr. Ricart's _The Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux_ is to be one of the main 'textbooks' in this conversion process. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get started in Linux and especially for those moving over from Windows 95 and NT.

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Summary: Useful Tool
Review: This introduction to Linux and Caldera edition was very useful as I began to learn about Linux and experiment with it on my computer. It is a useful tool and answers questions regarding installation.

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Summary: I wish I would have bought this book FIRST!
Review: This is by far the most helpful beginning book on Linux I have read. Most of them either assume you are already familiar with Unix and bury you in pages of technical jargon. Or they do not really contain enough explanation to be helpful.

I found this book to be very readable. The writer can expain the how and why of running linux without burying you in details. This is an excellent book for converting a Windows user to Linux.

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Summary: Great for first time Linux users from Win95/98
Review: This is the best book that I've found for getting started with Linux coming from the Win95/98 world. I bought TurboLinux 3.0.1 at LinuxWorld and never could get it to install. I succeeded in installing Red Hat Linux 5.0 from "Linux for Dummies", but couldn't figure out how to do anything useful with it because of the orientation of the Dummies book towards the characer-based shells. I guess I'm more of an "Idiot" than a "Dummy" because the former approaches Linux from the graphical K Desktop Environment first, then moves to the shell. The reference material is MUCH more usable than that in the Dummies book. I can actually USE linux now rather than playing around with configurations and the such. In net, if you want to use Linux as a Windows alternative, this is a great book to get started.

PENGUIN POWER!!!

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Summary: Great for beginners, too shallow for others
Review: Way into late nineties, most books on Linux still read like this: Here is Linux, which is zillion times better than MS-DOS, and here is the command shell, which is so much more powerful than COMMAND.COM in MS-DOS, then here are X Windows, which are like MS Windows in DOS, only better... A reader less acquainted with the history of computing might have asked "Wow, that's cool, but what is this MS-DOS thing you keep mentioning?"

When the first edition of this book appeared in late 1998, Manuel Alberto Ricart was among the first authors to admit that Windows 95 and 98 actually *did* happen. Rather than comparing bare-bones Linux with a historic relic, he chose a decent peer for a modern Windows environment: Linux with a desktop environment KDE.

Mr. Ricart starts with the elements of the KDE desktop, spends considerable time explaining basic operations with it, then proceeds to the programs of KDE base suite: file manager, text editor etc. The inevitable command line only comes in in part two. After explaining the basic commands -- file utilities -- some Unix concepts like pipes and regular expressions are discussed, while the programming in command shell is omitted. The section on programming editors Vi and Emacs is probably too short to be useful. The last part, part three, deals with the system administration tasks. Installation of Linux is added as an appendix.

What is the advantage of using command shell despite the existance of graphical interface? Mr. Ricart unfortunately cannot give a convincing answer, although it is probably clear to every second reader -- command shell contains a powerful macro language, which is superb for performing repetitive tasks. This is a pity -- spending 30-40 more pages on the Bash programming would actually give a meaning for including the complete Part 2. But I guess there has to be something idiotic in each of the books of Complete Idiot's series, right?

Leaving this aside, the book is perhaps the best introduction to Linux for beginners. Of all the distributions, Caldera Open Linux that comes with the book allegedly has the most user-friendly installation program -- unless you have some unfortunate exotic hardware, with which it won't work. Bear in mind though that every Linux CD included in a book is likely to be one year old or more when it arrives in your hands, and one year is a long time in Linux development. So the system you have just installed is already outdated... Watch the Web to find out what is really going on.

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Summary: Great newbie guide to Linux/Unix variants/Unix like OSes
Review: XFree86 version 3.3.4 (free Open Source version of X Window System version 11) that came on the cd for some odd reason didn't work on my computer with a Sis 5597/5598 using either Lizard or LISA and kept freezing it. The book's first chapter does a very good job of describing the process of inventorying hardware, checking hardware compatibility, repartitioning your hard drive using Fips, if necessary, explaining the difference between primary, extended, and logical partitions, taking you step by step through a Lizard install with plenty of pictures, and explaining what happens at each stage of the install process. The second chapter introduces you to the KDE desktop. The appendix at the end of the books shows you how to install using LISA (text based installer), though if you want to try LISA make sure to go to Caldera's hardware compatibility list at www.caldera.com/support/hardware/2.3/. If you choose to install that way all modules for hardware must be loaded manually and it may be a long process, you've been warned. Unfortunately sometimes hardware compatibility issues may pop up with Lizard so it's good to know how to do it just in case Lizard doesn't work. I haven't finished this book yet, but it's very interesting and in my opinion worth the read. Overall a good book and the cheapest I was able to find. Be wary of the fact that OpenLinux 2.3 may not work with the latest hardware. Other than that your install should go quite smoothly and I'd say the older the hardware you use the better the chances of your being successful (I'd recommend a Pentium 233 with MMX or PII 300 or equivalent or earlier). Please note that my review only applies to the Second Edition of this book (not the First Edition).