SUSE Linux 9 Bible

Rating:
Summary: SuSE Linux 9 Bible is good for the newbie
Review: I purchased this book because I am moving to Novell SuSE Linux Professional 9.2 from RedHat Linux 9 Professional. I wanted something new instead of migrating to RedHat Workstation or Fedora. SuSE Linux 9 Bible gives good detail on installation using YaST. The book goes through disk partitioning, the fundamentals of the Linux System, RPM packages, networking, administration and desktop customization. I thought the book was better than RedHat Linux 9 Bible which I purchased 2 years ago. The book comes with Linux 9.1 on a CD. This is good for a newbie to mid-level administrators. If you are doing anything fancy you can get the official Novell SuSE Linux Professional 9.2 User and Administration Guides on-line and in PDF format. SuSE is an exceptional Linux System and with Novell and IBM's backing could tip the scales away from RedHat Linux. I give it "Daumen Oben" ("thumbs up" in German).

Rating:
Summary: Strong Coverage of Install and Getting Started
Review: SUSE is to Linux in Europe what Red Hat was in the United States. That is, it's pretty much the standard distribution. In the United States Red Hat now moving to Fedora and away from selling a box product. At the same time Novell and SUSE have teamed up which should give SUSE more mind share than it had before.

At any rate, SUSE (Suz-A) was one of the very first distributions that produced a packaged product (and is still around). It comes with the YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) installation and administration program. This book is supplied with SUSE 9.1 (including YaST) on a DVD.

Chapter 1 of the book starts off with selecting your language (would you believe it offers Magyar) and then goes through the various installation screens, explaining what the various options mean as you go along.

This book covers just the operating system and a few programs that are very closely tied to the OS such as web, ftp, DNS and mail servers. The book does not cover such things as MySQL, just the OS. I don't consider this a problem because the amount of coverage you could give to MySQL in a chapter would be only enough to get you in trouble. And besides you might want to use Postgre instead.

Excellent book.