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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: 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: A very usefull book to get started with Linux
Review: I was reluctant to switch to Linux because I thought that it was only for professional computer users.
Gradually by getting more and more information, I choose to migrate totally to Linux...No more Windows operating system ! The most scariest part is undoubtly the command line but Linux for Dummies really helped me to get familiar with the basics and now I can administrate my computer directly with the command line, whithout using the GUI. Very good job !!
I don t use the distro described in the Book since I am a Mandrake user and the main developments are focused on FEDORA core of Red Hat. But the two GUI are well described.
A very usefull book to get started with LINUX.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for serious Linux users, only for windows type users
Review: I'm not a serious programmer, but I've done some C++ programming and was looking for a dipper look into Linux. Unfortunately this book is about a Windows Type Operating System (Red Hat Fedora) and how to installing it and use it. If you're are tired of Windows and all its problems this is the book for you.
Easy to understand and comes with a DVD with the software
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: 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: 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: Installation of Linux for Complete Idiots
Review: This book is awful. I mean terrible. It is so basic. Let's be honest, dummies are not going to use Linux. It just isn't reality. Techie people are going to. This book is too remedial and leaves out a lot of detail for those who want more nitty gritty about how the OS operates. It does do a section on command line which I find bizarre as no dummie would ever jump into console when they could use the GUI.
Rating:
Summary: The latest is the Greatest
Review: This new edition of Linux for Dummies, written by Linux guru Dee Ann LeBlanc is well worth the price. It's packed with the latest information and expertly written in a style that is accessible to computer users of all ability levels. A must have for every Linux user!
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