Linux eTudes

Rating:
Summary: Finally, Linux for Small Office/Home Office Business
Review: Linux Etudes is unique. It's a Linux book written for the small office, home office user trying to do business with Linux. It is not a Linux installation or system installation guide.

An etude is a musical composition designed to develop skill through practice. Linux Etudes gives you a set of 27 practical tutorials. Each Etude lab exercise was designed so you can apply your new Linux knowledge to your unique business. Each Etude starts with a discussion, is divided into easily digestible parts and includes step-by-step, business-oriented exercises you can try on virtually any Linux operating system. You learn to use the utility programs provided free with Linux to improve your productivity and enhance your creativity.

The first four etudes are core topics: file operations with either gnome file manager or Konqueror, Kedit editor and the ins and outs of using floppy disks with Linux. Then you learn how to share files between Microsoft and Linux partitions and the pitfalls to watch for when doing so.

Need a personal organizer, a time tracker, an organized note taker, or need to make screen captures for presentations or tutorials or need to use a spreadsheet? The next six etudes show you what to use. The activity for the spreadsheet even shows you how to create frequency of occurrence or Pareto charts.

Own a Palm Pilot? Linux Etudes shows you step-by-step how to install J-Pilot, the Linux Palm Pilot desktop program with all the functionality of the Windows version. You are carefully stepped through how to set it up and how to inform Linux about your serial cable connected to your Palm cradle.

Need an accounting program similar to Quicken? Try gnucash. This Etude really shines. You are taught more than merely how to punch buttons. The author first teaches you the basics of double-entry accounting and how to create a chart of accounts. Then the activities walk you through the accounting features. By the end, you've created a useable accounting system and can extend it to meet your needs.

Remember the quick and easy programming fun using Basic before it became Visual? It's back in Linux. Etude 14 teaches you how to download YA Basic and how to install and use it. Not only do you gain YA Basic but also the knowledge of how to download and install a program from the Internet. YA Basic lets you unleash your creativity again.

Linux also makes extensive use of the command line - where you have a command prompt and type commands. Learning the command line increases your speed and flexibility. Drawing on his Unix and Linux teaching experience, Professor Tancig painlessly leads you to command line mastery. Navigate the directory tree and learn file commands. Learn piping and redirection and how they're really just assembly line operations. Use alias to create short cuts the history mechanism to speed up using repetitive commands. Next comes grep which finds patterns, words and phrases and this leads into awk. Although awk finds patterns, too, it was also designed to be a simple yet powerful database programming language.

All these skills and knowledge can be integrated when you learn to write shell and awk scripts and learn to pass information you type on the command line into the shell script. Using this capability, the shell script can then make choices, perform looping or anything else you program it to do with the information you pass in.

StarOffice was not included. StarOffice tutorials already exist.

Linux Etudes is the place to start to build a solid foundation that you can actually use in a small office or home office. This is a reference you'll reach for. That's why the publisher printed it on quality paper and gave it non-curl covers. You won't be disappointed.

The author, David Tancig, has been a college professor of electronics engineering computer science for twenty three years, has owned and operated a small electronics manufacturing company and made and saved money for AT&T. Linux Etudes includes his business insights and his insights on using technology in business. As Professor Tancig said, "I've never forgotten the wolf at my door when I ran my own business: weekly payroll. You don't have time in business for wannabe software. I included nothing I wouldn't use in my own business. If it didn't work as expected with zero crashes, it didn't make it into Linux Etudes."