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156 lines
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<title>Review of "A Practical Guide to Linux" by Mark Sobell Issue 25</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<H2>Review of "A Practical Guide to Linux" by Mark Sobell</H2>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:bernardd@wr.com.au">Bernard Doyle</a></H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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Several months ago, with some trepidation and the assistance of a friend who is
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somewhat more knowledgeable than myself about computer hardware, I took the
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plunge and installed Linux on my Pentium PC.
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<p>
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Soon after, I downloaded a pile of assorted How-To's, FAQS and Tutorials from
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the Internet to start doing something useful with Linux. The downloaded
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documentation was handy but I frequently had trouble finding answers to
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important
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questions. After a month I purchased 2 books - Running Linux by Welsh &
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Kaufman and
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A Practical Guide to Linux by Mark Sobell. Welsh & Kaufman's Book is a well
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known,
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highly regarded, authoritative book on Linux. It is fundamentally about how
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to set
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up the major Systems and Hardware and how they interact.
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<p>
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Sobell's book, by way of contrast, approaches Linux from a software perspective.
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There is little, if any, overlap between the two books, even when they are
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talking
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about the same thing. The two books effectively work opposite sides of the Linux
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street. There is also a contrast in the styles of the two books. Welsh and
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Kaufman
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are somewhat "chatty" while Sobell basically tells it like it is with little
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or no
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opinion thrown in.
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<p>
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Although there is a chapter on System Administration, Sobell's book
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concentrates on
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showing how to use the Linux variants of the standard Unix software
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packages. There
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are chapters on X-Windows, vi, emacs, Linux Internet and Networking
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Software, bash
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(2 chapters on this important subject), the TC Shell, the Z Shell and
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Programming
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Tools.
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<p>
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Learning the bash Shell by Cameron Newham and Bill Rosenblatt (published by
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O'Reilly)
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covers the use of bash in more detail than Sobell's book, but I suspect it
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is a little
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advanced for the beginner. Sobell's chapters on bash were the most
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informative and useful
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information that I have come across so far. Being something of a
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scripting/batch
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file afficianado the two chapters on bash provided just the information I
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needed
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to produce a host of useful custom scripts.
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<p>
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The Command Summary takes up about a third of the book and maintains the high
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standards of the rest of the text. Sobell uses internal page references quite
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freely. This often results in a lot of page turning. I assume this was done
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to avoid
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repetition of material, and given the vast amount of material that could be
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included
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in a book on Linux/Unix software this is a reasonable compromise as it
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leaves more
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room for additional material.
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<p>
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This is not a book for solving Linux hardware or installation problems. If
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you are
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looking for that sort of information then get Welsh and Kaufman's book, or
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download
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the relevant "How-Tos" (or both). This is the book to use if you want to do
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learn how
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to do useful things with the software. The book manages to cover almost all
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the major
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software topics, and it covers them well.
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<p>
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I do have some quibbles with the book. The Table of Contents uses a
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typeface that
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is much too large, As a result it runs from page xvii to page xlvii. (That's
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31 pages
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for the Roman numerally challenged) Hopefully, the next edition will address
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this
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issue.
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<p>
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One notable Linux/Unix Utility not mentioned at all is Perl. A short 5-6 page
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reference to it in the Linux Utility Program Section or an Appendix would
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have been
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nice. Summarising Perl in 5-6 pages is possibly a tall order, but I would have
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liked some mention or reference to it.
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<p>
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Although the book gives a good rundown on accessing Linux Documentation and
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Software
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from the Internet, a Bibliography of Linux/Unix books would have been good.
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"Running
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Linux" does have a Bibliography, so if you have that book as well then I
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guess you
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have the information anyway (although it's a little out of date).
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<p>
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The book is an adaptation of Sobell's other Practical Guides to the Unix
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System and
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this shows, and it's not necessarily a bad thing either. However, given the
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nature of
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the Linux community, I doubt whether photographs of a mouse and keyboard are
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necessary.
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On the positive side, the book is professionally organized, indexed and
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referenced. It
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is substantially larger than the other Practical Guides to Unix by the same
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author as
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well.
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<p>
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In the light of the high quality of the book overall, all of the above
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criticisms are
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minor and easily overlooked. The book is far and away the best I have seen
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on the
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market for quickly and effectively using Linux software. If you have a copy
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of A
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Practical Guide to Linux and Running Linux along with a few appropriate
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"How-Tos",
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you should be able to get solutions to most of your Linux questions as well as
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productively use your system.
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Bernard Doyle <BR>
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Published in Issue 25 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, February 1998</H5></center>
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