REVIEW: Red Hat Linux 8 Bible._ - book review

Telecomworldwire, March 6, 2003

TELECOMWORLDWIRE-6 March 2003-REVIEW: Red Hat Linux 8 Bible(C)1994-2003 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com

Bibles seem to come in all sorts of sizes, as do IT manuals. This particular bible to all things Red Hat Linux is of the larger variety, lumbering in at well over 1000 pages and containing three CDs crammed with third party applications and software that you need to set up any level of Red Hat Linux machine from desktop to server.

Does all of this accumulated information really mean that the book is a bible? Does it mean that it is probably the best Red Hat Linux book that anyone of any level of knowledge should go out and buy right now?

Well, probably.

There is no doubting that this book is filled to bursting with great information: a quick flick through the contents listing is enough to either please you or scare you. After you get past the first chapter, which basically outlines the history of Red Hat Linux and the Red Hat Linux Bible, the early chapters deal with the earlier stages of Red Hat Linux ownership - installation and troubleshooting. The language at this stage isn't simplistic, but it manages to put the information across in a succinct manner while also adding in pointers and notes for the novice user. No-one should get confused at this point but equally no-one should feel patronised!

Further into the book and the language gets more technical, but that is only through necessity. It remains easy to read. Source code is easily picked out by the grey shading around it and simple line-art tables are used where necessary to help separate the lists of info from the surrounding text.

Just to demonstrate how thorough this manual is, the author has included a section on how to play games in the most efficient manner with Red Hat Linux. Now I've no doubt that this will be fascinating to bored members of server administration staff but in a thinner book I would have suggested that the information was frivolous. In this tome, however, it just seems to be proving a point: that no piece of seemingly trivial information is too trivial to include in this book.

On a more serious note the book does not make an interesting read. It is designed to be picked up, used and put back on the shelf. In this aspect it does a great job. Considering the vast amount of information available within its pages it is surprisingly easy to navigate around. The index is rather weighty, as would be expected, but it is well laid out and not cramped. Preceding this are a number of appendixes which offer condensed pieces of additional information which the reference user would find invaluable. There is also a list of the 1400 Red Hat Package Manager applications available on the CDs, including those which were removed from the latest version of Red Hat Linux but some administrators may still want to use. Very nice!

CONCLUSION: Easy to use and well laid out. I doubt that GBP37.50 will buy you this much accessible information about Red Hat Linux anywhere else!

Title: Red Hat Linux 8 BibleAuthor: Christopher NegusPublished by: John Wiley and SonsISBN: 0-7645-4968-5Price: GBP37.50Reviewer: Jamie Ayres

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