While Mac OS X garners all the praise from pundits, and Windows XP attracts all the viruses, Linux is quietly being installed on millions of desktops every year. For programmers and system administrators, business users, and educators, desktop Linux is a breath of fresh air and a needed alternative to other operating systems.
The
Linux Desktop Pocket Guide is your introduction to using Linux on five of the most popular distributions: Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, SUSE, and Ubuntu. Despite what you may have heard, using Linux is not all that hard. Firefox and Konqueror can handle all your web browsing needs; GAIM and Kopete allow you to chat with your friends on the AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! networks; and the email programs Evolution and Kontact provide the same functionality as Microsoft Outlook, with none of the cost. All of these programs run within the beautiful, feature-packed, and easy-to-use GNOME or KDE desktop environments.
No operating system truly "just works," and Linux is no exception. Although Linux is capable of running on most any computing hardware that Microsoft Windows can use, you sometimes need to tweak it just a little to make it work the way you really want. To help you with this task,
Linux Desktop Pocket Guide covers essential topics, such as configuring your video card, screen resolution, sound, and wireless networking. And laptop users are not left out--an entire section is devoted to the laptop issues of battery life, sleep, and hibernate modes.
Customer Reviews & Comments
I recently received a review copy of Linux Desktop Pocket Guide by David Brickner. This is one of those books that you may like or hate depending on what you're looking for...
Contents: Distributions; Logging In; GNOME; KDE; Applications; Add, Remove, and Update Programs; Configuration; Laptops; Running Commands and Editing Text; Index
Since this is a "pocket guide", I don't expect there to be a lot of conversational writing and screen prints. Normally you get core reference material that you can find and use quickly. The Linux Desktop Pocket Guide seems to be somewhat of a departure from that pattern. There's still no screen prints, which is fine. But I can't tell what level of reader would benefit most from this book. The distribution chapter has a nice short comparison between a number of distro choices, but seems to be a bit light in order for newbies to make decisions (or experts to learn anything new). GNOME and KDE are quick references to the basic desktop tool, and it will help the new Linux user to learn the basic keystrokes and components. The Applications chapter is a high-level sweep through some of the basic choices of software for things like media manipulation and office productivity software. Add/Remove finally starts to show the pattern of other pocket guides, by recapping the command line choices possible for installing programs on the different distros. Configuration and Laptops can help the reader get things like mice and sound cards running, but if you run into problems, there's not a lot of additional troubleshooting stuff here. Finally, the Running Commands appendix is just a short two or three page chapter on how the command line works.
In my opinion, I'd try and look at this book first before buying it. I'm just not sure if there's a single audience that this would appeal to without exception...
