Not terribly impressive

I've been a Linux user since Slackware 3.0 was new. I'm looking at Linux+ because I'm going back to school for computer science in the fall and I want to brush up on my skills, fill in a few gaps in my knowledge, and maybe get that knowledge recognized for college credit or at least a merit badge.

This book is a bit out of date at best, though some of that may have more to do with the fact that CompTIA's exam objectives are probably due for an update. As an example, Ubuntu, with something like 25% of the Linux market, isn't even mentioned as existing in the "rundown of Linux distributions" in chapter 1. On the up side, things like vi and bash haven't changed their interfaces much, so this is less of a problem than you might think.

It's also a bit light in some important areas. As an example, a total of 15 pages are devoted to making X11 work. (If you could fix a broken X server with just a text editor and a the man pages would you really need this book?)

One particularly galling thing is that the eBook on the CD-ROM uses Adobe DRM, and thus is useless on a Linux based machine, despite the claim on the back cover about "software that runs on both Linux and Windows." This is a bit of a problem for me, because I use Linux enough that I've purchased a book about it. I don't really use Windows. But I use eBooks. So it would be nice to, you know, have an eBook about Linux that works on Linux. (Otherwise I would probably have given this book 3 of 5 stars. . .)

All in all, not bad if you've got some experience with other OS's and want to learn how to use the Linux command line, or if you've got some pretty solid Linux knowledge and want to pass the Linux+ exam. Probably not what you want if you're a Linux newcomer or somebody who actually wants to do something with Linux other than take a test about how it works.

Other Reviews

• Linux+ Guru
• Not terribly impressive
• Overall a good book and test prep
• Fully Satisfied