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Red Hat Fedora 4 Unleashed Review by Thomas Duff
All things Linux in a single (albeit large) volume...
Looking for a single volume that touches on just about everything related to Red Hat Fedora? Here you go... Red Hat Fedora 4 Unleashed by Paul Hudson, Andrew Hudson, Bill Ball, and Hoyt Duff.
Contents:
Part 1 - Installation and Configuration: Introducing Fedora; Preparing to Install Fedora; Installing Fedora; Post-Installation Configuration; First Steps with Fedora
Part 2 - Fedora Desktop: The X Window System; Managing Software and System Resources; On the Internet - Surfing the Web, Writing Email, and Reading the News; Productivity Applications; Multimedia Applications; Printing with Fedora; Games
Part 3 - System Administration: Managing Users; Automating Tasks; System Resources; Backing Up, Restoring, and Recovery; Network Connectivity; Internet Connectivity
Part 4 - Fedora As a Server: Apache Web Server Management; Administering Database Services; File and Print; Remote File Serving with FTP; Handling Electronic Mail; Setting Up a Proxy Server; Remote System Access with SSH and Telnet; Managing DNS; LDAP; News Servers and Mailing Lists
Part 5 - Programming Linux: Using Perl; Working with Python; Writing PHP Scripts; C/C++ Programming Tools for Fedora
Part 6 - Fedora Housekeeping: Securing Your Machines; Performance Tuning; Command-line Masterclass; Advanced Yum; Managing the File System; Kernel and Module Management
Part 7 - Appendix: Fedora and Linux Internet Resources; Index
At over 1100 pages, this isn't the book you'd give to a typical Windows user to make the switch over to Linux... :-)
As you can see from the contents, Fedora Unleashed touches on nearly every area of Linux at some level. Using this book alone, you could easily get a Linux server and/or a Linux desktop environment up and running on your computer. Depending on your particular needs, you could then dive into server related topics like file sharing, LDAP, or running a web server. If you're just wanting to break out of the Windows monopoly and run a desktop OS not controlled by Microsoft, you would spend more time in Part 2 where the desktop Linux environment is covered. While you could definitely find more detailed books on specific areas of Linux, Unleashed allows you to get a working knowledge of a broad swath of the subject.
The book also comes with a DVD containing the Fedora 4 distribution so you can easily start to dive right into your own Linux build. This definitely beats having to find, download, and burn a number of CD .iso files before you can get started. While the downloads are free, having all the media ready to use adds to the value of the book...
Since I haven't yet upgraded to Red Hat Fedora 4, having this book around will put that task higher on my priority list... Good volume for anyone wanting to learn and understand Linux...