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Sams Teach Yourself Red Hat(R) Fedora(TM) 4 Linux All in One Review by W Boudville
check out the OpenOffice and Firefox applications
Linux grows and grows. Perhaps you are pondering migrating to it? To change operating systems can be fraught with uncertainty. Even if you are confident about the new operating system's reliability, how much do you have to learn to be productive in the OS?
Hsiao gives an answer for linux. He chooses to describe what is currently perhaps the most popular version, Red Hat's community-based Fedora. Naturally, the book has copious descriptions of what the desktop looks like, and the common operations you can do using this operational metaphor. You know, all that drag and drop stuff. It's been over 20 years since the Mac popularised the GUI desktop. And the main ideas are now the same across many operating systems. So if you're coming from elsewhere, adapting to the Fedora desktop should not cause any heartburn.
The book also reflects the reality of competition amongst operating systems. Two big reasons that people use computers are for doing office related paperwork and for browsing the Web. So the book (and its enclosed CD) carefully devote time to explaining how to use OpenOffice.org. A suite of applications that is the open source analog of Microsoft Office. Some of you are undoubtedly well familiar with the latter. If you compare that to the book's coverage of OpenOffice, you can see that broadly speaking, OpenOffice can do much the same as MS Office. Though it should be said that OpenOffice lacks much of the specialised commands available in MS Office. If you don't use those, then the book's explanations of OpenOffice should meet your needs.
The other big thing in the book is its description of the Firefox web browser. A Mozilla-derived browser that has won accolades from many for its ease of use. If you want to go beyond the really obvious usages of Firefox, the book can explain more intricate things you can do with it.
If you already know some linux, you might be impressed by the book's treatment of the two most common text editors that come with it - vi and emacs. The book gives a concise walkthrough of both, and a good comparative analysis, without taking sides.