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Red Hat Software Businesses Books Media Software Book Reviews Linux

Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 212

Posted by timothy from the don-the-fedora-too dept.
Dan Clough writes "Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge, very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9. It's over 900 pages, and includes the "Publisher's Edition" of RH9 on 2 CDs. It is written in a style which should accommodate Linux newcomers and more experienced users alike. There are a lot of examples, code snippets, and screenshots throughout the book. In fact, sometimes the abundance of these tend to make the material a little long to wade through. Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need, though." Read on for the rest of Dan's review.
Mastering Red Hat Linux 9
author Michael Jang
pages 942
publisher Sybex
rating 8 of 10
reviewer Dan Clough
ISBN 078214179X
summary Good summary for operating a Linux system; though it uses Red Hat, it's not Red Hat-dependent.

The book starts out with an introduction to Linux, and has a good chapter on preparing to install, including hardware checklists. This is followed by a very detailed step-by-step explanation of installing Red Hat, both locally and via network. A nice part of this is a troubleshooting chapter for solving installation problems. Part Two explains the basics of using the command line, how filesystems work in Linux, and using the shell for various tasks.

Part Three includes chapters for administering users and groups on your new system, and how the RPM software package management process works. Other chapters in this part explain the bootup process and how to configure it, various ways to perform system backups, and other common administration tasks such as cron jobs and logs. Especially useful should be Chapter 12 which explains how to update/compile your own kernel. There are very good examples of the myriad kernel options, mostly by using the xconfig utility.

The next several chapters go over how to configure and use the X Window display system, including good examples from the XF86Config file. This is followed by detailed explanations of configuring and using the Gnome and KDE desktop environments. The KDE discussion is very good, considering Red Hat is more known for its use of Gnome as the default desktop. Chapter 18 introduces many of the more commonly used graphical applications in Linux, such as OpenOffice.org, Gnome Office, and the KOffice suite. Chapter 19 should be very handy for Linux/RH new users, as it outlines the Red Hat graphical configuration utilities which allow customization of the desktop look-and-feel and other system preferences.

Chapters 20-22 cover basic Linux networking. The first part of this section gives a very understandable primer on TCP/IP and network terminology. This is followed up by excellent discussions on how to setup and manage networking on your Linux computer, including security recommendations and firewall/masquerading methods. Once you've got your network running safely, there are additional chapters which cover topics such as remote access and xinetd services, and various server applications installation and operation. These include DNS, DHCP, CUPS printing operations, FTP servers (and clients), NFS and NIS, and mail servers (sendmail). Some of these services are probably more than most home users would need, and the sendmail operation in particular is a little difficult to understand.

Chapter 29 (Using Samba) will probably be a great help for people desiring to integrate a Linux system with existing Windows computers on a network. It offers an excellent tutorial on how to share files and resources across the LAN, and includes an explanation of the SWAT configuration utility which greatly simplifies initial setup for newcomers. The final chapter in the book explains how to install and setup a basic webserver using the Apache software. The appendix of the book is a relatively short section called the Linux Command Reference. There is some handy information in this, although it seems to be organized somewhat haphazardly. The book's index, on the other hand, seems to be very complete.

Overall, I found this book to be a very useful reference tool. It is basic enough for most beginners to get all the help they need, and has a good amount of usable knowledge for more advanced Linux users. One thing I realized is that much of the information here is not necessarily Red Hat-specific, so it can be helpful to users of other Linux distributions as well.

You can purchase Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Mastering Red Hat Linux 9

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  • Too bad (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    RedHat is off the user linux market. All your skills are belong to us. Should've pursued MCSE or a degree from ITT Tech.

    • Re:Too bad (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How can a first post, be redundant, when it actually has content? Surely, nobody before him said, "RedHat is off the user linux market" Troll, sure, but Redundant? wtf are you smoking?

  • eol (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chef_raekwon ( 411401 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:31PM (#7435617) Homepage
    good thing this book came out before the End of Life for Redhat 9, in 5 months.

    (yeah, I guess this is a troll)

    • Re:eol (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rinikusu ( 28164 )
      I was going to post something similar, but then realized that at the very least, someone may get something out of it. Basically, the publishers/writers can get an idea of what they got right and what they can work on for the next Mastering (Fedora?) book. The biggest problem facing publishers is similar to the dilemna that RedHat was facing: RH spent all the time getting a distro out, then working on the documentation, and by the time everything was out, the distro looked dated by the overwhelming number
    • good thing this book came out before the End of Life for Redhat 9, in 5 months.

      (yeah, I guess this is a troll)

      Don't feel too bad--my first thought on seeing this was that the next Slashdot book review would be "Mastering Windows NT."
      • Don't feel too bad--my first thought on seeing this was that the next Slashdot book review would be "Mastering Windows NT."

        They have a book for that?

        ...and too think all these years, I've been stumbling in the dark.

    • Where's the foot? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Mr. Neutron ( 3115 )
      Seriously, this review belongs in the "It's funny, laugh" department.

      Although the impending RHL EOL is not all that "funny" to me....
    • Great timing indeed.

      Cept that all this nonsense from Dan was posted on Amazon on Nov 5 [amazon.com], scroll down to the reviews section. I'll give him partial credit since he didn't copy and paste from another reviewer.

      • Re:eol (Score:2, Informative)

        by spencerogden ( 49254 )
        Regardless of the quality of the review, what's wrong with him writing the review, and posting it several places? What difference does it make?
    • which will continue keeping redhat 7.3 and redhat 9 up to date with all current security patches so you can happily continue to run machine on those distros far into the future... why troll???
    • It might be a troll, but at least it's not redundant....

    • Doesn't anyone THINK anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ScottGant ( 642590 ) <scott_gant@sbcgloba l . n etNOT> on Monday November 10, 2003 @04:28PM (#7436690) Homepage
      I mean, come on. People are making it seem like Redhat is dead or that they're abandoning the product. Like if you install RH9 it's a dead product.

      Do we have to spell it out for the ones that choose not to think? RH9 is not dead. If you install it, the upgrades are going through Fedora now. I know this because I "upgraded" to Fedora from RH-9 on one box.

      OR you can choose to go the Enterprise route.

      Freedom of choice baby!

      Why are some people missing this?
      • RH9 is a dead product now with the release of Fedora. RH is going to drop support of 9 in April 2004. The key word in your statement about Fedora is upGRADE, not update. Unless I'm mistaken, Fedora is only providing a method to upgrade RH9 to Fedora Core 1.

        The usefullness of RH9 is that that's what Redhat Enterprise Linux 3.0 is based on. So the book isn't completely worthless, and it's a good start for the writer/publisher to write a book about RHE 3.0. RHE is a long release and supported product (12-

        • you are mistaken (Score:2, Informative)

          by Vitriolix ( 660279 )
          fedora legacy will provide updates to redhat 7.3 and 9. http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/terminology.h tml
          • I've wondered about that too!!

            But then again, you have to wonder how long they will provide updates. Fedora's release cycle is four to six months, with 2-3 months of updates after that. I just wonder how long Fedora will continue updates for the older RedHat's.

      • Or we can master it by formatting and re-installing slack. That's how I mastered RH.

        No flamebaiting intended, though I know some will take it that way, but really. I'm not the best person to ask about this, as RH alienated me from the start... but presumably there are some people out there that actually liked their product, and RH is going out of their way to make sure that everyone understands that Fedora will not be the same. It sounds like RH-attempts-debian, which is fine I suppose, but I have a feel

      • People are making it seem like Redhat is dead ...

        This isn't just a joke. My wife, who works in a Windows-only medical org (yeah; I know ;-) came home a few days ago asking if I'd heard that RedHat was going out of business. It seems that the people she works with had spent a lot of time discussing this, and were glad that they'd stuck with microsoft so they wouldn't have such a disaster hitting them.

        She uses a Mac at home. Lately, she's been taking it to work a lot. She seems to enjoy the looks of gr
    • So this is no different from a Red Hat 8 book. It covers most of Fedora Core apart from the new features, including the new up2date client with um and apt support, GUI bootup, screen res switching tool, OpenOffice 1.1.

      That said, I can appreciate that it must indeed suck for the author now that Fedora is having regular 6 month stable releases.

  • The next book will be lighter (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:32PM (#7435625)
    Mastering Red Hat Linux 9 is a huge, very complete guide to Red Hat Linux 9

    "Mastering Red Hat Linux 10" will be a thin, very complete leaflet to Red Hat Linux 10 that will have "Switch to Debian now!" written on it in big blood-red letters.
    • More likely, a quote from Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik telling the reader to "master" Windows instead.

    • "Mastering Red Hat Linux 10" will be a thin, very complete leaflet to Red Hat Linux 10 that will have "Switch to Debian now!" written on it in big blood-red letters.

      People who brought this book also purchased "How to be a rabid Slashdot Debian zealot in 24 hours for dumb idiots visually in full color"

  • Why not rebrand? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Limburgher ( 523006 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:32PM (#7435632) Homepage Journal
    Mastering Fedora Core 0. I mean, hey, get people used to the idea.

  • Great timing... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jargoone ( 166102 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:33PM (#7435636)
    Man, sucks to be the author. Put months of time into your book, then have the vendor pull support.

    Of course there is another side: since there won't be version 10, this will always be the book on the latest and greatest version of Red Hat Linux!
    • Put months of time into your book, then have the vendor pull support.

      Considering that RH announced their new EOL policy many months ago I doubt he was seriously surprised.

      I really wonder how this is going to affect RH's RHN service income though. Quite a few non-profs and schools used it to keep servers up to date. The same orgs aren't likely to replace all RH Linux servers with RHE servers... and without that, not much reason to buy RHN subs anymore.

  • RH9 is the consumer version, right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:33PM (#7435637)
    Step one: Install a version of Microsoft Windows, since Linux is not ready for your desktop yet.

    This has been a Red Hat approved statement(tm)

  • The problem (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    with this entire series is that they're very unwieldy and come with a 'orrible binding...the pages usually separate out within 3-4 months.
    • that's ok, that's about the length of time it takes for a RedHat distro to become obsolete. I'm trying out Mandrake now, RedHat isn't the same company it was from 5 years ago to 6 months ago.

  • another one that might be helpful (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Also see Teach Yourself Red Hat Linux 9 [amazon.com] from sams... I'm using it right now to try Linux out for the first time and it's pretty easy to follow so far.

  • Bad timing (Score:1, Redundant)

    by deanj ( 519759 )
    This book really has bad timing for the author, considering that RH 9 will discontinue maintenance in April 2004 [slashdot.org].
  • Oh sorry - yes it will still exist for 5 months :)
  • "The Complete Guide to Microsoft NT4 Internet Services" and "Push Technology: The Future of Content Distribution".

    It must suck to publish and have the product EOLed within six months.

  • Unfortunate Title (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ridgelift ( 228977 ) * on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:37PM (#7435667)
    Even though the content of this book is relevant and probably useful, the title should have been change to reflect more the Mandrake [mandrake-linux.com]/Fedora [redhat.com] Linux distributions. The fact that Red Hat will now be synonymous with their expensive Red Hat Enterprise edition, this will probably limit the audience and sale of this book.
    • This is way it has always been with Publishing when it comes to opensource. I've yet to read ANY book on a specific opensource project that wasn't out of date by the time it was published. This book was obviously in the making and probably done well before Red Hat made its intentions clear. IF they knew what they know now 5 months ago maybe they could have done something but as it stands I'm sure it was just too late to change anything.

      The same problem awaits anyone writing a book about Fedora. How to you

  • Timing doesn't really matter I guess ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:37PM (#7435668) Journal
    ...given that Fedora is going to be based around Redhat 9, I suppose the (rather poor :-) timing isn't an issue.

    I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian now that RH9 isn't a 'hold-your-hands' upgradable system (assuming you buy RH update :-)

    Simon.
    • I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian

      Installed Slack 9.1 on all my boxen over the weekend. Well, ok, my wife did a lot of the installs. Slack is up to Kernel 2.4.22 and Gnome 2.4 out of the box. Check it out!

    • Isn't Sarge supposed to be the new stable next month? If so, I'm moving to Debian.
    • I wimped out and went to Mandrake after the Bluecurve fiasco. After what happened to Red Hat, however, I do plan on diversifying my Linux knowledge base. Who knows what will happen if Mandrake goes tits-up or gets assimilated? My goals are to become proficient in Debian and Gentoo.

      May God have mercy on my soul.
    • > I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian now that RH9 isn't a 'hold-your-hands' upgradable system (assuming you buy RH update :-) They'll find plenty of hand-holding with SUSE and Mandrake.
      • You can upgrade from RH9 to FC1 in the exact same way you would have upgraded from RH8 to RH9. The installer for FC1 finds out you have RH9 (or any previous version, at least from RH7.x) and upgrades the relevant packages. End of story.

        Then you have an apt-enabled (and yum-enabled) system that looks and feel like a RH machine. If you know RH it's a time saver. If you liked RH before you might still like FC1, it feels exactly the same.

        But as you learn apt/yum more and more, you might be pulled towards the


    • I wonder how many others (than me) are seriously considering moving to debian now that RH9 isn't a 'hold-your-hands' upgradable system (assuming you buy RH update :-)

      Not many, and those that don't will likely come back when they relize exactly how much bullshit Slashdot has put out about Fedora. I upgraded from Red Hat 9 to Fedora 1 last night. Pop in CD. Click upgrade. Same as any other Red Hat upgrade.

  • Good. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by H8X55 ( 650339 ) <jason...r...thomas@@@gmail...com> on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:38PM (#7435683) Homepage Journal
    Plenty of folks complaining or pointing the finger that Red Hat will be pulling the plug on RH9 this spring. In my opinion there's even more reason to go buy this book, if you plan on sticking w/ RH9. Why not have a 900 page bible on the OS you plan on sticking with? I know I know, gentoo gentoo gentoo, but in the meantime us newbies can contniue using RH and at least have one decent source to turn to.
    • In my opinion there's even more reason to go buy this book, if you plan on sticking w/ RH9. Why not have a 900 page bible on the OS you plan on sticking with?

      The primary reason I liked RHL was the security errata and patching, either through upgrades or backports. Once it it EOL'd, that is gone. What point is there then? I certainly don't want to micromanage every package myself, then I'd much rather go with Debian, Fedora or some other free distro where there's at least some level of coordination.

      Kjella
  • What's wrong with apropos, man and info (well, and google)? They're free, take less space in the shelf and they're always current. The only paper book you need to use those is a Unix for Dummies book, if you're new to Unix, just to get started.
  • Given recent events [slashdot.org], does the author now wish he had written Mastering Debian GNU/Linux? I know I sure do.

  • Is it very long before... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Linux books get charged a sales tax and a SCO tax?

  • Also look for.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by redhat421 ( 620779 ) * on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:51PM (#7435779)
    Mastering Windows 3.11 from the same author. :)

  • RHCE books? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rootnl ( 644552 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:59PM (#7435837)
    I am/was busy studying for RHCE, I started out with RHL8, at that point only RHL7 books were available. In due time, RH9 was released and I found myself running 2 versions behind plus Red Hat is very proud of the fact that they switch their exams quickly after a new product release. This was one of the books that I was looking at to use as a study guide as it came highly recommended. Pity about the switch Red Hat has made.At this point in time there are no study books available for RHEL and you might as well forget about RH9.

  • Bonus Chapter (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, 2003 @03:01PM (#7435856)
    Episode 3: Revenge of Redhat

    Unknown to the Linux Masters, Senator Redhat makes a secret deal with Microsoft to bring doom and destruction to Linux. As the plan unfolds, the masters realize that they have been betrayed by redhat, but it was too late.

    Microsoft's apprentice, SCO, seeks out the linux masters. SCO battles it out with linux, the fight looking unfavorable to sco. Then FreeBSD steps in and knocks the piss out of both of them.

    Rumored to be the most powerfulest unix in the universe, The Little D.Mon Master proceeds to show who is the master of unix to sco and linux.

    After the fight, the one left standing is D.Mon. D.Mon now angry that a little unknown linux master named Gentoo claimed to be a BSD Like and uber fast and all powerful.

    The Freebsd master chuckled, and showed Gentoo masters a little document showing that there is actually a performance loss if one does "-03" compared to regular "-O". The gentoo master refused the truth, but couldnt fight due to emerge not functioning correctly. Instead, the gentoo master was busy trying to get its nvidia drivers working, and recovering from the crasy of "oh darn, -O3 made my system unusable"

    FreeBSD took pitty on gentoo, and decided to give gentoo a copy of 4.9 and a nifty handbook, that explains everything, and what a true master unix behaves like.

    Now Redhat, responded to the threat of FreeBSD, it incorportated a new weapon called "RHEL". RHEL has a deadly weapon called of "I can run linux apps". Freebsd chuckled, as it said "so can I, but even faster"

    Redhat starts to cry, and shows it's new apprentice.. Fedora. Fedora, if you didnt know, is a redheaded stepchild, that was born out of "lets dumped the user".

    Meanwhile.... Novel, the old master of File Services, is chuckling....

    (continue the story)
    • Please explain how one Open Source project (Fedora) is some how "dumping the user" whereas another (FreeBSD) isn't.

  • Cowpoke (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Having my up2date cut off in December (I have RH 8.0) and no upgrade path makes me feel like I'm in a wild west town where the sheriff up'n left us - and the bandits are a-circlin'.

    The internet is filled with way too many goofballs writing worms and exploits for Linux and Windoze systems. I need a Linux OS that has an updater, and one that knows how to do a seamless upgrade from RedHat 8.0. I'll PAY $$$!

  • call me crazy... (Score:4, Funny)

    by supercooled32 ( 722063 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @03:09PM (#7435909)
    Experts should have no trouble skipping over the sections they don't need, though

    well thats a nice feature but won't that soon be the entire book??

  • Headless Server? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gandy909 ( 222251 ) <gandy909@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday November 10, 2003 @03:10PM (#7435918) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how this book rates with NON GUI subjects. Of the last several books I looked at on RH8, not a single one touched on command line stuff more than an occasional teaser here or there. When you are using one as a headless server, not only no monitor, but X not even installed, all these GUI centric books don't help one iota. It seems like either the authors don't have a clue as to how to administer one via the keyboard, or they just choose to take the 'easy' way to a quick buck.

  • cross-vendor compatiability (Score:3, Informative)

    by pyros ( 61399 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @03:17PM (#7435969) Journal
    Not quite on-topic with the book review, but relevant to the comments discussing life-cycle. If I've observed anything out of the transition from Red Hat Linux to Fedora, which is nowhere near done, it's that a common standard like the LSB and FHS combined with package managet agnostic repository header information is becoming essential. While waiting for FC to come out I installed Debian unstable, and was quickly reminded that the reason I liked Red Hat in the first place was for the awesome config tools. I actually had to get on irc to figure out not only how to configure my USB mouse but also how to get my IDE controller working! Move forward a couple of weeks and FC is out and installed side-by-side with Debian unstable. I hate having to do so much extra legwork to get ntfs and mp3 support. When LSB/FHS compliance are so strong between the major vendors that an app packaged for Debian can be installed on Red Hat and Red Hat's config tools can see/configure it, or Red Hat's config tools can be installed on Debian and produce config files that Debian will be aware of, there will be rejoicing in the streets. RedHat adding yuma dn apt support to up2date is a huge step. Yum is part of the Fedora Core, and apt is on the way, I believe. But having the tool agnostic repo header info will make it all moot. You setup your package repo and magically apt, yum, and up2date can all process dependencies. What a glorious day it will be.
  • About two weeks ago I decided to try and install Linux on my old K6-2 450mhz machine gathering dust in the basement.
    A friend of mine gave me a few cd's that had something called 'Mandrake' on it.

    He said "This is supposed to be the most user-friendly 'distro' out there. Give it a try."

    So with trepidation about wiping out my beloved win98se install on the old machine, I jumped right in.

    On firing up the install disk, the Man-drake installer asked me if I wanted to remove the win98se partition
    that already ex

  • Why Bother? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Pepebuho ( 167300 )
    Too Late, now I need the Mastering Fedora FC 1 Book

  • 900 pages? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pimpinmonk ( 238443 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @03:47PM (#7436283)
    I'm sorry. But isn't there a problem with a 900 page guide to an operating system? This isn't even advanced server. This is RH9 desktop. This is why I stopped using Linux on my desktop. It took me way more time to learn how to set something up, try to set it up, troubleshoot, and find the dirty hacks than to actually do what I was trying to do. Yes, it ran faster than windows and philosophically better, but I just didn't have time in my life!

    So in regards to linux being ready for the prime-time desktop, well I think that it's still a hobbyist's OS. The day when you can plug stuff in and it all just *works* properly will be great. I know Lycoris and Lindows are working toward this, but doesn't it seem like they're just layering wrappers upon wrappers on top of the fundamentally unelegant backend? Take USB keys for example. You need to have SCSI compiled to use them. Why???

    Sorry for the rant. But I see many posts making fun of 900 pages, and many posts making fun of RH not being ready for the desktop, but if you look at things from a realistic perspective, it's just *not ready* for mainstream. RH is not an idealistic company. They are reealistic, want to make money, and are succeeding at it, so I'd tend to think they know what they're talking about. Maybe linux is ready for tightly controlled office settings where you have homogenous hardware, set it up so it all works dandy, don't touch it and pray it doesn't break down, but it's not good where you have people with many diverse needs from their computers.

    Mod me down, burn me at the stake, but this really is a personal reaction to all the "+5 Funny" posts on this page.

    • Re:900 pages? (Score:3, Informative)

      by tuffy ( 10202 )

      I'm sorry. But isn't there a problem with a 900 page guide to an operating system? This isn't even advanced server. This is RH9 desktop.

      Here's [amazon.com] a 1,296 page book about Windows XP. Does that mean Windows XP is too complicated for the average user and isn't suitable for the desktop? Using the page count of a book devoted to an operating system as an excuse to blast its user friendliness is idiotic.

      • The difference is: You don't need a manual to figure out stuff under Windows XP. Linux, on the other hand, is a maze of man pages, info pages, --help, etc. Generally speaking, if you want to do something in Windows XP, the intuitive way is how you do it. Same goes for Mac OS. With Linux, you're hoping that the developer thinks like you do...

    • Re:900 pages? (Score:3, Informative)

      by WNight ( 23683 )
      Who cares if Linux uses SCSI for USB Keys? Your distro, assuming it was released in the last two years or so, should come with support for USB Keys pre-compiled. You plug the key in and the auto-mounter makes it appear on the desktop. At least in Mandrake...

      If you can't read the docs and figure out what you need (assuming it's not obvious because USB keys tend to be /dev/sdX) why are you recompiling your kernel? Windows users don't complain that the system won't work if you delete the registry, so why do t
      • Sir, you need to be enlightened. Read the Unix Hater's Handbook. Unix will never be simple. It is a never ending pit of shame and self loathing. Chastise yourself before the One True OS. Hate yourself for not understanding how to use the code snippet in the man page. Stab yourself in the thigh with an X-acto knife when you cannot get functions to pass pointers correctly. And never try to fix the problems in the BUGS section of the man page! The BUGS have been there since 1978, and they are features.

    • Re:900 pages? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Kynde ( 324134 )
      Maybe linux is ready for tightly controlled office settings where you have homogenous hardware, set it up so it all works dandy, don't touch it and pray it doesn't break down, but it's not good where you have people with many diverse needs from their computers.

      You tend to forget _the_ use it's been ready for years, for those of us that do not just use the computer in their work, but whoose work is the computer. Power users.

      I agree it not being ready for everybody, but it is ready for our desktops. Weth

    • Re:900 pages? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nailer ( 69468 )
      This isn't even advanced server. This is RH9 desktop.

      Red Hat 9 includes a server install and a large variety of server apps. The only things it lacks are clustering and a bigmem kernel.

      Take USB keys for example. You need to have SCSI compiled to use them. Why???

      You need to have SCSI compiled to use them under Windows too. Neither Red Hat 9 nor Windows ask you to compile SCSI to use your USB key.

      Otherwise thanks for the second intelligent post I've read in this entire thread.
  • I am writing this from Redhat 9. I use this box for one simple task. Web browsing. that's it. I did a simple user install, haven't tried anything my mom or other general users could not do.

    In order to properly navigate the internet from this RedHat 9 box, I need only mozilla and just one extra program...terminal.

    terminal is for killing hung mozilla sessions, I have to do this daily.

    ready for desktop? depends on your definition of "ready". I know my mom would have no idea how to handle a stuck brows
    • % killall mozilla

      or

      % killall mozilla-bin

      ymmv. mozilla has never hung on me since about 1.0.3
    • Hmm. Which version of Mozilla are you using?

      While I don't use Linux for the desktop, I use the 1.4 and 1.5 releases of mozilla on various machines (Windows 98/2000/NT/XP, Solaris 8/9) and find them rock solid stable. Prior to 1.4, I was killing mozilla daily.

      Now I have to ask--does Linux (RH or other) have a 'pkill' command? If so, then killing a hung process on Linux is no worse than through task manager on Windows. Not that this alone will make it ready for the desktop though.
    • I haven't had to kill Epiphany in a long time, but with Fedora, the desktop keeps track of whether the application reacts to a close window request. If nothing happens, a prompt will appear, asking whether to kill the application. It works very nicely.
    • Ctrl-Alt-Esc, click on the application that's hung. Generally works for me, IIRC. Not that I've had an application (outside of beta-builds) that's crashed on me in a while.
  • This is really really silly.

    A 900 page book on Unix and Unix-like OSes (Linux, etc.) is probably about right. Hell, Nemeth and co. managed to fit four OSes into a book about that sized.

    Now a 900 page book on a single version of a single distribution of Linux is crazy overkill! Have they copied the man pages (oops--info shitty pages) verbatim, or is Linux (between distros and also between versions within a distro) so badly unstandardised and non-static that it needs a book this big, per version/distro/OS?
  • including future versions of Fedora.


    Besides the usual Microsofties using the story to blast Linux (which is probably the ONLY reason they frequent /.), and the clowns who can't get work as a standup comedian, the rest of the comments seem on target: Most of what you learn running about any version of Linux will help you when you run other versions.

  • The way I look at it is, with the lack of constantly revising the kernel, maybe now they will come out with some standards, an API toolkit, and support for hardware made in the last five years. Yes, that's not completely true about the hardware, but have you tried to install any version of Linux on a new machine and had all the devices work right out of the box. I have access to a large variety of laptops, most of them being Toshiba models, with some Dell, Hitachi, and Compaqs. I gave up after trying to i

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