Red Hat Linux 9 for Dummies

By Jon Hall and Paul G. Sery

Red Hat Linux, with its splashy brand name and recognizable logo, is undeniably one of the driving forces behind the Linux revolution--and, by far, the most popular Linux flavor. It's used by businesses, individuals, and governments world wide to cut costs, improve performance, and just plain get the work done. You can use it as a desktop workstation, a network server, an Internet gateway, a firewall, the basis of an embedded system (such as a smart VCR or a robot), or even as a multiprocessor supercomputer. And thanks to the thousands of people who continually refine different parts of Linux, Red Hat Linux keeps getting more flexible and robust with each new release. Ready to put the power of the penguin in your PC? This handy plain-English guide to Red Hat Linux 9 shows you how--no experience required It gets you up and running with everything you need to know to: Install, configure, customize, and fine-tune Red Hat Linux 9 Get connected to the Internet Work with Word documents Set up a Web server Customize your own flexible, powerful workstation Connect to a wireless network Build a firewall With world-renowned Linux expert and crusader Jon "maddog" Hall and Paul Sery as your guides, you'll quickly master what you need to know about: Connecting to the Internet via broadband DSL and cable modems or old-fashioned dial-up modems Getting connected to your Local Area Network (LAN) Building simple Internet and LAN services, including Web pages and print servers Using Red Hat Linux to play CDs and MP3s and listen to radio stations Using OpenOffice desktop productivity suite, Evolution desktop organizer/and email client, the streaming multimedia player, and other cool applications On the 2 Bonus CD-ROMs you'll find: Publisher's edition of Red Hat Linux 9 Apache Web Server GNU compiler GNOME and KDE Desktop This amazing book/CD package is hands-down the quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to put the full power of Linux to work for you.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764539906
• ISBN13: 9780764539909
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: For Dummies
• Length: 408 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

good for partitioning and installing...not a lot of content

This book is great for getting the newest version of Red Hat and getting step-by-step installation instructions, but the rest of the book does not get heavily into using Linux other than for connecting to the internet and using some basic programs. I was hoping for some stuff on shell programming, for example, but nothing at all like that appears in this book. Still, I would've been lost as far as partitioning and installing without this book. It just became a bit useless afterward.

You will not be a dummie if you buy this book!! Awesome!

I cannot thank and commend the authors enough (John "Maddog" Hall and Paul G. Sery) for their outstanding job in writing Red Hat Linux 9 for Dummies (RHL9D). I have been looking for a quick and comprehensive book for Linux beginners like this one for a long time. This book may say it's for dummies, but after you are done with this, you will feel like a genius. Trust me, you NEED this book like Osama bin Laden needs a good shower and a fat missile to the arse! I bought the boxed set (personal ed.) of Red Hat 9, and was able to get by with the manual included there for installing Red Hat (since it is pretty easy), but using the Red Hat desktop features is another story because the boxed set does not give you a user's guide (well, you do get a CD ROM that has the user's documentation, but who wants to wade through that??)! RHL9D will expertly guide you through the install and then show you how to "use" Red Hat 9. After all, if you are like me, the very first thing you want to do after installing an OS is to use music CDs (including burning CD's and watching DVD's), MP3's, games, e-mail, and surfing the Internet. RHL9D does it all and fast too! Coming from the crash-prone, pay-for-everything MS Windows world, I was very skeptical in thinking RHL9D could quickly replace Windows. Red Hat spanked Windows plus a whole lot more (except crash)! Besides including a myriad of "free" utilities and games, you also get OpenOffice that is the equivalent of MS Office, and it can open your MS documents!! I have been waiting for the day when I could lose Windows for Linux. That day is here and I cannot be happier! Don't worry, you can still use MS Windows because Linux partitions a section of your hard drive for it's own use, thus giving you a dual-boot system (Windows+Linux). I recommend buying a second hard drive and installing Red Hat there, but you don't have to. In short, Red Hat Linux is all it's cranked up to be and much more-thanks to this book! This book is worth 3x the asking price for saving me the headaches and frustration of wading through nerdy tomes of Unix/Linux jargon offered in other books just to do a simple Linux task via the dreaded command line! It beats the hell of wading through the Linux CD-ROM documentation or "man" pages too! I cannot praise this book enough. By the way, before you go out and buy Red Hat Linux 9-DON'T! The authors have also included the personal edition here for free (minus the source code CD's which you don't need anyway unless you are a Linux guru, and if that were the case, why would you be interested in this book??). You cannot ask for more than that! Author's, if you're reading this, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!