Running Linux Book Review

A Distribution Neutral Guide For Servers and Desktops

‘Running Linux’ is the fifth edition of this popular Linux book. ‘Running Linux’ now includes consumer topics such as audio and video as well as groupware functionality and spam filtering.

‘Running Linux’ begins by introducing the different types of Linux and how to install the operating system. The following ten chapters then run you through all the various useful desktop applications that are available for Linux and a lot of them are for free, including OpenOffice, Audio, Video and Games for Linux.

You are then introduced to the Linux filesystem and system administration basics such as setting up accounts and using crontab etc. The book also discussed networking via TCP/IP and using Dial-up PPP and PPP over ISDN. Other topics include printing locally and over a network and file sharing using SAMBA.

The main text editors of Linux are also covered, which are vi, emacs, tex, latex and texinfo. The final section of the book covers programming with Linux, the chapters are split up into programming with gcc, debugging with gdb, c, perl, java and python languages. There is a very small chapter on the Apache Web Server and the book finishes off with chapters on running an email server on
linux, firewalls and backing up your linux system.

‘Running Linux’ is a great book with lots of content and programming examples. It’s the kind of book which should give you a great overview and understanding of Linux. I would say ‘Running Linux’ is more of a beginners book as you may want more in depth information on certain topics, such as Apache, which is not covered in any depth in this title.

Overall ‘Running Linux’ is one large book with nearly 1,000 pages and it should cover everything you need to know about the basics of most areas of Linux.