Amazon.com
Large is the universe of all-purpose Linux books that ship with a distribution of the popular open-source Unix clone on CD-ROM.
Linux Desktop Starter Kit definitely fits into that group (with four distributions included), but it differentiates itself from the herd through its balanced treatment of several popular Linux distributions and a strong chapter on home networking with Linux. The book also pays careful attention to productivity applications that compete with Microsoft Office and other mainstream suites, instead of treating them like an afterthought like other books--which tend to focus on the operating system at the expense of the things you can do with it.
The home-networking chapter deserves a second mention. It shows exactly what you need to do to configure Microsoft Windows computers for TCP/IP networking, set up a Linux box as a print and file server using Samba, and link everything together. The book even provides a recipe for using Linux IP masquerading as a way of sharing an Internet connection between all the computers on the little network you've set up. The recipe is simple and specific to a certain case, but the book reprints the whole IP-masquerading how-to document as an appendix. In fact, about half this book is how-to documents, including the ones on modems and boot-time parameters. Sure, the how-tos exist on the Internet, but printed copies of them--beside Lathrop's solid tutorials--have extra value. --David Wall
Topics covered: Installing, configuring, and running Linux, explained for the benefit of a reader with no Unix experience and little systems-administration knowledge. The book focuses on Red Hat Linux 6.1, but several others (Caldera OpenLinux 2.3, TurboLinux Workstation 3.6, and SuSE Linux 6.1) get substantial attention. Beyond installation, the focus is on office-suite work with StarOffice and (to a lesser extent) Corel WordPerfect Suite. How-to documents explain working with sound, modems, IP masquerading, and networking.
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