Book Review: Red Hat Linux 6 in Small Business

In conclusion, this book is unsatisfactory. It is too sketchy, tries to cover too much ground, and is short on detailed, hands-on demonstrations of what to do. There is no clear focus and, as a result, the book fails to be either a detailed technical resource for system administrators or a decent introduction to Linux as a server OS for the less experienced.

It is true that some parts are better than others. The firewall chapter, for instance, is a decent (albeit brief) introduction to this important subject. But, in contrast (and this is unhappily the more common case), the chapter entitled “Configuring a Linux E-mail Server” simply doesn't deliver what it promises.

At the very least, the book needs to be supplemented with on-line resources. In that case, why buy the book? Of course, given the speed with which Linux changes and the inevitable lag in publication times, any book will need supplementing by on-line resources to a degree. Here, I'm afraid, the book is so heavily dependent on them as to render it superfluous.