The Complete Reference: Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora Edition by Richard L. Petersen and Ibrahim Haddad

The Complete Reference: Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora Edition

by Richard L. Petersen and Ibrahim Haddad

McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2003

ISBN: 0072230754

$49.99 US

The Complete Reference: Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora Edition is aptly titled, as it fills the role of a complete reference very well. This book is divided into eight distinct parts, ranging from “Getting Started” to “Network Administration”. The first half of the book is geared towards novice to intermediate users, and the second half is dedicated to more advanced subjects. Chapters covering installation, command-line and GUI environments help novices become oriented to Linux while other chapters about NFS, Samba DNS and Security should appeal to system administrators. Several reference books are available that cover a great many topics but often fail to go into the proper detail. Considering the breadth of topics included in this book, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the most important details were present.

The book contains one of the best descriptions of the Linux filesystem I have ever read. When I first installed Linux, I received advice from many people on how to partition my Linux system properly. It was a confusing process for me as a novice. The authors here do an exceptional job of explaining each directory's purpose and recommending a simple but effective partitioning scheme for a desktop install.

A DVD of Fedora Core 1 is included with this book. Although the system I used to test the DVD install didn't take to Fedora well, using the DVD to install Linux certainly was a great luxury. I checked the Fedora Web site, and they do offer an ISO image one could download and use to burn a DVD.

I would recommend this book to my friends regardless of their levels of expertise with Linux. It is such a useful reference that I have recommended that my office purchase a copy. It serves a complete range of users from the complete novice considering a first Linux installation to an experienced system administrator. In my opinion, it is a must-have reference for anyone running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is an excellent choice for those running Fedora.