[NTLUG:Discuss] Good RedHat or Linux Book

[Greg Hewett]

madhat...

I totally agree with every word that you said.  That is the way that I
learned, and that is the way that I teach others to learn.  The ones who
depend on these type of those who are moving from m$.   M$  have brainwashed
people in thinking that configuring servers and applications are hard if it
is not in a neat little GUI.  My thoughts are that GUI's take away a lot of
power and flexiblility that make UNIX cool, but they are important to M$ 
converts.  I guess I am trying to pose a question here.  I run a slackware 
dist because I do not want to be distracted by configuration tools and rpms.  
I might be extreme, but  I can probably install sendmail, apache/mod_perl, 
squid, gnome, samba, ... without rpms on any unix platform. 

My question I guess is, where is the line?  should there be a standard in
configuration and installation tools, or do newbies have to choose a dist,
and if they decide they want to change do they learn a new configuration
tool?

Just a random thought...

greg


On Fri, Feb 18, 2000 at 07:26:32AM -0600, MadHat wrote:
> > Bob Byron wrote:
> > 
> > I am a newbie at Linux and would like to know which book I should
> > buy.  First,
> > I would like a book that details how to use linuxconf,  Second, I
> > would like to
> > find out what the best all around Linux (or RedHat 6.1) book would be
> > to help me setup a
> > Linux server.
> 
> First, I personally wouldn't use Linuxconf.  I don't know of a book that
> covers it, but I am sure someone has done it.  The reason I say don't
> use it, is because if you really want to be able to use a linux box, it
> is a bad tool to get into the habit of using.  
> 1. it isn't always installed on all machines, so if you want to be able
> to admin most machines, or at least know how to admin most machine, it
> is better to learn without this tool.
> 2. it sucks for admining certain daemons (like SMB).  And when I say
> suck, I mean it can cause the configuration files to be so mangled that
> the daemon won't even run.
> 3. I don't consider it to be reliable or secure, but this is all just my
> own personal opinion.
> 
> Best book to setup a Linux Server?  Depends on what the focus of the
> server is and how much you already know, whether or not you are actually
> setting up a server in the sense of the "new" Linux idea (created by
> companies like RedHat and others) where a server is a machine with X and
> all the user apps and then have the daemons running on there as well
> (which is what I would consider a workstation) or what I consider a
> "true" server where there is no X, there are minimal user apps necessary
> to use the machine and the machine is focused on running the daemons it
> needs and runs them well because of less crap^H^H^H^Hstuff taking up
> resources.
> 
> Before buying any book, I would take a look at the HOW-TOs on almost
> every Linux site out there and included with just about every Linux
> distribution and look at all the docs at sites like linux.com, oswg.org
> and linuxdoc.org, they should have a lot of the information you need. 
> When you decide you need to get a book, if you are looking for a
> reference manual, go with O'Reilly's Unix or Linux in a Netshell, not
> great for learning from, but an excellent reference.  And of course
> O'Rielly has lots of great other titles, like "Running Linux",
> "Essential System Administration" and "Unix Power Tools".  I have also
> looked at Learning Unix in XX days, and it can be ok.  The Using Linux
> from Que isn't bad either, but I have yet to find a book that actually
> covers what the reader is looking for.  It always works out that the
> reader gets good info from the book they bought, but it just didn't have
> what they wanted.  It seems to miss that one important point and that is
> when you come here with your question.
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/browse-books/3849/qid=950880032/sr=6-1/002-7637720-8951412
> 
> Sorry for such a rant so early in the morning.
> 
> -- 
> %_=split';','f; Perl ;h;st a;o;ker;@;not;.;hac;u;her;d;ju';
> print map $_{$_}, split //,
> 'madhat at unspecific.com'
> 
> _______________________________________________
> http://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

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