Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Charlie: My first review on the bad mama penguin site covers the "Linux System Administration Handbook", Prentice Hall Technical, by Mark Komarinski and Cary Collett. This book was a paradox of good information that fell short of the depth I was expecting. It covers a broad Linux subject matter from kernels and runlevels to window managers, applications and programming languages, all in a mere 377 pages. Overall, although the book superficially touches alot of interesting Linux subject matter, I was very disapointed in the lack of real technical and in-depth information from a book that boasts it is the "first true system administrators book" for Linux. Good points in the book included kernel and system specs and recommendations on specific software solutions and applications such as KDE, Staroffice, and MySQL. This book also has sections on Apache and on Python, Perl and PHP, but again all are very high level and while it may be in style to have a chapter on these guys, no real information is provided. This book covers all the Linux bases, distros, installs, networking, applications and more. That much, the broad coverage and the occasional specific reccomendation, was appreciated. However, weak points in this book included the superficiallity I have mentioned before and oranizational problems. The book is poorly organized and jumps from section to section without design. Also, I am sure this book was rushed to press by Prentice because of the Linux demand, its riddled with typos and misspellings, I realize that computer books and readers demand up to date info and that puts pressure on deadlines, but this was ridiculous to read, its a final product, its not our website (pot and kettle joke.) RATING : 0.8 Penguin Afros (out of a possible 5.2) on our scale. Overall, dont bother, all of the info in this book is available in HOWTOs, product info or books you already own. However, if you still want to checkit, see it at Amazon, Linux Sys Admin Handbook.