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Marc M wrote: | I understand what you are saying about the timeliness of the printing. | But I disagree somewhat. Sometimes it has helped me tremendously to | find a good book and read up on a topic (say a chapter) like mail or DNS | or something. Sites are good too, I agree also with the server setup of | course. It is definitely a very non-linear process, thats for sure. | You need to do probably 20% reading and 80% experimenting.... | | Also joining a LUG (and recently I started my own Linux Users Group) | also taught me more than anything I could read, since individuals were | there to show me and answer questions.
Exactly!
I have an entire zoo full of books with animals on the cover that handle specific topics (Postfix, OpenLDAP, NFS, etc). O'Reilly makes some killer books, and I recommend them quite often. But the question was about general books. Books about how Linux operates. A topic that will change by the time I finish this email, lol.
To be honest, I am not even sure it is required to know all the inter-workings to run a successful Linux server or desktop. This is not like the days when I started (RedHat 2) where just installing the OS was an adventure. Modern distros like Redhat/Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, Gentoo and even Debian can be installed in a stable state by simply following the prompts. By taking that stable platform, then learning topics, I feel that the current crop of newbies have a huge advantage over us old timers.
LUGS were also an awesome suggestion for newbies. I find that most Linux gurus have been doing this for a long time. Since before penguins were cool. Many of the guys at the LUGs can help even more than the newbie websites.
The OP is trying to wrap his head around a fast moving target. Building a safety net and getting a running (notice I did not even specify well running) system, and "tweaking" it mercilessly is often the only way to ever try and tackle this. Until the publishing industry learns how to get that information out quicker, such as electronic publishing, it will always be too far out of date to promote good computing habits.
| On 4/14/05, *Kevin Fries* <Kevin.Fries@xxxxxxxxx | I have gotten more screwed up by these general purpose books, than they | have ever helped me. Specific books, such as on DNS or LDAP, are a | different story. But I have not found a general purpose book I would | ever consider as teaching outdated, and therefore bad, practices.
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