This is the latest in a series of books published since 2006, and it is intended to cover Ubuntu versions 13.10 and 14.04 LTS. A 13.10 32-bit installation DVD is included inside its back cover, and a bonus 14.04 chapter will be available for download at a later date. The book is aimed at intermediate to advanced users, but new users should learn a lot from it.
The first of its five parts guides the reader through installation from the DVD. Screen shots are used to illustrate a suggested partitioning scheme, software updater usage, and post-installation configuration steps. There’s just enough here for a basic root-swap-home setup, without any of the added complication that might be introduced through logical volume management (LVM) or redundant array of independent disks (RAID) arrangements.
In Part 2, “Desktop Ubuntu,” readers will find a few pages about using the Unity desktop environment, followed by more details than they’ll ever want about default and alternative browsers, office suites, multimedia applications, and desktop environments. Those unfamiliar with KDE, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu desktops will likely have some difficulty detecting the differences from the desktop screen shots shown for these. There is also a chapter about games, and it is suggested that Wine might be installed to enable users to play Windows games.
System administration is covered in Part 3, the largest part in the book. It begins with a short chapter on managing software, which suggests that the synaptic package manager should be installed rather than relying on the default Ubuntu software center utility. Use of the apt-get command is also illustrated. There are a couple of chapters that show how common Linux commands like find, awk, and vi can be used to locate and edit files, followed by a chapter on managing users, which includes some details about sudo configuration and quota specification. Subsequent chapters in this part deal with simple shell scripts, service management, system monitoring, backup procedures (with particular emphasis on tar), networking configuration, remote access, and security. These are followed by chapters on disk and kernel tuning, and on kernel and module management. The latter chapter includes some instructions for patching and compiling a new kernel; that’s not something you will find in too many books of this type.
Part 4, “Ubuntu as a Server,” illustrates network file system (NFS) and Samba file-sharing mechanisms and common Unix printing system (CUPS) printer configurations. The Apache and Nginx web servers are discussed in some detail, together with the vsftpd file transfer protocol (FTP) server; brief details are included for alternatives, such as Tomcat. Several mail transfer agents (MTAs) are compared, and configuration options for Postfix are described. There are a couple of chapters about traditional and NoSQL database servers, with brief examples for MySQL and PostgreSQL setup; one would need something far more detailed to do any serious database work. Other chapters in this part relate to Squid proxy service configuration, virtual private network (VPN) setup, virtualization, cloud services, and domain name system (DNS) setup.
The final part, “Programming Linux,” begins with a summary of version control systems. This is followed by short chapters introducing the Perl, Python, PHP, and (to a lesser extent) C programming languages. Readers will need one of the books mentioned in the references if they really want to write useful programs. There’s also a short chapter that introduces the Android software development kit (SDK).
Not everyone will want to configure and install web servers or database servers on their machine, use an Amazon cloud machine, or write programs in Python. But for those who want an up-to-date book that has a little detail about almost everything one might do with a current-release Ubuntu system, this book is a great choice. The author obviously knows what he is talking about, and has kept abreast of emerging trends. I learned a lot from it.
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