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Beginning Fedora desktop : Fedora 20 edition
Petersen R., Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2014. 504 pp. Type: Book (978-1-484200-68-1)
Date Reviewed: Sep 19 2014

This book is an updated version of the author’s previous book on an earlier Fedora release [1]. It is intended for novice to intermediate users who are looking to install Fedora 20 as their primary computing environment. Unfortunately, while illustrating the use of new tools found in Fedora 20, the author also illustrates the use of tools like PackageKit, which the new tools replace; this could cause some confusion among novice readers.

A brief introduction describes the desktop features in Fedora 20 and lists alternate (live and custom spin) ISO images. Live and standard installation processes are then illustrated with screen shots of every step in chapter 2. There’s nothing here about anything like RAID mirroring, so it’s unlikely to confuse a new user.

The third chapter contains illustrations of startup and login screens, and then mentions that users may have installed a GNOME, K desktop environment (KDE), Xfce, or other desktop; readers may have appreciated seeing more about this in the installation coverage. It then provides comprehensive coverage of GNOME desktop usage. Several pages show how Tweak Tool can be used; unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be installed by default, and the GNOME software facility isn’t discussed until chapter 4.

Chapter 4 uses screen shots to demonstrate the capabilities of the GNOME software facility. There is also some coverage of basic yum and rpm commands, and some discussion about using the RPM Fusion repository to install vendor graphics drivers and multimedia codecs with licensing issues. The author notes that the YUM Extender interface provides a convenient mechanism for allowing users to turn repositories on and off. It also provides easy access to RPM Fusion packages.

In chapter 5, “Office Applications and Editors,” the author discusses default GNOME items like LibreOffice, Evince, Evolution, and Gedit. But he also includes additional items such as AbiWord, Mutt, and Xpdf, which aren’t included in a standard installation; this is likely to confuse a novice user.

In the same vein, the chapter about graphics and multimedia, chapter 6, references a whole set of graphics utilities not found in a standard installation. It does, however, offer some valuable suggestions concerning plugins for expanding the capabilities of default GNOME sound and video utilities.

There are a couple of chapters (7 and 8) about installing additional Internet tools such as Chrome, Filezilla, and Skype. These are followed by a lengthy chapter 9 that revisits the GNOME desktop in a greater level of detail. I was pleased to see that the GNOME classic desktop is also shown (this is actually my personal preference).

The author notes that, even if you did not choose KDE as your base environment during installation, you can retrofit it using simple command-line directives. He then offers almost 50 pages (chapter 10) illustrating how it can be used. It has been a long time since I used KDE, so I took advantage of the opportunity to revisit it; the screen shots on almost every page made this easy.

A short chapter 11 provides a good summary of basic shell commands, and chapters 12 and 13 show how some system tools (like disk-utility) can be used. Some additional tools (for example, users-and-groups and system-config-date) are discussed in chapter 14, “System Administration.” This chapter also illustrates how to manually edit configuration files for file system mounts, startup characteristics, and more.

The final two chapters deal with network and printer management tools. The coverage here is good, but there are a couple of places where a service command is shown for enabling a daemon rather than a systemctl command.

Overall, this book meets its objective of providing a comprehensive guide for new Fedora 20 desktop users, though they may find it easier to read if some parts were reordered. The KDE desktop and application content is something readers won’t find in other Fedora 20 books.

Reviewer:  G. K. Jenkins Review #: CR142731 (1412-1011)
1) Petersen, R. Beginning Fedora desktop: Fedora 18 edition. Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2013.
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