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Introducing Linux distros
Castro J., Apress, New York, NY, 2016. 380 pp. Type: Book (978-1-484213-93-3)
Date Reviewed: Sep 13 2016

The DistroWatch website now lists several hundred “active” Linux distributions, with a few new ones being added each week. How would a potential Linux user decide which of these he should use? To assist with this decision, the author outlines the origins of the Linux operating system and the GNU utilities that are essential components of most Linux, Unix, and Berkeley software distribution (BSD) systems. Did you know that Linus Torvalds developed Linux as a Minix lookalike so as to circumvent the license costs and distribution restrictions associated with Minix? Or that the Linux penguin mascot was chosen after Linus was bitten by a fairy penguin at an Australian zoo in 1993?

Some criteria that should be considered in selecting a distribution are introduced in the second chapter. Do you want a general-purpose desktop system for home or office use, something like Ubuntu or Mint? Or do you need a task-oriented system for home theater, gaming, or mobile phone use? Perhaps you are building a server to support a website or database? Other considerations include level of expertise, hardware architecture and support, preferred desktop environment, and release management.

The author identifies four major families of distribution. These are the Red Hat (CentOS, Fedora, and so on), SUSE (including OpenSUSE), Debian (including Ubuntu and Mint), and Slackware families. He traces the evolution of these from early offerings like Yggdrasil, which appeared in 1992, and SCO. Eleven general-purpose distributions have been selected for detailed coverage. If you had to guess the lucky candidates, you would probably get Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE, and Mint. You might also get Gentoo and Slackware because these have been with us forever. But Elementary OS or NixOS? They would not have been on my list.

Each candidate gets an entire chapter detailing how it stacks up against the criteria introduced earlier, followed by (typically) 20 pages of screen shots illustrating its installation and update processes. Those screen shots seem to show releases that were current at the end of April 2016, and each chapter ends with a pros and cons summary of candidate attributes. This is really good stuff! As you can imagine, the installation steps for distributions like Gentoo are quite complex, and I was unable to find any obvious faults.

There is a short chapter entitled “Other Alternatives,” which offers a one-page summary on 13 lesser-known distributions. Among these are ones that provide graphical installers for less-friendly distributions like Gentoo or Arch, and others that attempt to provide a Windows-like user experience. There is also one intended for use in embedded devices and widely employed in docker images.

The Linux OS is used in devices such as mobile phones and routers, where we find the Android and OpenWrt distributions respectively. A group of about 60 such task-oriented distributions is covered in the final chapter, with a short paragraph about each distribution. Among other things, we see there that the KaeilOS distribution can be used in embedded systems, AsteriskNOW and Elastix are commonly used in telephone systems, and OpenELEC has been used for media center applications in set-top boxes and single-board computers.

My own background is in high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and I was slightly disappointed at finding so little in the book about Red Hat, CentOS, and Scientific Linux, so widely used in HPC servers and academic desktops. And as an occasional user of several Linux-like operating systems, I experienced some frustration at being unable to find the bonus chapter about such things that is mentioned in the book’s introduction.

In any event, the target audience here is individuals looking to select a Linux distribution for personal or business use. This book is just what they need.

Reviewer:  G. K. Jenkins Review #: CR144761 (1612-0866)
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