The intent of this text is to provide both use and administration details for Linux, as well as more general concepts of operating systems. Prepared specifically for use as an academic textbook, most chapters end with a review of topics, vocabulary, and Linux commands covered in that chapter plus a set of exercises. The author suggests how the book can serve one-semester upper-level “Intro to Linux” or system administration courses, or combined intro-sys admin courses of one- or two-semesters. It would be less appropriate for a traditional operating systems concepts course. The Linux focus is on Red Hat version 6 and CentOS version 2.6 varieties, but the coverage is actually much more flexible than that may make it seem.

There are essentially two parts of the book, with seven chapters for the Linux user and seven chapters on system administration. The Linux user part includes an introductory chapter, and discusses the Bash shell, Linux file system, process management, a variety of Linux applications, regular expressions, and shell scripting. The system administration part describes Linux installation, user accounts, the Linux file system in depth, system initialization and services, network configuration, software installation and maintenance, and maintaining and troubleshooting Linux. As might be expected, the author encourages developing comfort with the command-line interface (CLI) over a graphical user interface (GUI), but both approaches are addressed. The chapter on regular expressions is relatively complete and addresses general concepts as well as the application of grep/egrep, sed, and awk utility programs.

The writing style is almost conversational, and there are relatively few typographical errors. The coverage is quite good given the broad focus of the book, and there are many helpful comments that help in dealing with the many Linux variations. This text has the potential to serve a wide variety of audiences (other than those needing a traditional operating systems concepts course), and a review of the 12-page table of contents is the best way for someone seeking to adopt an appropriate text to appreciate the coverage in this book. It can also serve as a helpful side reference to Linux that is not narrowly focused on a specific variant.

More reviews about this item: Amazon