Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Book Review: SUSE Linux Toolbox

I like reading and I like Linux/BSD/Unix. So when I hop to the bookstore I have a tendency to check out any book related to Unix-like operating systems.

In the past Monday I came across SUSE Linux Toolbox on the Linux section. As the Linux section is always very small it caught my attention and decided to flip a couple of pages.

As I picked up the book I thought "A book for dummies, full of stupid GUI screenshot with no depth I bet". Well I couldn't be more wrong!

As flipped through I was amazed: the book was entirely focused on the CLI on a very straight to the point fashion. It was love at first sight and I ended up spending about 15 minutes in the bookstore reading a couple sections/topics.

My girlfriend was also checking out a book and as we were leaving she gazed upon my sad face as I took the book back to the shelf and suggested that I should buy it. I just thought "It's a book about SUSE and that's not exactly my favorite distro" so decided to place it back in the shelf. As I got there the bookstore guy had just finished re-arranging the shelf and there wasn't any room where the book originally was. It was destiny: I just had to buy the book!

So I did. For the past days I've gone through 4 of its 14 chapters and read several sections/topics of a couple more chapters and so far haven't come across a single incongruence.

It really is a great book and a wonderful purchase.

I've been running Linux for about one and a half years and gone through distros such as Debian, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS and on the BSD side FreeBSD. I know my way around, I'm no guru but nor am I a newbie, and SUSE Linux Toolbox fits like a glove to anyone who enjoy tinkering with their system and learning.

The book contains tons of information that aren't distro specific while identifying SUSE only things such as the zypper's use on chapters 1 and 2.

Chapter 3 is all about the shell and how to use it. Chapters 4 and 5 expand on subjects like working with files and manipulating text.

From chapter 7 onwards it focuses on my main area of interest which is administration and does a damn good job at it in my humble opinion.

To sum up, great buy for anyone into Linux, CLI and widely applicable to any other distro. I for one am glad of the purchase.

On a final note there are 2 other books on the series: Ubuntu Linux Toolbox and Fedora Linux Toolbox.

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