Linux books - generally a waste of money

[willisoften]

Linux Format:

 

It's OK but as for providing any working knowledge its pretty basic about the level of the beginners books mentioned earlier in this thread. Occasionally it does more involved stuff. Like most magazines it tends to repeat itself after a while. Most of the up to date can be found on the web a few weeks (maybe even a month) before each magazine hits the shelves.

 

I think the problem for publishers is the vast arena which is Linux / open source.

What does the average Linux user want in a more sophisticated book? What is an average open source user? Who is the average Linux user?

Even from from this forum you can tell that we're a loose bunch of people with a variety of objectives lifestyles, needs and wants. Everybody is an individual but that fact becomes less apparent when you sample larger groups (MS Windows users). Individuals are a frightening thing for advertisers, marketeers, governments and publishers.

 

As an aside theres an Australian(possibly American) guy living close to me who wrote an extremely large tome with a title like Windows XP encyclopedia - how to do everything with MS Windows XP which contains something like 3000 pages sells for about £60.00 and is really pretty trivial. I'd guess he's a writer/ technical journalist rather than a computer person. Be careful what you wish for.......

[Gowator]

This really is an ongoing subject!

 

As willisoften points out the number of trivial books on windows is massive!

 

But it isn't faced with the same problems....

Firstly, a WinXP Home book is unlikely to cover running a web server or your own email server yet hardly a linux distro comes without them!

 

As mentioned above the server based books are in the majority, representing the RH trend!

 

The distro's of linux are uncontrolled. They can include anything and the documentation of one thing is usually a matter for the package writers, not the distro. Look at window managers. Who should document KDE???

KDE - Mandrake or who? Same for Gnome....

 

I strongly beleive the KDE documentation should be done by KDE... and Gnome by Gnome etc. These are not anything to do with linux, let alone a specific distro.

 

If you buy a car ( I love my car analogies) its made up of components from many manufactuerers. You get a car handbook and it tells you service intervals and tyre pressures but it doesn't tell you how to take apart the gear box. This is often becuase the gear box (or whatever) isn't made by the manufacturer, indeed it could actually be made by a rival or third party. When you BUY a maintainance manual it is pretty specific to your model/year etc. and even then some stuff is just left out. I don't see a general book that tells me how to hook an engine management diagnositc program up to my EMS.

Of course the manafactuers of the diagnositc machines have manuals but they are considered as not for a general consumer.

 

This computer probably works for 20 makes of car and thousands of models by a series of inputs and measureing devices. Therefore documentation isn't in your manual provided by your manufactuerer.

 

To me this is like say DNS/NIS you can't expect a full explaination of what is a several hundred page book with every distro. Linux just uses these standards and if you want to understand them and many more you need to get the specialist books (O'Reilly seems the reliable source on these)

 

KDE/Gnome .... etc. I believe the relevant .org's are responsible. Again they don't just run on linux they run on ANY unix like system that runs X.

 

X - Who documents that... ?? Again it has to be the open standards

 

You don't buy a consumer phone and expect it to list and explain all the standards used it telecomunications! Quite often it just refers to the accompanying legal framework of standards for telecoms.

 

So Linux/Mandrake is just using these Open Standards. That is the whole idea of Linux/UNIX.

 

 

What is REALLY badly missing is explaining to people where linux comes from and where to find information on these standards!

 

This is one reason I dislike distro-specific config tools for things which are not even specifically UNIX. I prefer Webmin to admin DNS/NIS etc. because webmin is all UNIX platforms as is DNS/NIS. Therefore a book can be written on Using Webmin and this will serve everyone from Linux to solaris to BSD!

 

I have yet to find ANY documentaiton on the wizard in Mandrake ... and this is IMHO bad.... if a distro makes specific tools then they SHOULD document them. For an organisation/company having the source is one thing, for a home user it is in many cases not realistic as a source of documentation!

 

Finally, some distro's do document stuff and they are usually the NON FREE ones. Not only are they not free beer theyre not free speech becuase if you try and modfy them you stand a good chance of breaking them ... (i.e. Lindows, Xandros etc.)

 

Nor can anyone anticipate which firewall ?? you will use. i.e. A general book on ipchains/iptables is one thing a shorewall/bastille etc book is another. This is why I think the Mandrake shorewall implementaiton really stinks, becuase it actually is implemented so that the shorewall documentation is pretty much useless with it until you REALLY understand it. If I wrote a Using Mandrake book, what would I put in for shorewall.

I'd have to say forget the Mandrake setup and read the shorewall documentaiton ... if I do that then my whole chapter is redundant!!!

 

null has really hit the nail on the head!!!! There is a problem but the solution isn't easy or simple!!!