Linux Music Toys

I picked up Linux Bible 2010 Edition the other day. I was skeptical I have to admit. I mean every scrap of information you could imagine about Linux is out there on the Internet. The value add for me was to have the information organized and to have a good read on a variety of topics from one source. The problem with the information on the Internet is “what you don’t know, you don’t know” meaning you really have to have a clue about what you need to know before you go find it.

The subtitle of the book “Boot Up to Ubuntu, Fedora, KNOPPIX, Debian, openSUSE, and 13 Other Distributions” concerned me but as it turns out there is really only a couple hundred of the 900+ pages devoted to introducing you to the various distros. This is probably a good thing since a book that tried to cover all these distros would either be too large or simply not detailed enough to be useful.

The 13 distributions was appealing to me though. I wanted to experience some other distros and needed to review a few other distos for some compatibility with some hardware. I was pleasantly surprised to find the DVD’s had live versions of many of the distributions. I was able to try them out on my laptop really quickly and check compatibility on things like network cards, wifi, sound and so on. This in the past has been a major deciding factor in my choice of what distro to install (though its not as critical now that I prefer Debian for a host of other reasons).

The book is somewhat bias in that if you want to “jump right into” linux and get started they push Knoppix for powerful computers or Damn Small Linux if you’re trying to leverage your basement full of old hardware. My favorite parts of this book included:

• The live images on the DVD which let me experience 3 distros in 10 minutes
• An overview of the window managers
• An friendly introduction to vi
• Overview of multiple applications typically sought (eg: music, video and desktop publishing)
• The command line documentation (useful topics like on reverse searching and sequential commands)

So I’m giving this book a thumbs up for someone who is just getting into Linux or wants to know what they don’t know. For more experienced Linux users I’d recommend Linux in a Nutshell.