Red Hat Linux Unleashed

Covering version 4.2 of Red Hat Linux, this book includes in-depth coverage of Red Hat Package Manager (RPM), hardware issues, additional installation options, and the latest Linux tools and utilities. The CD-ROM supplies the operating system and added tools.

Pitts's book guides the Red Hat Linux user through installation, programming, and everything in between. If you want to set up a Linux machine from scratch, this book will ease your task considerably. After explaining how to install the operating system (including an entertaining discussion of Linux loaders LILO, MILO, and SILO), the author explains the mechanics of altering and rebuilding the kernel-key aspects of any Unix environment. He then goes on to discuss the Common Desktop Environment and lots of other Red Hat Linux services, including X Windows, FTP, SMTP, and the popular Apache Web server. Pitts devotes full sections to system administration and the installation of hardware devices. Pitts conclusion covers programming and other automation techniques with scripts, C, C++, Perl, and tcl/tk. The programming tutorials are brief and not the strongest part of the book.

Red Hat Linux Unleashed's only real shortcoming is that it focuses on (and the accompanying CD-ROM contains) Red Hat Linux 4.2, which has been superseded by version 5.0. Much of the information remains useful to the Red Hat 5.0 user. The 1998 edition comes with 5.2 version of Red Hat Linux.