Product Description

A new edition of this title is available, ISBN-10: 0137136684 ISBN-13: 9780137136681

 

Praise for The Official Ubuntu Book

". . . this one (Ubuntu Linux book) is at the head of the pack for getting started with your penguin experience. . . ."

—Tom Duff

"Benjamin Mako Hill et al. have produced an excellent book that speaks to everyone who uses or is considering using Ubuntu."

—James Pyles, Reviewer, "The Linux Tutorial"

"Well written in an easy-to-follow format. Full of information for folks new to Linux or just new to Ubuntu. Even nontechnical users would find this a very helpful resource."

—Ben Gerber,Arsgeek.com

"I'd recommend picking it up if you are running Ubuntu."

—Tony Lawrence, owner of aplawrence.com

Ubuntu is a complete, free operating system that emphasizes community, support, and ease of use without compromising speed, power, or flexibility. It's Linux for human beings—designed for everyone from computer novices to experts. Ubuntu 7.04 (a.k.a., "Feisty Fawn") is the latest release—more powerful, more flexible, and friendlier than ever. The Official Ubuntu Book, Second Edition, will get you up and running quickly.

Written by expert leading Ubuntu community members, this book covers all you need to know to make the most of Ubuntu 7.04, whether you're a home user, small business user, server administrator, or programmer. The authors cover Ubuntu 7.04 from start to finish: installation, configuration, desktop productivity, games, management, support, and much more. Among the many new topics covered in this edition: Ubuntu's expanded multimedia functionality and Edubuntu offerings geared for schools and educational settings.

The Official Ubuntu Book, Second Edition, covers standard desktop applications, from word processing, spreadsheets, Web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, music, video, and games to software development, databases, and server applications. In addition, you'll

• Learn how to customize Ubuntu for home, small business, school, government, and enterprise environments
• Learn how to quickly update Ubuntu to accommodate new versions and new applications
• Find up-to-the-minute troubleshooting advice from Ubuntu users worldwide
• Learn Ubuntu Server installation and administration, including LVM and RAID implementation
• Learn about Edubuntu—Ubuntu optimized specifically for classroom

The DVD includes the complete Ubuntu Linux operating system for installation on PC platforms, preconfigured with an outstanding desktop environment for both home and business computing. It can be used to install other complete variants of Ubuntu including Kubuntu (with the KDE environment), and Edubuntu (for use in schools).

 

 

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #458274 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review

"The Official Ubuntu Book was well written and covered all topics that is necessary for a new Ubuntu user who is either trying out Ubuntu for the first time or just got fed up of Windows. It was a great read and there were enough pictures to fully understand what the authors were trying to portray."--Michael Levy, Blogger, Gnuman.com

 

“Benjamin Mako Hill et al have produced an excellent book that speaks to everyone who uses or is considering using Ubuntu. The book is traditionally organized, easy to read, and provides consistently useful content. The book is a winner and belongs on the bookshelf of the Ubuntu newbie and veteran alike. As an Ubuntu user, I found it interesting and helpful on several occasions and I'm sure as my use of Ubuntu lengthens, I'll have more occasions to consult this text.”-- James Pyles, Reviewer, The Linux Tutorial

About the Author

Benjamin Mako Hill serves on Ubuntu's Community Council governance board, which helps advise the Ubuntu Foundation. He works at the MIT Media Lab and on the One Laptop Per Child project.

Jono Bacon, Ubuntu community manager, was formerly an open source consultant in the United Kingdom. He is the author of Practical PHP and MySQL(R).

Ivan Krstić, Ubuntu Server Team administrator, develops software architecture for the One Laptop Per Child project

David J. Murphy recently jointed Canonical as a developer for Launchpad.

Jonathan Jesse serves on the Ubuntu Documentation Team, contributes to the Kubuntu documentatiation, and tests for the Ubuntu Laptop Testing Team.

Peter Savage, developer of the Edubuntu's Thin Client Manager software, created the Edubuntu Schools Advocacy documentation.

Corey Burger serves on Ubuntu's Documentation and Laptop Testing Teams, and is deploying Ubuntu at non governmental organizations across Vancouver Island.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

As we write this, it is one year since we penned the first edition of The Official Ubuntu Book. The last year has seen Ubuntu continue its explosive growth, and we feel blessed by the fact that The Official Ubuntu Book has been able to benefit from, and perhaps in a small way even contribute to, that success. Ultimately, that success paved the way for the second edition of the book that you’re reading now.

Being Official has carried with it a set of rights and responsibilities. Our book’s title means that we must attempt to reflect and represent the whole Ubuntu community. While we, as authors, are expected to put ourselves into the book, it is understood that it can never be to the detriment of the values, principles, technologies, or structures of the Ubuntu community.

Often the effects of this added responsibility are wonderful. While most book publishers and authors struggle with the decision to release a book under a free license that allows uninhibited redistribution, reuse, and revision, our situation was clear: Any official book needed to live up to the Ubuntu community’s stated philosophical standards of freedom for sharing and reuse. Prentice Hall was willing to take the risk, and the community has responded in typical fashion by making the book a great commercial success.

Other times, the pressure to live up to our title has been a little more difficult. Since certain groups within the Ubuntu community expanded in the last year, we have an obligation to update our text to reflect this. While the authors of other books might have the luxury to pass on an Edubuntu chapter because Edubuntu is not geared toward the market they’d envisioned for their book, we can’t use this excuse. The scope of an official book is the entirety of the Ubuntu project, and as that project grows in size and in scope, our goal of building an accurate, honest, and representative summary of and introduction to that community and its product—in several hundred pages, no less—becomes increasingly challenging.

Meanwhile, as for the first edition, we needed to write this book about a new release of Ubuntu while that version was under active development and was being redesigned, rethought, and rebuilt. Every day, Ubuntu grows in different, unpredictable ways. Our book’s development process had to both match and track this process as our content was crafted, rewritten, adjusted, and allowed to mature itself.

As in the previous edition, the contributors to this book go well beyond those listed on the book’s cover. As last time, the recipes included in Chapter 6 have been elicited from and designed in consultation with the community. But while the community contributions are sometimes less visible in other chapters, they are no less present. Invisible to most readers, dozens of members of the community left their mark on different parts of the text of this book. Although this process led to a writing process that was as hectic, and frustrating at times, as the one that builds Ubuntu, we hope we can remind readers of the level of quality that this process inspires in our book’s subject. In the places where we achieve this, we have earned our book’s title. With that goal in mind, we look forward to future versions of Ubuntu and editions of this book wrought through the same community-driven process.

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Customer Reviews

Just what a beginner like me needed.
I decided to try Linux this summer when I was building a new computer and I got a defective Windows XP sp2 installation disk. While I was waiting for a replacement to be sent, I tried installing Fedora 5 Core, and SUSE 10.1 since they were given to me and just sitting on my shelf. I was soon lost and frustrated. I had no clue what I was doing or was supposed to do. So I ordered the Linux for Dummies book which helped get me better oriented, but it was woefully incomplete and seemed to sometimes assume that I knew something already about Linux. Then a friend recommended Ubuntu. I ordered this book first, and read the first 2 chapters before I tried installing it. I had much better success this time around. The few problems I had (such as configuring my modem), were resolved with some more reading on the subject. This book is just what I needed to explain to me about how Linux works generally, and how Ubunto is different than other distributions of Linux. It explains things and doesn't launch into a bunch of geek-speak about using "sudo bash logged in as root on terminal bla, bla, bla." The explainations of unfamilliar technical terms were easy to understand and in a logical order. The only suggestion I have is that there is a lot of bragging and horn-blowing about how wonderful Ubuntu and the Ubuntu community is throughout most of the book. That is great for the introduction, but becomes trite when you are trying to learn about the "nuts and bolts" of using Ubuntu in later chapters. That is only a minor complaint, however. This is an excellent book for someone who knows nothing about Linux and would like to give it a try. They say that Ubuntu is "Linux for human beings." I would agree with that, and say that this book is for human beings as well.

Great collaborative book effort...
There are a plethora of books hitting the market on the Ubuntu Linux distribution, and so far they've all been pretty good. But this one is at the head of the pack for getting started with your penguin experience... The Official Ubuntu Book by Benjamin Mako Hill, Jono Bacon, Corey Burger, Jonathan Jesse, and Ivan Krstic. It's a collaborative book writing effort that pays off on a number of levels.

Contents: Introducing Ubuntu; Installing Ubuntu; Using Ubuntu on the Desktop; Advanced Usage and Managing Ubuntu; The Ubuntu Server; Support and Typical Problems; Using Kubuntu; The Ubuntu Community; Ubuntu-Related Projects; Welcome to the Command Line; Ubuntu Foundation Documents; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Open Publication License; Ubuntu Equivalents to Windows Programs; Index

This book, as you can see from the number of authors listed, was a collaborative effort. In addition to the listed authors, contributions were also taken from members of the Ubuntu community, so you truly have experts writing about the system they are deeply involved with. The quality that comes with that type of knowledge shows through here. Rather than focus on a number of applications that run on Ubuntu, the focus tends to stay with the operating system and the desktop environment. As such, I felt I was learning Ubuntu rather than learning OpenOffice. While the screen shots and directions are clear, there's not so much hand-holding that you feel like half the book is fluff. We've all installed software, and can figure that stuff out. Good job! I was also surprised and pleased with the chapters on the Ubuntu server and the Support chapter. It seems that Ubuntu Server only gets a passing mention in many books, and I wasn't really sure if there *was* an Ubuntu Server (there is). The support chapter is also very helpful in covering some of the basic problems you'll encounter. Obviously they can't touch on everything, but the chapter on the Ubuntu community fills in the gaps to show you where all your additional knowledge will come from.

This is not a 1000 page "Ubuntu Exhaustive Reference" manual. Instead, it's focused, practical, and written by the experts. Equipped with this book and the included media, there's no reason you shouldn't be up and running Ubuntu in no time flat...

Great Book- so stop apologizing!
This is a great place to start for anyone considering making the move to Ubuntu and open source software. Thr first chapter gives a quick recap of the what exactly "open source" software means including F/OSS, Free Open Source Software, and a bit of background on the Ubuntu project itself. Some might skip that chapter but since that was exactly some of the info I was looking for, it was very helpful. . .except, "stop apolozgizing for writing such a great book!" At least three if not four times in the first chapter, the phrase, "If you've made it this far. . . " or "If you are still reading this. . . " was used. Hey guys, you did a great job, no need to apologize. I mean why else would someone buy this book rather than download it for free? ;-)

Why? becuase it puts into one useful package everything one needs to know and I can take it with me on the airplane or beach or poolside, because it saves me time, because it's convenient, because time equals money and paying for good information is the open source business model. Yes, Ubuntu and other Linux distros are free but the time it takes to learn a new OS is not. This book makes that move easier and quicker.

Two other small nits:
- The included DVD is PC only. Since the DVD only includes the regular CD image, couldn't both the Mac & PC images fit?
- Chapter 6 is huge! That's a little bit scary given that it covers troubleshooting and seems to indicate that there are more than a few problems. Granted someone will only look there if they are having problems and I know you probably wanted to cover some common problems but maybe pare it down and toss some of that stuff into an appendix.

Nice forward by Mark, and just an overall nicely pacakged product - kind of like Ubuntu itself. :-)