Product Description

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 9.04 is the latest release—more powerful, more flexible, and friendlier than ever. The Official Ubuntu Book, Fourth 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 9.04, whether you’re a home user, small business user, server administrator, or programmer. The authors cover Ubuntu 9.04 from start to finish: installation, configuration, desktop productivity, games, management, support, and much more. Among the many topics covered in this edition: Edubuntu, Kubuntu, and Ubuntu Server.

The Official Ubuntu Book, Fourth 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 will

• 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 how to take advantage of the Ubuntu user forum to get the help you need quickly

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), Ubuntu Server, and Edubuntu (for use in schools).  

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107694 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780137021208
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
Linux Journal Readers’ Choice Awards 2008 Favorite Linux Book, Honorable Mention. (linuxjournal.com)

“. . . this is an item of choice for any serious Ubuntu collection or software designer’s library.”
—Jim Cox, Midwest Book Review

“. . . 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

About the Author
Benjamin Mako Hill is a Seattle native working out of Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Mako is a long-time free software developer and advocate. He  was part of the founding Ubuntu team, one of the first employees of Canonical, Ltd., and coauthor of The Official Ubuntu Server Book. In addition to some technical work, his charge at Canonical was to help grow the Ubuntu development and user community during the project’s first year. Mako is currently a fellow at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, and a researcher and Ph.D. Candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Mako has continued his involvement with Ubuntu as a member of the Community Council governance board, through development work, and through projects such as this book.

Matthew Helmke has been an Ubuntu user since April 2005 and an Ubuntu Member since August 2006. He serves on the Ubuntu Forum Council, providing leadership and oversight of the Ubuntu Forums, as well as on the Ubuntu regional membership approval board for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He has written articles about Ubuntu for Linux+ and Linux Identity magazines, along with books and articles on this and other topics. He recently closed his consulting business in Morocco and began a Master’s degree program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, USA.

Corey Burger lives in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and is a long-term user and contributor to Ubuntu. A member of the Ubuntu Canada and the Community Council, he has been involved with Ubuntu since its first release. Corey is currently a geography student and has most recently worked for a Canadian Linux company. He also contributes to OpenStreetMap and works to promote Ubuntu on Vancouver Island. Corey speaks regularly about Ubuntu, OpenStreetMap, and open source to a wide variety of audiences.

 

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...

Very basic
To be fair - I was looking for a book that would help to help make the transition to Linux (Ubuntu in particular) from Windows, aimed at someone who is a "advanced user" in the realm of the Windows based OS. So with that expectation, I found this book to be to "basic". For example - I wanted more information on SAMBA (there is almost none) and scripting. There is very little done in this book that utilizes a terminal window - that alone sets the tone for the book.

However, as a book "for the masses" - to allow someone to set up and run Ubuntu as a stand alone computer connected to the internet (no LAN) - it hits the mark. Based on that criteria, I would give it 4 stars.