Linux, Unix, /etc

Danger Will Robinson! You are now entering a condescending Unix user zone!

Review of Running Linux

Published by a long-standing producer of quality Unix books, O'Reilly Associates, and written by a veteran Linux hacker, Matt Welsh (assisisted by other Linux experts), this is the book on Linux. Originally, I bought the paperback because I knew it had originated in Welsh's e-text Linux Installation and Getting Started (q.v.), the Very First Book About Linux. Times have changed, though. The authors announce in the Preface, "in writing this book, we wanted to make Linux a real choice for the many personal computer users who find themselves trapped within the limitations of commercial operating systems." And this sums up the changing audience for books about Linux. Welsh, in the early editions of "LIGS", could assume that his readers were basically of the hacker mindset. Today (the 3rd edition is dated August 1999), this is no longer the case. Many people are investigating Linux as an alternative to MS Windows; it is less a case of wanting to run Unix, or free software, than of not wanting to run MS Windows. Given such a market, the temptation is always there on the part of writers and publishers to "dumb down" their material, to emphasise the ways in which Linux can look like Windows, to make-believe this isn't really nasty old Unix. Happily, the three authors and O'Reilly have not followed this slippery slope. While the original LIGS has as I said been revised and expanded, the basic approach is still there. This is a book for hands-on people, who want to know what to do and why they have to do it.

Outline of the Book

There are 14 chapters and 8 appendices. Let's take a walk through them.

Introduction to Linux

The introduction is the usual stuff: what is Linux, what hardware do you need, etc, etc. It contains a particularly-good section on "Open Source (sic) and the Philosophy of Linux". Really, every new Linux user should read this part at least; and I dare say many a one who already uses Linux would benefit as well. It's a shame that this section wasn't chosen as part of the samples from the book on the O'Reilly web site.

I see we are told that "You should have at the very least 8 MB of RAM". Oh, well, had to happen. Though actually, Linux can still run in 4 MB — it's just that most installation programs now want 8.

Preparing to Install Linux

The book is not distribution-specific, which is very welcome, and indeed an advance on Linux Installation and Getting Started, which dealt specifically with Slackware.

Basic Unix Commands and Concepts

The very first sentence frankly warns us, "you have a steep learning curve ahead of you". This chapter takes us onto the first gentle slopes of that curve.

Essential System Management

As the book says, "this is by far the most important chapter for anyone running his own Linux system". All the basics are covered, and covered well.

Managing Filesystems

An extension of the previous chapters. Again, much essential information in a small compass.

Upgrading Software and the Kernel

An important chapter in any Linux book. This is again well done. Kernel compilation is not a fearsome task in any case, but the authors do a good job of explaining just what is going on in "make config && make dep && make clean && make zImage && make modules" (or whatever incantation you prefer).

Other Administrative Tasks

A grab-bag for stuff that didn't fit in before. Backups, crond, syslogd, lpd (with a very good explanation of /etc/printcap).

Editors

Much essential information in a small compass. How to get started with vi and emacs, how to write a letter using LaTeX, how to write a man page, and how to print all these things. There is a brief mention of those hideous things, Word Processors, though the authors seem to share my distaste. Image processing is also lumped in here, rather oddly— I suppose they had to put it somewhere.

Installing the X Window System

The best short guide to getting X up and running. What else is there to say?

Customising Your X Environment

Well, if you must use it, I suppose you may as well make it look nice. Unfortunately, stuff changes fast — fvwm, the window manager used in the examples, is now fvwm2 in most distributions, certainly in Slackware 7. Despite my lack of interest in GUIs per se, I do know a bit about configuring X (it may not be my ideal working environment, but it's great for fiddling with), and so far as I can judge this chapter does a good job of explaining the twisty little maze of .xinitrc and .Xresources files et al. KDE gets a name check and a few pages — a few pages too many, as far as I'm concerned, but then I'm just a crank.

Windows Compatibility and Samba

A neat introduction to samba.

Programming Languages and Tools for Programming

The two chapters on programming are perhaps the best in the book. This is Welsh's speciality, after all, and it shows. A tour of the most popular programming languages under Linux encompasses C, make (which properly belongs in the Tools chapter, but there you go), Perl, Tcl/Tk, Java. there is a bit on the shell, but frankly this is disappointingly brief. The tools chapter takes us through debugging with gdb, a very good introduction; examining program performance with gprof and strace; imake, for building makefiles, particularly for X programs; checker, for checking up on your memory allocation; revision control (RCS and CVS); patch; and lastly, indent.

TCP/IP and PPP

Another solid chapter. A surprising bonus is the good coverage of ISDN. Since this isn't very popular in the States, most Linux books barely mention it. Co-author Dalheimer no doubt had something to do with not repeating this mistake here.

The World Wide Web and Electronic Mail

The browser of choice is Netscape; a pity they didn't at least give a cursory glance at lynx. Strangely, no information about configuring sendmail. A few pages on smail instead, which according to our authors is "the most popular Linux MTA". This is news to me; I haven't encountered that program since SLS went and installed it for me. I quickly replaced it with sendmail, which had the advantage of being documented in TCP/IP Network Administration among other places.

Appendices

Sources of Linux Information

The GNOME Project

Installing Linux on Digital/Compaq Alpha Systems

Installing Linux on PowerPC Systems

Installing Linux/M68K on Motorola 68000-series Systems

Installing Linux on Sun SPARC Systems

LILO Boot Options

Zmodem File Transfer

Why This Book Is Important

Obviously, any O'Reilly book has high standards to live up to. More, Running Linux has inherited the mantle of Linux Installation and Getting Started, and you've seen in the last installment of this guide in what esteem I still hold that work. I am glad to be able to say that it has a worthy successor. The core attitude is still there: that you must know what you are doing. There is no attempt to hide behind GUI hand-holders, whether installers or system administration tools or what have you. Instead, you sit down at your new Linux box, and you learn through trying out stuff that's in this book.

The book is not distribution-specific, which is very welcome, and indeed an advance on Linux Installation and Getting Started, which dealt specifically with Slackware (or SLS, if you go back far enough). Most publishers seem to believe that there is no such thing as Linux, but only Red Hat Linux 6, Slackware 7, and so on and so on. It's good to see at least one among them bucking the trend.

Well, I've been almost wholly positive so far, so now seems an opportune moment to sum up what in general I don't like about this book. First off, I don't like the screen-prints. This seems to be a new trend in O'Reilly books. Where once the illustrations were sparse and severely functional, now we have screen-shots of Netscape showing such mundane things as the homepage of the Linux Documentation Project. A waste of paper, in my view. And Philip Greenspun agrees with me, so there! There's not enough about the shell. We get a very brief introduction to "shell programming" late in the book, sandwiched uncomfortably between C++ and perl, but this is too short, and there is no treatment of aliases, startup files and all the nitty-gritty of everyday interactive use. This is a shame, as I believe the key concept that makes Unix and therefore Linux so good is precisely the help the shell lends to everyday tasks. And, finally, this is yet another Unix/Linux book that doesn't mention m4. Is it just me then? Obviously it is. But I've grumbled enough, and it's time to sum up.

In a nutshell, the decision here is a no-brainer. If you are new to Linux, buy this book, full stop, period, end of story. If you've been using Linux for some time, chances are there will still be something in here that's new and useful to you.

How To Get This Book

Title: Running Linux, 3rd edition
Author: Matt Welsh, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer & Lar Kaufman
Publisher: O'Reilly
ISBN: 156592469X
Price: $34.95
Pages: 730
Date: August 1999

Paul Dunne 2000

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