Organization of This Book (Running Linux, 4th Edition)

0.2. Organization of This Book

Each chapter of this book contains a big chunk of information. It takes you into a world of material that could easily take up several books. But we move quickly through the topics you need to know.

Chapter 1 tries to draw together many different threads. It explains why Linux came to be and what makes it different from other versions of Unix as well as other operating systems for personal computers.

Chapter 2 describes preliminary tasks that you may have to do before installation, such as partitioning your disk (in case you want to run another operating system as well as Linux).

Chapter 3 is a comprehensive tutorial on installing and configuring Linux on your system.

Chapter 4 offers a system administrator's introduction to Unix, for people who need one. It is intended to give you enough tools to perform the basic tasks you'll need to do throughout the book. Basic commands are covered, along with some tips for administrators and some concepts you should know.

Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and Chapter 8 cover system administration and maintenance. These are perhaps the most important and useful chapters of the book; they cover user account management, backups, software upgrading, building a new kernel, audio configuration, and more.

Chapter 9 introduces you to the most popular and commonly used text tools and editors on Linux — vi and Emacs — and shows you how to print a document and how to use various graphics programs.

Chapter 10 shows you how to install and configure the X Window System, a powerful GUI for Linux and Unix systems. We show you how to overcome problems you might encounter when your distribution installs the software and how to configure it for the best performance on your video hardware.

Chapter 11 shows you how to set up your own visual environment under the X Window System, covering a wide range of the powerful customizations the system makes available, the KDE and GNOME desktops, and a few useful programs that run under X.

Chapter 12 presents various tools for interfacing with DOS and Windows systems, particularly the Samba server that integrates Linux with other users running PCs.

Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 are for programmers. Compilers, interpreters, debuggers, and many other tools for programming under Linux are presented.

Chapter 15 tells you how to set up your all-important connection to the outside world. It shows you how to configure your system so that it can work on a local area network or communicate with an Internet service provider using Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP).

Chapter 16 goes beyond basic network configuration and shows you how to configure electronic mail, set up the Elm and Netscape mail readers, and even run your own World Wide Web server.

Chapter 17 offers the most basic, critical rules for securing an Internet-connected system. It will not guarantee by any means that you are safe from break-ins, but it will help you eliminate the obvious and trivial weaknesses in your system.

Chapter 18 introduces the most popular set of tools that web site administrators use to serve up content. This collection is called LAMP, which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

Appendix A tells you about other useful documentation for Linux and other sources of help.

Appendix B shows you how to install Linux on the first non-Intel system that supported it, the 64-bit Digital Alpha machine.

The Bibliography lists a number of books, HOWTOs, and Internet RFCs of interest to Linux users and administrators.