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Book of The Month, September: Ubuntu Unleashed

Book of the Month
The Ubuntu Distribution, and associated spin-offs such as Kubuntu and Edubuntu, have developed quite a following in a fairly short period of time. Ubuntu's goal is to be the "linux for human beings" and focuses on (among other things) usability.

LOPSA is proud of the member benefits we are developing, and our relationships with the best book publishers in our industry. To support our new relationship with Pearson Education, the September Book of the Month is Ubuntu Unleashed by Paul and Andrew Hudson.

Purchase the book at Amazon and support LOPSA at the same time! Members can also get this book directly from Pearson with 40% discount. See our Member Discounts page for more details.


Discussions can be attached as comments to this article, or discussed on the LOPSA technical mailing list. Suggestions for topics or specific books for a future Book of the Month should be mailed to board@lopsa.org

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Review of Ubuntu Unleashed
Submitted by jimmythegeek on Sun, 2006-10-22 22:34.

I'm in general agreement with the review of _Ubuntu Unleashed_ posted elsewhere, but I have a few strong reservations.

The book is lifted wholesale from _Fedora Core Unleashed_, with inadequate editing. I think it is great to cover generic information as well as you can, once, and replicate it to whatever works need it. TCP/IP should be described the same way for Fedora Core as Ubuntu. But where things are different, you need to update the material. They enthusiastically recommend software that isn't available as an Ubuntu (or Debian) package. They tell people to search for the RPMs. They refer to "Ubuntu Core" at one point, a fairly telling sign of a search & replace operation that didn't search for the right string. (I don't think it was done with sed, which could have handled "Fedora" and "Fedora Core" in the substitution match.) They talk about the backup software available in the distro version for businesses, but Ubuntu doesn't segment itself that way. That's a Redhat thing.

Marcel Gagne adapted _Moving to Linux_ and turned it into _Moving to Ubuntu_, but I didn't find any similar mistakes. He even updated graphics, customizing illustrations that would have worked fine for both works, but looks a little more polished and specific to Ubuntu.

Gagne's book is much less formidable than _Ubuntu Unleashed_; its audience is interested newbs. I think it's great, but I appreciate the nutrient-dense _Ubuntu Unleashed_. It's much more of a tech's book. It has information for large deployments, such as a detailed hardware inventory list (to ensure peripherals are compatible) and a Kickstart how-to.

For a complete comparison of 3 Ubuntu titles (U Unleashed, Moving to U, and the Official U Book), check here: http://inadvertantmenace.blogspot.com/2006/10/3-book-reviews-ubuntu-titles-moving-to.html

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