Linux can be an intimidating topic to the uninitated, but this book is an easy, straight-forward read. For such a potentially intense topic, the book is fairly non-technical. I also liked the fact that it covers the StarOffice suite, the open source "equivalent" to Microsoft's Office. You can download OpenOffice for free and give it a whirl. For most people, it is an excellent alternative to MS Office, and you can't beat the price.
Some of the topics covered in the book include:
- nstalling JDS
- printing
- networking
- e-mail/ calendar/ PIM
- running Windows applications
- the RPM package management system
Will the Sun JDS Desktop catch on in the corporate environment as a MS Windows and Office alternative and killer? Time will tell. In the meantime, I can recommend this book to the curious as it explains the similarities between Windows and JDS and walks you through how to be just as productive as you are or were with Microsoft's offerings, with relative ease. If your expectation for the book is that its a seriously in-depth guide to quickly getting up and running, you will be disappointed.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
it may take a long time for linux to catch on in the corporate desktop world, but in the embedded world, there's a lot of development going on where linux is being chosen over windows.