Book Review: Linux Made Easy, Part 2 - Page 3

But even at that, there are some nice touches to the book that delve further than a self-tour of Linux will get you. For example, setting up your system to even do basic tasks like listening to mp3s and playing DVDs is not intuitive (in fact you'll think it's broken), until you have someone clearly explain the couple extra steps you'll have to do on your own. Likewise, one of the last chapters of the book gives you a nice introduction to the command line, and shows you why it's something to help simplify tasks, and not just scare you. The glossary at the end is also surprisingly thorough and explains in plain English what some of these weird terms are (because computers in general, and especially Linux, do NOT excel in common-sense naming conventions and terms).

I do, however, have a couple of small criticisms for ths book. The first is regarding the chosen distribution. Given the intended audience for this book, Xandros is not an unsuitable choice. It is easy to manage, has a nice graphical installer with minimal interaction necessary from the user, and an excellent selection of basic applications. It also plays well with, and operates similar to, the Microsoft Windows world. My main beef is that it introduces crippleware into Linux. This "free" edition intentionally limits the speed of your CD burner (to 2x) until you "upgrade" to a more advanced version. I have no problem with Linux distros charging for unique functionality and support, but intentionally crippling your distro is really not in the spirit of Linux. So in the interest of equal time, I'd just like to throw out there that Mandriva and Ubuntu are also both easy to configure and very nice choices for beginners.

The other smaller complaint I have is that there was not a stern enough caution for installing on a laptop computer. Many people, including newbies (and not my mother, but perhaps others), are likely to have a laptop as their main or only computer, and at least as of today it is a much trickier installation/setup procedure that is going to be outside the realm of Linux Made Easy. "Linux Made Frustrating" is probably closer, and a more obvious word of warning to newbies, as well as resources for further information, would have been nice to see.

Article Author: David R Perry

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