You may be contemplating your first Linux installation. Or you may have been using Linux for years and need to know more about adding a network printer or setting up an FTP server.
Running Linux, now in its fifth edition, is the book you'll want on hand in either case. Widely recognized in the Linux community as the ultimate getting-started and problem-solving book, it answers the questions and tackles the configuration issues that frequently plague users, but are seldom addressed in other books.
This fifth edition of Running Linux is greatly expanded, reflecting the maturity of the operating system and the teeming wealth of software available for it. Hot consumer topics such as audio and video playback applications, groupware functionality, and spam filtering are covered, along with the basics in configuration and management that always have made the book popular.
Running Linux covers basic communications such as mail, web surfing, and instant messaging, but also delves into the subtleties of network configuration--including dial-up, ADSL, and cable modems--in case you need to set up your network manually. The book can make you proficient on office suites and personal productivity applications--and also tells you what programming tools are available if you're interested in contributing to these applications.
Other new topics in the fifth edition include encrypted email and filesystems, advanced shell techniques, and remote login applications. Classic discussions on booting, package management, kernel recompilation, and X configuration have also been updated.
The authors of Running Linux have anticipated problem areas, selected stable and popular solutions, and provided clear instructions to ensure that you'll have a satisfying experience using Linux. The discussion is direct and complete enough to guide novice users, while still providing the additional information experienced users will need to progress in their mastery of Linux.
Whether you're using Linux on a home workstation or maintaining a network server, Running Linux will provide expert advice just when you need it.
Matthias Kalle Dalheimer works as an independent author, translator and software consultant in Northern Germany, where he lives in a tiny village with his wife and son. After studying computer science and general linguistics, he first worked for Star Division, where he was responsible for porting the office suite Star Office to Linux. In spring 1997, he quit his job and became a happy freelancer. Kalle mainly uses Linux for his development work and uses XEmacs 20.4 for most of his programming and writing tasks. In his spare time, he plays with his son, hikes in the surrounding forests, reads books about history, and helps develop the K Desktop Environment, a free desktop for Unix systems. He has written Programming with Qt for O'Reilly & Associates, and has written and translated a number of O'Reilly books in German. Matt Welsh is a computer scientist with research interests spanning many aspects of complex systems, including operating systems design, distributed systems, networking, and parallel computing. Matt is a long-time Linux advocate and developer, a role in which he has fielded questions from thousands of Linux users over the years. He was the original coordinator of the Linux Documentation Project and author of the original Linux Installation and Getting Started guide. He completed his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and is currently a researcher at Intel Research Labs in Berkeley, and will be joining the faculty of the Computer Science department at Harvard University in July 2003.
