[KLUG Members] Re: Books to learn from

[Adam Williams]

>It really depends on your experience level.  I was very frustrated with
>OReilly books as a beginner, because they assume that you know the system
>to a certain extent.  They are good reference books but not for beginners.

It depends.  Their Javascript and awk books are pretty good walk through
introduction information,  but your right, most of their texts move into
the deeply technical rather quickly.  I find that online documents and
tutorials are often the best solution for lite treatments,  and O'Reilly
takes up where they leave off.

>I have "Learning Red Hat Linux" and "Running Linux", and I would not
>recommend them to a beginner.

I'm not a huge fan on "Running Linux" or such titles, as they are often
too general.  A new user especially needs more distribution specific
information,  the best way to do things on Redhat (the contents of
/etc/sysconfig for example) may not be reflective of the best way to do
things on Linux in general.

>I decided to buy "Red Hat Linux for Dummies", there is a recent one out
>for RH 8.0.  It is OK but it does not give much help on using the command
>line, the focus is all GUI.  But it is much more helpful to me than any
>other book I have seen.

I've found the 'for Dummies' books to be generally pretty good.

>With regard promoting linux use in organizations, try showing what Open
>Office (or other open source applications) can do.  Find out what the
>budget is for updating the Windows Office suite and then have a working
>example of OO to show to a manager.  The sysadmin will not be your ally,

Open Office has a marketing "department" and documents on their website.

>>P.S. I am _still _trying_ to get linux into the Comstock schools, but
>>not having a very good shot at it. Still bending ears on linux here and
>>there. The school IT was supposed to get back to me, but never did.

An IT department that didn't call back! :O

>>The
>>school board member was very put off by the answers that I received from
>>the list. 

No shock there,  I've found school boards to be about the most useless,
ignorant, and knee-jerk organs ever conceived by humanity.  Hopefully
the trend of state seizure of school systems will continue.

>>Any help is appreciated. But we have to keep it positive,

It might be more effective to just try and trojan in and the official
process be damned.  Official decrees at public schools are usually
pretty impotent anyway.

>>positive, positive. I still don't know if I have it through to him or
>>not that the programs that he wants to be able to run, will run with
>>VMWare, for $300, per the system, _not_ per computer. Sometimes I feel
>>like I'm fighting a losing battle. :-) Maybe until m$ comes in and tells

If your attempting to preserve existing infrastructure but host it on
Linux, that is a loosing battle.  It just doesn't work that way.  Linux
can offer more and better solutions for a great deal less money - that
is the only angle that will work.

>>them, like they did to the schools is Washington and Oregon last spring,
>>then I can get somewhere. Be positive, Bruce, be positive. (That's to
>>me, not the other Bruce guy, (Smith)).

Oh, the other Bruce could use a little pick-me-up on occasion as well. 
Especially after him and Bob get done with a 'bout of harassing each
other. :)