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Search in Book Reviews

The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
Search is a simple string search in either book title or book author. The full text search is a search of the text of the review.
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Title:
Linux in Easy Steps
Author:
Mike McGrath
ISBN:
1-84078-275-7
Publisher:
Computer Step
Pages:
Price:
£10.99
Reviewer:
Paul F. Johnson
Subject:
Linux
Appeared in:
17-1
This must go down as probably the worst book I have ever read. Everything about it screams "stick with Windows". It is plain awful.

Right from the outset the books sets out on the wrong foot. It seems to think there is only one Linux distribution around (Mandrake). It does not bother with the likes of Redhat, Debian or the other flavours around. The book concentrates on dual booting rather than a fresh install - why? I can understand back in the days of RedHat 6 or 7 when hardwarewas not as well supported, having a dual boot enabled you to access the internet under Windows. But not for the age of this book.

While the idea of the book is commendable (easy steps, a brief look at a few applications and the such), everything is biased towards a particular distribution - the advice given for installing applications or removing them is useless for those using a non-rpm based system.

Probably the only decent parts of the book are the small sections on using OpenOffice or Gimp, but that hardly makes up for the rest of the book.

There are numerous problems with this book. Save your money. Do not buy this book - unless you want to convince someone to stick with Windows. Not recommended.