Red Hat Linux Unleashed grew out of our popular Linux Unleashed book, now in its second edition, which featured SlackWare's version of Linux. The last year has a seen a growing number of users attracted by the Red Hat Linux version. Red Hat's Linux
offers a number of different features from SlackWare's features we thought were important enough to deserve focus in a Linux Unleashed book of its own.
Red Hat Linux is quite different from SlackWare's Linux, primarily in the installation and package maintenance routine. Red Hat's user-friendly installation and easy X configuration make it especially attractive to first-time Linux users. The actual
behavior of either version of Linux, once installed, is virtually the same, through.
The contents of much of this book are similar to those in our Linux Unleashed book, although we have made a few changes to reflect Red Hat Linux's nature. The first few chapters dealing with installation and configuration have been revised to reflect
Red Hat's procedures, and the chapter on LILO has been rewritten to clear up some issues. The chapter on Perl has also been rewritten to present the latest version of Perl. The rest of the book's contents have been checked for accuracy and timeliness
against the Red Hat software.
We hope you enjoy this book and find it a gentle introduction to the wonderful world of Linux!
If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, UNIX should be proud indeed. The Linux project was begun several years ago as a public domain version of the popular UNIX operating system—the most widely used operating system in the world. Linux
made it possible for anyone to obtain a full-featured version of UNIX for their own pleasure and education, with a minimum of monetary outlay. (With commercial versions of UNIX costing many hundreds of dollars, this was a very important aspect of Linux's
popularity.)
Although begun by a single programmer, Linux quickly blossomed into a project organized by people around the world, each contributing ideas, code, and effort for the good of the project and no recompense. The environment in many ways recalled the
excitement and dedication the nascent personal computer industry experienced years ago.
This book was an interesting project right from the start. It combined the expertise of several veteran UNIX and Linux users with a complete distribution version of Linux supplied on CD-ROM. This is, essentially, one-stop shopping for a Linux system.
The CD-ROM coupled with the installation chapters of this book help you install the complete Linux software system software on your PC, then you can read through the subjects that interest you in the book, working through with the examples on your machine.
For those who have never used Linux (or UNIX) before, you will find the operating system both engrossing and confusing. UNIX has a long and evolved history, leading inevitably to some idiosyncrasies with the operating system. On the other hand, UNIX and
Linux are a powerful multitasking operating system that can take your PC far beyond the limitations of the DOS operating system.
We sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book, and that you find the information useful, educational, and beneficial. The book covers many aspects of Linux, not all of which you will care about. However, we set out to create the most complete
introduction to Linux that we could, and we think we've accomplished that task.
Enjoy!
The following typographic conventions are used in this book:
A special icon _ is used before a line of code that is really a continuation of the preceding line. Sometimes a line of code is too long to fit as a single line in the book, given the book's limited width. If you see the _ before a line of code, remember that you should interpret that "line" as part of the line immediately before it.
