Teachers the reader everything he or she needs to know in order to use FreeBSD to its full potential. This book can be a very economical and powerful solutions to your needs. Softcover. CD-ROM included.
Because it's very popular among Internet service providers (ISPs), FreeBSD is likely the Unix flavor you work with when you Telnet into the server that hosts a Web site. For that reason, it's worth having FreeBSD Unleashed around if you frequently need to log in to various hosted environments but don't do your day-to-day work on a FreeBSD computer. If you're running FreeBSD on your own machine--and more than a few Linux critics say you should be--you'll get even more out of this book, particularly if you prefer to have your reference materials on paper. It's a good idea to have them that way when you're having problems getting FreeBSD to connect to the Internet, after all. This book explains, succinctly, how to do basic utilitarian stuff like moving files and creating users, and advanced utilitarian stuff like "building the world" from raw source. Further, the authors explain Unix concepts (like the shell and its relationship to the kernel) clearly and in ample detail. Michael Urban and Brian Tiemann also go beyond FreeBSD itself, explaining such concepts as wide area networks (WANs) and basic, environment-neutral Perl programming. Whether these inclusions are valuable extras or extraneous padding depends upon your perspective, but there's no doubt that the authors maintain a high quality standard throughout their documentation of FreeBSD and its allied technologies. --David Wall Topics covered: Using and enjoying the FreeBSD flavor of Unix, with emphasis on versions 4.4 and 5.0. Instructions and explanations--all rather detailed--appear on installing the operating system, configuring groups and users, setting up daemons (including those for network services like mail), and connecting to other computers (as well as the Internet). Installable copies of FreeBSD 4.4 and 5.0 ship with this book.
Author: Michael Urban
Author: Brian Tiemann
Customer Reviews
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I'm reading this cover-to-cover!
This is an excellent book! It explains many things I've noticed but didn't comprehend well in FreeBSD and Linux. The authors are very gifted at communicating, a rare gift concerning tech book and online doc authors (generally, such works so dull, they may merely serve (too often) as ambiguous reference material). The authors also give some interesting history about FreeBSD and its competitors; they give a very compelling case for the OS, which was first being developed in the era of the first moon landing and in the heart of the cold war.
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<br />The authors give the steps for setting up the GUI, and many options for this (this is bedeviling for many of us--a default GUI doesn't "pop-up" after install as in commercially-supported Linux, Windows, and the Mac OS--one "builds" the GUI from a low level with desired features), and, also, the authors explain the reasons for having to set up the GUI (the OS is favored by server users who prefer a lean command-line interface).
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<br />The bewildering VI editor is thoughtfully explained in some detail as well: It is a high-powered, yet, heavily keyboard-command dependent (and user-unfriendly) text editor that often is necessary for system configuration and software development. It's not user friendly (or "intuitive") because it was developed in the aforementioned cold-war era of really limited computer power and storage: Needless to say, it hasn't changed much....
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<br />The book, which I haven't yet finished but am eagerly reading daily, gives many caveats (such as configuring the sync settings of monitors correctly). FreeBSD is not a good OS for a PC newbie to learn to use (at least not without a knowledgeable mentor); nevertheless, I think this is a very good intro book for gamers and high-level techies--these may wish to use FreeBSD in advanced ways such as for servers, developing firewalls, as well as for common internet/e-mail and other networking tasks (such tasks are inherently more secure and speedy on FreeBSD)--or for those well-exposed to Linux, or Apple OSX--cousin-OSes or, in the latter case, a direct descendant....
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A Good Book
The book was comprehensive and showed me enough to use FreeBSD effectively.
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Fantastic!!!
This book is wonderful for the beginner who already knows about the ins and outs of computers. I installed freeBSD and was so impressed that I bought this book. It has already been an asset and I have learned a ton about this operating system and I am only in Chapter 4!
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<br />Worth the money, it is in-depth and doesn't miss a step so far!
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<br />Best Wishes On Your FreeBSD Adventure!!! Microsoft won't know what hit 'em!
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<br />This book is a good referance for newbies and hardened geeks alike!
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I think that is a good book
I preorder this book, and waited by 2 months until it was published, but FreeBSD 6 really was a good choice. It is well wrote, but for my is necessary a better chapter reference, because I used it like a reference book and some time I need to look in the entire book to find a specific topic.
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