Book review: Fedora Linux Toolbox
by Paul Frields
Christopher Negus is responsible for some of the most widely-read and well-respected mass-market books on Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You may already know of, or own, Linux Toys, its sequel Linux Toys II, or one of his miraculously up-to-the-minute Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible books.
Negus has an uncanny ability to keep up with the rapid pace of development in the innovative Fedora distribution that, among other functions, serves as an upstream source for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, One Laptop Per Child, and other notable projects. If you’ve ever attended a Red Hat Summit or a Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon), you’ll undoubtedly find him circulating through the many interesting leading-edge seminars, picking up information for the next edition of the popular Bible series.
Recently, Negus teamed up with author François Caen to produce Fedora Linux Toolbox, which gives eager command-line enthusiasts a dense but easy reference for powerful shell tools. At about 300 pages, it also won’t bust the seams of your already overloaded computer bag. Fedora Linux Toolbox assumes the reader already has some experience with Linux in general, but not necessarily Fedora. Linux novices may prefer to start with a more thorough book, such as Negus’ Bible, or the latest edition of one of the others reviewed in this 2005 article, that spends time acquainting them with additional beginner topics.
Although the book is aimed at Linux users who have had moderate experience with the platform, even experts who have been using the Linux command line for many years can find new tricks in every chapter of this book. One friend to whom I showed the book is a pretty competent system administrator who runs a bank of Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers for a customer in our building. He’s been using Linux for years, but when he flipped to a random page about the process reporting utility ps, he read for about fifteen seconds, and with surprise and joy mingling on his face, immediately exclaimed, “[Wow], I didn’t know you could do that!” I had several epiphanies myself while reading it for this review.
Interesting anecdotes aside, a risk inherent in Fedora’s relentless pursuit of rapid innovation is that even up-to-the-moment guides can be left in the dust. How does Fedora Linux Toolbox fare, since it seems to have been mostly completed after the release of Fedora 7? Quite well, actually, in part because of its concentration on command line tools.
The Linux command line is renowned for its essential stability over time — the same set of core commands and power tools have sustained many a system administrator for years. By concentrating on command line proficiency, this book avoids the “currency trap” found in many other volumes about Fedora, wherein a book slips out of sync with reality because the authors can’t keep up with the distribution’s development pace. Certainly there are powerful command line tools off the beaten path that have emerged in the latest releases of Fedora, and won’t be seen in Fedora Linux Toolbox. But the core of knowledge found in this book is enough to take a Linux enthusiast from desktop user to command line jockey in practically no time.
Each chapter is arranged around a central topic, which allows readers to digest smaller chunks of the book as needed, or to solve particular problems. At a very manageable 15-20 pages per chapter, it’s possible to read a whole topic over a snack or before turning in for the night, although I suspect most Linux enthusiasts will be eager to try the material out as they read instead. The topics aren’t limited just to command line solutions, and concisely explain the concepts behind the tools, so readers can expand their use beyond the examples.
The random sampling of commands I tried from areas throughout the book showed that the technical editing work was excellent, which I suspect is at least in part inherited from the years of work involved in the many editions of the Bible series. A distinguishing feature of this book is that key phrases are typeset in boldface, allowing the reader to page through a chapter very quickly looking for specific topics–a very helpful feature in a book with fairly dense text. Sometimes the amount of text emphasis is not enough to compete with other boldface on a page, such as examples that show user input in bold and system output in medium weight, but overall it’s an effective measure.
If you’re a Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux desktop user or administrator looking for a way to jump start your command line skills, refresh your knowledge, or live without the GUI, Fedora Linux Toolbox is right up your alley.
About the reviewer
Paul Frields is the incoming Fedora Project Leader.