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As the title of the book suggests, this isn't about GNU/Linux. It's not about the GNU programs that come with the Debian distribution. Instead, the book with its 600 pages (including a Debian Sarge DVD) is fully loaded. Martin F. Krafft, an active Debian developer, goes to great lengths to describe the interplay of Debian's tools and the project's philosophy. Copyright notice: All reader-contributed material on freshmeat.net is the property and responsibility of its author; for reprint rights, please contact the author directly.
Krafft begins with an introduction to Debian, its history, and the philosophy of Free Software to bootstrap the reader into the matter. Introductory topics such as Debian's installation and the organization of the project are also covered, and offer the reader a comprehensive picture of Debian. Subsequently, things become more complex. He describes Debian package management in all its glory, the interaction between dpkg and the frontends (apt, aptitude, synaptic, etc.), and peculiarities of the system, such as Debian package version numbering. A large number of the tools that make an administrator's day-to-day life easier are presented and explained in detail. The book is especially suited for administrators, as it identifies typical problems with the distribution and offers solutions to counter them. Topics of primary relevance to developers, such as packaging, are also extensively covered. It struck me positively that the author also examines newer alternative build tools, such as yada and cdbs, and describes manual packaging (package creation without the use of debhelper). This is one of the reasons why this book is of particular interest to prospective developers and people who have to build their own packages for whatever reason. New maintainers can draw from the book a good overview of the knowledge required to become a Debian developer. Krafft manages to illustrate topics such as APT pinning, which have a reputation of being complicated and daunting, in an accessible way. For inexperienced Debian users, this book will also be a pleasant read. It is not, however, a topical user-oriented book. Instead, the book targets administrators, developers, and those that work with Debian on a regular basis. Nevertheless, even long-time users will most certainly find new and interesting stuff between the covers. Whoever considers the information on the Debian Web site to be too dry will find in this book an enticing alternative. In my opinion, this book has the potential to become the future Debian Bible. It is nice to see that Martin F. Krafft regularly publishes additional information and errata on the book's Web site, http://debiansystem.info/. Author's bio: Nico Golde is a 19-year-old computer science student at the Technische Universität Berlin and is involved in various Free Software projects, including Debian and Mutt-ng. He has been interested in software development and operating systems for a number of years now. T-Shirts and Fame! We're eager to find people interested in writing articles on software-related topics. We're flexible on length, style, and topic, so long as you know what you're talking about and back up your opinions with facts. Anyone who writes an article gets a t-shirt from ThinkGeek in addition to 15 minutes of fame. If you think you'd like to try your hand at it, let jeff.covey@freshmeat.net know what you'd like to write about. [Comments are disabled]
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Coming back to Debian I have been a GNU/Linux user for over 6 years now. I started out with Debian but over the years have tried a dozen distributions. Eventually I always turn back to Debian. I have just ordered this book hope I'm going to like it :)
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Debian Book Debian is a great Distro. I've been using linux 90% of my time for almost
the past five years. I used Fedora Core & Redhat before. Debian
provides a huge software library when compared to other Distros. I only
was able to switch to debian and make use of this advantage because I know
ways out of almost every problem and how to fix a mess. That's why I think
a comprehensive book on Debian would be a great boost, if it provides
hands on to new Linux users so that they can start with Debian as their
first Distro. --
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Look interesting It looks like a very interesting book. I think i might give this Book & Debian a try soon. It has been a while that a think of switching to Debian. Thanks for this insightful review. --
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This article very well written Debian still (to this day) lacks of good books and documentation which is really needed because it usually doesn't follow the same path as other distros. If I ever take the step to go back and try out Debian, it will be only after I put my hands on a good book... I guess I will start with this one, I saw the TOC and is quite well organized and targeted only for Debian users/admins. --
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Re: This article very well written
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my opinion Hi, it's try. Respect! 2 you wrote: > I bought a copy, and was somewhat disappointed. It's not very well written -- lots of it sounds like it was badly translated from another language. The first 66 pages consist of vague philosophizing and OSS cheerleading, with section titles like "The importance of free speech." A lot of the time, I felt like the book was launching into a topic without explaining why it was important or why I should care. In many cases, it read as if it had been written by a committee, or maybe the author was just trying a little too hard to appease a lot of different people. Like a lot of books from No Starch, it seems to have been very poorly edited. --
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Debian books and docs are needed. Debian books are needed, installing for the first time and securing a Debian Box can be hell on earth and good documentation is not as easy to find as you may think. I remember 5 years ago when I first tried Debian, after a painful install I almost quit and return to Windows but I kept trying, I couldn't find any books at all with basic info about the problems I was having, only web docs with generic info about all Linux distros and in some cases a lot of documentation for Red Hat and other popular distros, but you know what, Debian did not work with RPM's and apt-get was quite new for me. Debian still (to this day) lacks of good books and documentation which is really needed because it usually doesn't follow the same path as other distros. If I ever take the step to go back and try out Debian, it will be only after I put my hands on a good book... I guess I will start with this one, I saw the TOC and is quite well organized and targeted only for Debian users/admins. And I extend this as an advice for any new user of Debian. Mel
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Don't try amd64 yet Oh! One last thing, don't even try amd64 for Debian just yet as it was very unstable on a Athlon64 box we tried, it crashed every 15 minutes so I changed to FreeBSD... We still have to wait until full support for amd64 is available on the next release. This book doesn't seem to cover this area (amd64) yet. Mel
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not very well written I bought a copy, and was somewhat disappointed. It's not very well written -- lots of it sounds like it was badly translated from another language. The first 66 pages consist of vague philosophizing and OSS cheerleading, with section titles like "The importance of free speech." A lot of the time, I felt like the book was launching into a topic without explaining why it was important or why I should care. In many cases, it read as if it had been written by a committee, or maybe the author was just trying a little too hard to appease a lot of different people. Like a lot of books from No Starch, it seems to have been very poorly edited.
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Purchase URL By the way the cheapest purchase URL in the UK seems to be Amazon: Amazon UK purchase URL which is much cheaper (£23) than both the publisher and the US site you list . Cheers BozMo --
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Re: Purchase URL Yes this book has got more cheaper it is just £21.69 and with Debian GNU/Linux 3.X Bible it is just £39.18 a savings of £20 cheers
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