XavierP

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As with other Apress books, this book is easy to read - the language is clear and concise and the layout and headings make it easy to find the information required.

The copy I have is from 2001, this means that a few of the details in the book are now out of date. Luckily, this being Linux, information in older books is only really out of date in the case of major changes - as with IPChains/IPTables.

Personally, I would like to see more 'real world' examples in technical books. Abstract commands and situations can be helpful, but to really understand what is happening, it's useful to be able to relate someone else's experiences to your own.

I'd like to give special mention to the Firewalling section of the book - it is very difficult to post a useful IPTables script that is usable: my system is probably very different to your system and so your firewall may not fit my pc. This book discusses firewalling and explains what the commands do so that you can see why you need to do it and what you are doing. Please note though that this book is aimed at the intermediate-advanced user, so if you are a total beginner it's probably best to go with a gui firewall rather than a hand built script.

Debian users are very well covered in this book. At this time of writing, 3.0 has not long been superseded and so you can relate the sections directly to your own system.

This book is not about squeezing extra performance for your system, if that is your sole reason for buying it, you may well have wasted your money. If you want to learn where to install programs and why, this is the book for you.

Overall, I would say that this book should fit very nicely with the other books in your library. As with most Linux books, don't just get one - one book will not fit all. But as an addition to the rest of your books, you will definitely find your knowledge increasing.