I was very interested to read this book. I have had varying levels of results with Fedora Core x and hoped that this would help me to get around the problems I had had.
Unfortunately, it was too general to be of much help. This book faces the same problem every Linux book does: strip away the distro specific trappings and Linux is Linux is Linux.
The install chapter was far too general and didn't actually offer too much advice and guidance on installing the distro. There were excellent sections on Yum and creating RPMs from source, but there were also general Bash programming sections and other sections covered in
Rute and other similar books.
If you know of a complete newbie with some computer experience, this book is ideal for them. If you or your friend is an experienced Linux or Fedora user then I would steer clear of this book.
The negative comments aside, the book was very clearly written and the layout was great - every exercise has a lab exercise and an easy to understand "how it works" section.
A good book as an opening to your Linux library, handy to get you over a few hurdles with the distro, less ideal if you already have some Fedora/Red Hat knowledge and a well stocked library.