12 More Enlightening Free Linux Books
It is often commented in the press that open source
developers would rather concentrate on coding additional functionality
than to educate individuals how to use their software. Writing
documentation is often perceived as near the bottom of the pecking
order in the development of open source software. The lack
of adequate documentation is often cited as a barrier for users to make
full use of open source software. However, this conception
neglects the fact that there are thousands of books related to Linux
which make a useful contribution, and help Linux users with an
insatiable appetite to learn more about their system.
The purpose of this article is to identify insightful and well
written Linux books that can be downloaded without charge. The majority
of the books featured in this article are themselves released under an
open
source license. All of the books featured here are written in English.
One non-English book that is worthy of a mention is 'Att använda Linux
och GNU', an excellent book written in Swedish.
We have chosen a wide range of books with titles of interest
to
complete newcomers to Linux, programmers of all levels, administrators
that are wanting to brush up on their skills, as well as books that
focus on a single software application. This article should be read in
conjunction with our two previous articles on free Linux books,
entitled 20
of the Best Free Linux Books, and 12
More of the Best Free Linux Books.
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1. The Debian Administrator's Handbook
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The Debian Administrator's Handbook is a tome that
teaches the
essentials to anyone who wishes to be an effective administrator of a
Debian machine. This book should appeal to systems administrators,
users of a different distribution, and individuals that want to learn
about about the Debian community. It is an excellent resource
accessible to everyone.
This is an English translation of the French best-seller
"Cahier de l'Admin'.It is written by two Debian developers.
Topics covered include:
- The Debian Project
- Presenting the Case Study
- Analysing the Existing Setup and Migrating
- Installation
- Packaging System: Tools and Fundamental Principles
- Maintenance and Updates: The APT Tools, aptitude,
apt-get, apt-cache, and frontends for aptitude and synaptic
- Solving Problems and Finding Relevant Information
examining document sources including manual pages, info documents,
websites, and tutorials
- Basic Configuration: Network, Accounts, Printing etc
- Unix Services covering system boot, remote login,
managing rights, administration interfaces, syslog system events,
inetd, anacron, quotas, backup with rsync, hot plugging, and power
management
- Network Infrastructure looking at gateways, virtual
private network, quality of service, dynamic routing, IPv6, DNS, DHCP,
and network diagnosis tools
- Network Services: Postfix, Apache web server, FTP
server, NFS file server, Samba, Squid,
LDAP directory
- Advanced Administration looking at RAID, LVM,
virtualization, automated installation, and monitoring
- Workstation, configure X11, graphical desktop (GNOME,
KDE, Xfce and others), email, web browsers, office suites and more
- Security with topics including firewalls,
supervision, and SELinux
- Creating a Debian Package
- Debian's Future looking at upcoming developments
- Derivative Distributions
- Short Remedial Course: Shell and Basic commands,
organization of the filesystem hierarchy, inner workings of a computer,
and more
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2. Ubuntu - An Absolute Beginner's Guide
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Ubuntu is an open-source computer Linux distribution
which is used by more than 20 million users around the world. However,
Ubuntu stands for much more. It is an ethos, a collaborative project
and, first and foremost, Ubuntu is a community of people.
Many people are intimidated by the technical jargon of a
non-commercial operating system and believe it is too advanced for
them. This is where Ubuntu - An Absolute Beginner's Guide
steps in. It is a no-nonsense guide that starts right at the basics,
and is written in plain English.
This book breaks down the barrier by teaching beginners
to Ubuntu how to:
- Install and set up Ubuntu on your computer
- Find technical support in your community with Ubuntu
local communities, free documentation, and Launchpad answers
- Understand the Ubuntu philosophy
- Navigate the Unity desktop interface looking at the
desktop, launcher, navigating the panel and dash, the latter is an
interface within Unity that lets users quickly access files and
applications
- Use Ubuntu compatible software programs, offering a
brief look at email, web, music, photos, videos, social networking,
office applications, and cloud storage
- What makes Ubuntu free, as in freedom
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3. Blender Basics Classroom Tutorial Book
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Blender Basics makes an invaluable introduction to
Blender, a free open source 3D content creation suite
available for many operating systems including Linux. It used to be
developed commercially, but is now released under the GPL.
Targeted
at media professionals and artists, Blender can be used to create 3D
visualizations, stills as well as broadcast and cinema quality video,
whilst the incorporation of a real-time 3D engine allows for the
creation of 3D interactive content for stand-alone playback. Blender
has a huge variety of uses including modelling, animating, rendering,
texturing, skinning, rigging, weighting, non-linear editing, scripting,
compositing, post-production and much more.
Chapters include:
- Working with Viewports
- Creating/Editing Objects including using main
modifiers to manipulate meshes, the tool shelf, and proportional editing
- Lights and Cameras including indirect lighting
- Ray Tracing covering lighting / shadows, mirror and
transparency
- Animation
Basics including basic key-framing, auto key-framing, graph editor,
dope sheet, animating materials, lamps and world settings
- Non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) and Meta
Shapes
- Particle Systems
- Object Physics
- Game Engine Basics and Textures
- Video Sequence Editor
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4. CouchDB - The Definitive Guide
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| Website |
guide.couchdb.org |
| Author |
J. Chris Anderson, Jan Lehnardt, Noah Slater
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| Format |
HTML |
| Pages |
272 |
CouchDB is software for creators of web applications
that need a reliable, scalable, fast database manager. Written by three
of
the creators of CouchDB, this book is intended to be a comprehensive
guide for this document-oriented database.
The book enables readers to:
- Understand the basics of document-oriented storage
and manipulation
- Interact with CouchDB entirely though HTTP using its
RESTful interface
- Model data as self-contained JSON documents
- Handle evolving data schemas naturally
- Query and aggregate data in CouchDB using MapReduce
views
- Replicate data between nodes
- Tune CouchDB for increased performance and reliability
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Next
Section: 12 More Enlightening Free Linux Books - Part 2
This article is divided into three parts:
Part
1, Part
2, Part
3
Last Updated Sunday, March 24 2013 @ 03:13 PM EST
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