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Title: Linux in the Workplace by SSC, Publishers of Linux Journal ISBN: 1-886411-86-7 Publisher: No Starch Press Pub. Date: October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: good introduction to KDE; good for complete newbies
Comment: I've always been surprised and even disappointed at my friends' lack of curiosity about Linux. Maybe geeks and slashdotters understand why Linux is so appealing, but many people simply don't have time for it. Even the more open-minded people refuse to consider Linux until it runs a lot of commercial applications (does it support Photoshop? Video games? MS Word? Etc)."
Linux has failed to catch on among ordinary users because PC manufacturers have been prevented from offering dual-boot systems. Not only is partitioning and dual booting a little tricky, the OS CD that comes with a new PC is usually just a system restore, making it difficult to configure a dual-boot environment without messing up factory settings and file systems. Learning Linux has become an all-or-nothing proposition; in many cases the new user has to wipe Windows off his system for good or rely on a second machine just to get started.
The irony is that Linux has never been more user friendly, and the latest KDE desktop on my gentoo box is slicker, faster and easier to use than XP. It is becoming easier to be productive on Linux, and while university students have already discovered this, corporate IT departments who support a large number of Windows-only commercial applications tend to view open source solutions as a time burden (these are the same IT departments whose days are consumed with applying Windows patches or verifying license compliance).
The book Linux in the Workplace shows the ordinary user who has never laid eyes on Linux how to perform everyday office tasks. The book assumes that the user has a machine with Linux already installed and successfully configured. This book (which is more of an introduction to the KDE desktop than Linux itself) is easy and fun to read, and has lots of screenshots. Slashdotters might find this book a bit too basic, but it's the kind of book that a technophobe spouse or child or parent might love (and could very well appear under Christmas trees right beside the new Linux PC).
This book devotes a chapter each to talking about Open Office, Gimp, Konqueror, personal information managers, and various KDE office and email applications. Most of them are part of the KDE window manager or installed by default. This book walks a thin line between being too superficial for daily use and dwelling too much on the technical details. There are better books on The GIMP or OpenOffice, for example, but still it is nice to have introductory chapters in a single book. I found a few useful tidbits on controlling file associations, xscanimage, screen capturing and ark archiver. The book is not without a sense of humor. In a useful section on creating a GPG key, the book says "your passphrase should be rude or embarrassing ... using a naughty passphrase will remind you not to type it where others can see."
This book began with the mission to bring a simplified approach to Linux. By definition, it must exclude certain topics, either by design or because an application was not yet mature when the book was being written. The book scrupulously avoids a discussion of server applications like apache (which makes a certain sense), but it would have been nice to have a section on Evolution or mplayer (yes, a media player is an indispensable application for the bored employee) or ssh, cd burning programs, browser plugins, mozilla, crossover, irc or ftp clients.
Surprisingly, the book contains almost nothing about printing or how to install or upgrade applications. Because the book is intended for a newbie user, not a sys admin, it recommends talking to your network administrator about that. Cop out? Perhaps. But even the unskilled non-root user will have to install apps once in a while; the book would have been much better with a section on rpm managers and compiling programs from scratch.
From a sys admin's point of view, I would have liked to see a case study of an office that had actually made the switch. What problems did it encounter? How did the switch change business processes? What applications required the most time and energy for support? How did a Linux-only office manage domain authentication or interoperability? What system management tools made administration easier in a heterogenous environment?
The book raises an epistemological question about the best way to learn a new technology. Will a user who has never really performed tasks as root be able to leverage the freedom and power offered by open source? Will a user truly be comfortable with an operating system without first having experienced the agony of a bad install or frantically scouring the newsgroups for help ? This book presumes that a learner needs to be able to use normal applications before being ready to handle the admin stuff. The problem with that approach is that it depends on IT staff being near and ready to do some hand-holding. But Linux may emerge in the workplace not as a result of IT's enthusiasm but because of ordinary workers' exasperation with uniform proprietary solutions imposed by these IT departments.
In summary: A useful and friendly KDE-centric introduction to Linux for nongeeks. The lack of system administration material makes it probably too basic for slashdotters.
Rating: 5
Summary: Easy-to-understand and enthusiastically recommended
Comment: Compiled by the staff of Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. (publishers of Linux Journal magazine), Linux In The Workplace: How To Use Linux In Your Office is a straightforward and "user friendly" guide to using the (free!) Linux operating system in the workplace as a workable alternative to paying [] licencing fees for other systems such as Microsoft's Windows. Individual chapters address using word processing programs ideally suited for desktop operations, graphics, web browsers, using the command line, and numerous other practical nuances of using a Linux operating system to aid in carrying out all manner of corporate and workplace tasks. Black-and-white photographs and detailed examples enhance this refreshingly easy-to-understand and enthusiastically recommended primer.
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Title: The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use by Michael Stutz ISBN: 1886411484 Publisher: No Starch Press Pub. Date: 15 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Linux Problem Solver (with CD-ROM) by Brian Ward ISBN: 1886411352 Publisher: No Starch Press Pub. Date: 15 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! by Marcel Gagne ISBN: 0321159985 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co Pub. Date: 07 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.99 |
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