[wplug] debian books

Brady Hunsaker bkh at member.fsf.org
Thu Apr 8 20:06:56 EDT 2004


On Thu, 2004-04-08 at 12:00, wplug-request at wplug.org wrote:
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 17
> Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 09:25:05 -0400
> From: John Harrold <jmh17 at pitt.edu>
> Subject: [wplug] debian books.
> To: western PA LUG <wplug at wplug.org>
> Message-ID: <20040408132505.GC27874 at sage.che.pitt.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> hey.
> 
> i want to muck around with debian. i did this once before, but it prooved
> to be a little harder to adapt from redhat than i thought it would be, this
> time, i thought i would start with a book. i started looking around for a
> book specific to debian. from google i found this page:
> 
> http://www.debian.org/doc/books
> 
> of the books there this one looks to be the most promising:
> 
> http://www.polaris.net/~dwarf/dwarfs-debian-guide_2.2.98.pdf
> 
> however it's a little dated (~2001). i was wondering if anyone could tell
> me how appropriate this book would be for what i want to do. i need a book
> that describes generic installation and configuration issues (network,
> dpkg, etc.) as well as how to configure stuff like nis, nfs, etc. i can do
> this stuff in redhat, but the redhat way (e.g.
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/) versus the debian way (i have no idea ;))
> has prooven to make the transition a little more difficult. 
> 
> so can any debian users comment on the book above, or suggest a better
> book? i have no aversion to buying something.
> 

I haven't read that one (dwarf's debian guide).  Unless you really want
a printed copy, I would take a look first at the documentation page:
http://www.debian.org/doc/

In particular, the manual called "Debian Reference" may have a lot of
what you're interested in:
http://www.debian.org/doc/user-manuals#quick-reference

I do have one of the older books listed on the books page: Debian
GNU/Linux 2.1 Unleashed.  It's from 1999-2000, so it's even older than
the one you're considering, but it might have some of the distribution
basics that you're interested in.  I can't say for sure since I've
always used Debian and the book is old.  You're welcome to have that
book if you want it.

One piece of advice: I recently "discovered" aptitude, which is a great
front-end for Debian package management.  It takes a little getting used
to, but provides lots of power and more flexibility/convenience than
dselect.

Brady





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