1.1 About This Book

This book is an installation and entry-level guide to the Linux system. The purpose is to get new users up and running with the system by consolodating as much important material as possible into one book. Instead of covering many of the volatile technical details, those things which tend to change with rapid development, we give you enough background to find out more on your own.

Linux is not difficult to install and use. However, as with any implementation of UNIX, there is often some black magic involved to get everything working correctly. We hope that this book will get you on the Linux tourbus and show you how groovy this operating system can be.

In this book, we cover the following topics.

• What is Linux? The design and philosophy of this unique operating system, and what it can do for you.

• All of the details of what is needed to run Linux, including suggestions on what kind of hardware configuration is recommended for a complete system.

• How to obtain and install Linux. There are many distributions of the Linux software. We present a general discussion of Linux software distributions, how to obtain them, and generic instructions for installing the software (which should be applicable to any distribution).

  This edition also contains specific instructions for the Slackware distribution of Linux.

• A brief introductory UNIX tutorial, for those users who have never had experience with UNIX before. This tutorial should, hopefully, provide enough material for complete novices to have enough basic know-how to find their way around the system.

• An introduction to systems administration with Linux. This covers the most important tasks that new Linux administrators will need to be familiar with, such as creating users, managing filesystems, and so forth.

• Information on configuring more advanced aspects of Linux, such as the X Window System, networking with TCP/IP and SLIP, and the setup of electronic mail and news systems.

This book is for the personal computer user wishing to get started with Linux. We don't assume previous UNIX experience, but do expect novices to refer to other materials along the way. For those unfamiliar with UNIX, a list of useful sources of information is given in Appendix A. In general, this book is meant to be read along with another book on basic UNIX concepts.