Way into late nineties, most books on Linux still read like this: Here is Linux, which is zillion times better than MS-DOS, and here is the command shell, which is so much more powerful than COMMAND.COM in MS-DOS, then here are X Windows, which are like MS Windows in DOS, only better... A reader less acquainted with the history of computing might have asked "Wow, that's cool, but what is this MS-DOS thing you keep mentioning?"
When the first edition of this book appeared in late 1998, Manuel Alberto Ricart was among the first authors to admit that Windows 95 and 98 actually *did* happen. Rather than comparing bare-bones Linux with a historic relic, he chose a decent peer for a modern Windows environment: Linux with a desktop environment KDE.
Mr. Ricart starts with the elements of the KDE desktop, spends considerable time explaining basic operations with it, then proceeds to the programs of KDE base suite: file manager, text editor etc. The inevitable command line only comes in in part two. After explaining the basic commands -- file utilities -- some Unix concepts like pipes and regular expressions are discussed, while the programming in command shell is omitted. The section on programming editors Vi and Emacs is probably too short to be useful. The last part, part three, deals with the system administration tasks. Installation of Linux is added as an appendix.
What is the advantage of using command shell despite the existance of graphical interface? Mr. Ricart unfortunately cannot give a convincing answer, although it is probably clear to every second reader -- command shell contains a powerful macro language, which is superb for performing repetitive tasks. This is a pity -- spending 30-40 more pages on the Bash programming would actually give a meaning for including the complete Part 2. But I guess there has to be something idiotic in each of the books of Complete Idiot's series, right?
Leaving this aside, the book is perhaps the best introduction to Linux for beginners. Of all the distributions, Caldera Open Linux that comes with the book allegedly has the most user-friendly installation program -- unless you have some unfortunate exotic hardware, with which it won't work. Bear in mind though that every Linux CD included in a book is likely to be one year old or more when it arrives in your hands, and one year is a long time in Linux development. So the system you have just installed is already outdated... Watch the Web to find out what is really going on.
