Open Source

It is rare for me to get a graphic novel to review, but when O'Reilly puts out a graphic novel it must deserve some attention. The premise is simple: teaching internet technologies and socially/legally acceptable uses of the technology so that younger minds can protect themselves online and also collaborate through the Internet to make the world a better place.

How on Earth could I pass that up?

The book itself didn't take long to read, but the plots within plots were very interesting. With names like HackerIP and DNSolver, there is no question of the technology basis of the book. The reluctant hero of this first novel, Yago, becomes a young member of Hackerteen - perhaps the youngest - and finds himself in dilemmas that are influenced by realities that extend beyond the Internet dimension but are mutually affected. Family, friends and circumstance are woven together in tidy moral decisions that lead one way - then another.

Not too unlike the real world. { Read more }

With a name like Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, a book is hard to ignore in this day and age. The name itself is derived from Wiki, which is a Hawaiian word for 'fast', and the use of Wiki software for projects such as the Wikipedia have become well known - and famous and notorious in their own right. The Internet and technologies and policies which permit collaboration have allowed mankind to do interesting things over the last decade - and, as the book posits, are indicators of how the future of culture and business will be affected.

Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams took an interesting and fairly objective look at how our technologies are changing the way in which we do things - or, perhaps, are causing a return to the way we used to do things but now on a larger scale. They did this enough so that I found many many quotations on Wikinomics to be noteworthy.

To someone who is an avid reader, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything may seem like a remix of many of the books over the last ten years. Many books along these lines remind me of Levy's Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace, which preceded much of what has been written about the internet and the collaboration and atomization of the way things are done. Perhaps Levy's 'sin' was originally publishing in French? We'll revisit that. { Read more }

Fedora is one of the more popular distributions of Linux, and like any flavor of Linux has it's own taste. Being a community version sponsored by RedHat, it is a well established distribution of Linux and will continue to be in the forseeable future. Therefore, a premise for the book certainly exists, and given that Fedora doesn't offer RedHat's documentation and support, it's handy to have a book that assists people with Fedora Linux.

The author states in the Preface:

...The book is written for experienced computer users, regardless of their previous experience with Linux. It covers both desktop and server configurations , and is ideally suited to an administrator or power user migrating from another environment, such as Windows, Mac OS X, or Unix...

The book is targeted for Fedora Core 6; the author claims that it should be useful to users of Fedora Core 5 and Fedora Core 7 as well. That's a reasonable assumption; I tossed Fedora Core 6 on one of my machines and swung right in, getting my hands a little dirty within the 608 pages.

Between the covers, the author is thorough - even pointing people to Red Hat's commercial distribution of Linux if they are likely to need more than community support. That's something one rarely sees in a book related to learning to use an operating system, and in this instance it is commendable. { Read more }

One of the inherent beauties of PHP is how versatile it is. You can write quick hacks in it, or write a full blown content management system. It's a robust language with semicolons which is an integral part of LAMP servers around the world. It's open source, and it's fairly easy to learn for even the most novice of programmers.

The trick, sometimes, is getting it to do the little things that you want it to do. Suddenly, you may need to write something which deals with SOAP and you may need some pointers. Maybe you want to parse some XML, or maybe you want to generate it. Or maybe you need to read and write a compressed file. Whatever it is, maybe you're doing it for the first time in PHP, or perhaps the first time ever. Maybe you have so many languages in your head that it's nice to have a reference just to remind you how you do things within PHP. Enter the PHP Cookbook, 2nd Edition, which puts code and explanations together with distinct titles related to problems.

The book itself weighs in at 758 pages and is split into 26 sections. These sections cover an impressive amount of code solutions to real world problems. { Read more }

One of the difficult things for a new Linux user remains picking a distribution; one of the more difficult things for a new Linux user is sticking with a distribution long enough to actually learn how to use it. Everyone has their own favorite distribution, everyone has their own reasons - the best that I've heard being, 'my girlfriend downloaded and installed it'². And of course, one of the most annoying things for new Linux users is getting stuff working that they want to. Turn on the music. Watch those videos you downloaded (of course they aren't porn, we know). Playing some games. Producing documents quickly so you have time to (legally) download more files.

I'm a big fan of Ubuntu Linux - that's no secret - so when something calls itself a 'Pain-Free, Project Based, Get-Things-Dibe Guidebook', it has to be read. With penguins and walruses looking through a hole and the ice (and the fish below), you can't help but feel sorry for the school of fish¹. And if you're smart, you'll figure out that the paperback book doesn't bend well because there's a CD in the back cover, with Dapper Drake (Ubuntu Desktop CD 6.06 for x86) in the back of the book - which you can run off the CD or install from. Your own PC required. It should be noted that you can download Ubuntu Linux yourself if you need to. The book saves the majority of users this by supplying what must be the most common downloaded type, and in 18 chapters attempts to bring the new user up to speed on: { Read more }

SUSE Linux is probably one of the more popular distributions of Linux out there. As a Linux distribution, it's beginning was a German rendition of Slackware. In 1992 it was Softlanding Linux System, and later that year S.u.S.E. (Software- und System-Entwicklung) was formed as a UNIX consulting group. The first CD release of SLS/Slackware came in 1994, and in 1998 the name became SuSE. After Novell's purchase in 2004, it became SuSE Linux.

In other words, SuSE Linux is not new, and it has evolved a lot in the last 14 years (at the time of this writing), it has become and maintained itself as a stable operating system. It's no surprise that there's a new book on it. Between the community and Novell, SuSE continues it's evolution. The author's first paragraph in Chapter 1 probably gives the best explanation of the book:

I have never liked delayed gratification. I don't buy self-assembly furniture or bake cakes from scratch - there's too much waiting involved. Bonsai? You must be joking! With software products and and operating systems especially, I want to start putting them to use the instant I have them in hand. Hopefully, this book will help you do that with SUSE Linux...

That's a great premise for any book. Sure, the documentation on the internet is great - but what if you can't connect? What happens if you live in a alternative operating system paradise? It helps to have a book. { Read more }

There's so many authors to this book I couldn't fit into the title line, so I'll write the author's names here: Steven Pritchard, Bruno Gomes Pessanha, Nicolai Langfeldt, James Stanger & Jeff Dean all worked together to create this 917 page book. It's not to be taken lightly in any sense of the word, but is it good? Read on.

The Linux Professional Institute are considered by many to be the de facto standard of Linux Certification, and it's not known for being easy. [t:LPI] certifications have managed to maintain a high standard throughout the world by not lowering standards, by maintaining vendor neutrality (not done by a particular software vendor), and by solid examinations. Therefore, the study materials have to keep pace - which is a tough thing for any group of writers to do in the shifting landscape of Linux and certifications.

Within this book's covers, preparation for General Linux Exam 101, 102, 201 and 202 are covered in a linear fashion - in a fashion which is broken up to prepare one for the Linux Professional institute's 4 General Linux examinations. { Read more }

Ubuntu. Linux. Hacks. The cover had me at 'Ubuntu' - so once I got the book I devoured it (last week) and only now have had a chance to write the review.

The major chapters in this book deal with things from getting started (you're not using Ubuntu yet? Hello?) to setting up a server for a small office. 100 hacks, 414 pages, and a tuning fork on the cover (which must be confusing Darwin, wherever he is). This is one of the books I really went into because I use Ubuntu on one of my systems. While I didn't go through and do all of the hacks, I did find the ones I thought were interesting and ran through them. It's never too late to teach a middle-aged penguin new tricks. Sushi, anyone?

The 10 chapters cover a lot of ground: { Read more }

• Getting Started: Getting started with the Live CD, installing Ubuntu on a PC, Mac and dual booting with Windows, dealing with Windows data, setting up your printer (people still use those?), installing Ubuntu on an external drive (like a USB device), installing from a network boot server, submitting bug repoirts, using the command line and getting productive with applications