Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great resource for a sparse topic - BSD ROCKS!!!
Comment: I'll admit - I'm a cheapskate. I bought the previous edition on Amazon; loved the text, wouldn't take it back... but after seeing this book at my Bookstore & Neighborhood coffee shop, I might go back and get this one too. The expansion of topics is minimal, but the depth is better than the first edition. If you're running BSD, you need this; if you're thinking about running BSD, you need this. If you think Beastie is cool, you need BSD... and this book.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: the book after you read "Building a Server with FreeBSD 7"
Comment: Now, you read "Building a Server with FreeBSD 7" and you want to do more. This is the book to get.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition
Comment: This is an excellent book, plenty of information and very well written, covering every aspect of a FreeBSD system.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice and updated. Much better than I expected.
Comment: I am a big fan of open source software. I've been a GNU/Linux user for years but I must admit I had never played with BSD before. I bought this book because I wanted to set up a network server at home and I thought it was the perfect occasion to try FreeBSD. I expected one of those thick and boring reference books but, hey! I am very glad I chose "Absolute FreeBSD" because it is the perfect example of how write a clear, informative, nice and accurate technical book. The book is not for the absolute beginner but, in general, it's very easy to read. It should be self-explanatory to anyone with a little experience in networking, UNIX-like systems or, in general, computer science.
The author is a FreeBSD developer himself, so he talks about the inner workings of the FreeBSD community, providing an interesting point of view of the operating system, not only as a regular user but also as one of its "insiders".
The book covers everything a BSD system administrator should know. It covers basic things like how to install the system, how to make backups and recover from data loss, how to configure the network, disk management, etc. It also includes detailed explanations and sysadmin tricks of the usual network services: DNS, SSH, DHCP, FTP, printing server, web Server, mail Server... The author also gets into more advanced topics like, kernel tunning, security, performance analysis and tunning or RAID management. I was particularly interested in using hard disk encryption. I thought getting it was going to be a pain in the neck but the book explains how to do it with 6 simple commands. Nice!
In general the book is well structured. Concepts are explained clearly and with a lot of examples. Some chapters cover so many concepts that my brain couldn't keep up with so much information and I had to take a break for a nice beer ;-) The book is worth it's price: 37 dollars for 700 pages.
Only one advice: Although it has a graphical interface, FreeBSD is normally configured trough the good old command-line. Don't expect this book to tell you how to configure your web server double-clicking on an icon, FreeBSD is not Ubuntu or Win2003. The book may not be suitable for Happy Windows Users, used too the click-next click-next click-next way. This book is for computer geeks, system administrators, people that enjoy using different operating systems, people that need to have a robust system to use as a network server, people that like to tune every detail of their machines, or people that need to learn freeBSD and have no time to google every single configuration detail. For any of those people, I highly recommend this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A must have for all the FreeBSD users and administrators
Comment: This book is worth every dollar.
Easy to read, you don't need to be already an experienced administrator or user to read this book
|
|
