The Official Ubuntu Book by Benjamin Mako Hill, Jono Bacon, Corey Burger, Jonathan Jesse, Ivan Krstic

From Barnes & Noble

Dare we say it? For mainstream users, Ubuntu is rapidly becoming the "de facto" Linux standard. It's friendly, accessible, and reliable -- all qualities that apply to its official guidebook, too. This book captures the welcoming feel of the Ubuntu community, inviting you to get involved both as user and participant. But it also covers all the techniques you need to succeed happily with Ubuntu: from installation and configuration to "office applications," CD burning to instant messaging, networking to troubleshooting.

There are plenty of specific answers: how to make Ubuntu run faster on older computers; better coexistence with Windows; fixes for balky microphones and scroll-wheel mice; tips for recovering lost system passwords, and much more. You'll even find chapters on Kubuntu (Ubuntu preconfigured with the KDE graphical user interface) and Edubuntu (Ubuntu optimized for schools). Plus, instant gratification: This book's DVD contains the full 7.0.4 "Feisty Fawn" distribution. Bill Camarda, from the October 2007 Read Only

From the Publisher

Ubuntu is a complete, free operating system that emphasizes community, support, and ease of use without compromising speed, power, or flexibility. It's Linux for human beings—designed for everyone from computer novices to experts. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support), a.k.a., "Hardy Heron," is the latest release—more powerful, more flexible, and friendlier than ever. The Official Ubuntu, Third Edition, will get you up and running quickly.

Written by expert leading Ubuntu community members, this book covers all you need to know to make the most of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, whether you're a home user, small business user, server administrator, or programmer. The authors covers Ubuntu 8.04 LTS from start to finish: installation, configure, desktop productivity, games, management, support, and much more. Among the many new topics covered in this edition: the new Edubuntu and the brand new Kubuntu Remix including KDE 4.

The Official Ubuntu Book, Third Edition, covers standard desktop applications, from word processing, spreadsheets, Web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, music, video, and games to software development, databases, and server aplications. In addition, you'll

• Learn how to customize Ubuntu for home, small business, school, government, and enterprise environments

• Learn how to quickly update Ubuntu to accommodate new versions and new applications

• Find up-to-the-minute troubleshooting advice from Ubuntu users worldwide

• Learn Ubuntu Server installation and administration, including LVM and RAID implementation

• Learn about Edubuntu—Ubuntu optimized specifically for the classroom

The DVD includes the complete Ubuntu Linux operating system for installation on PC platforms, preconfigured with an outstanding desktop environment for both home and business computing. It can be used to install other complete variants of Ubuntu including Kubuntu (with the KDE environment), and Edubuntu (for use in schools).

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Forewords & Introductions

Table of Contents

Forewords & Introductions

As we write this, it is two years since we penned the first edition of The Official Ubuntu Book and a year since the second. The last year has seen Ubuntu continue its explosive growth. Updating this book drives this fact home in striking ways. For example, the number of users and posts have nearly doubled since the last edition of this book a year ago. Again. The number of officially supported flavors of Ubuntu have been added to. Again. Once again, we feel blessed that The Official Ubuntu Book has been able to benefit from, and perhaps in a small way even contribute to, that success. Ultimately, that success paved the way for the second and now the third edition of the book that you're reading now.

In the process, this book, like Ubuntu, is beginning to mature. Like Ubuntu, we have now put together our piece a few times and are beginning to get more comfortable. Our job as authors, like that of the Ubuntu developers, now involves more updating and polishing than it used to. Distributed under a free license, a once-risky book on a once-risky operating system is, just two short years later, as close to a sure thing as an author, publisher, and if we have done our job well, a reader, could hope for.

And yet with success comes responsibility to our readers and to our users with high expectations. Ubuntu's success is built in part of maturity and excellence, and it cannot sacrifice these qualities if it will succeed. We cannot either. Our job as writers is complicated because we need to accurately reflect and represent both while catering to an increasing and increasingly diverse group of users.

As we've noted in the prefaces to previous editions of thisbook, being Official has carried with it a set of rights and responsibilities. Our book's title means that we must attempt to reflect and represent the whole Ubuntu community. While we, as authors, are expected to put ourselves into the book, it is understood that it can never be to the detriment of the values, principles, technologies, or structures of the Ubuntu community.

Doing this has been complicated as Ubuntu has grown. In the second edition, we added a chapter on Edubuntu, which is updated in this edition because the Ubuntu community has grown to include this new project. In each revision of this book, we have needed to add to the list of related projects, tools, and community initiatives. As the Ubuntu community grows, it is impossible to give a complete accounting of what Ubuntu has to offer. Creating a summary requires some hard decisions. At the end of the day, we are constrained by page count and our own limited schedules.

Meanwhile, as with the first and second editions, we needed to write this book about a new release of Ubuntu while that version was under active development and was being redesigned, rethought, and rebuilt. Every day, Ubuntu grows in different, unpredictable ways, and this growth has increased exponentially with the size of the community and the diversity of the userbase. Our book's development process had to both match and track this process as our content was crafted, rewritten, adjusted, and allowed to mature itself.

As in the previous edition, the contributors to this book go well beyond those listed on the book's cover. As in the first two editions, the recipes included in Chapter 6 have been elicited from and designed in consultation with the community. But while the community contributions are sometimes less visible in other chapters, they are no less present. Invisible to most readers, dozens of members of the community left their mark on different parts of the text of this book. Although this degree of participation led to a writing process that was as hectic, and at times frustrating, as the process that builds Ubuntu, we hope we can remind readers of the level of quality that this process inspires in our book's subject. In the places where we achieve this, we have earned our book's title. With that goal in mind, we look forward to future versions of Ubuntu and editions of this book wrought through the same community-driven process.