FreeBSD: An Open-Source Operating System for Your Personal Computer, Second Edition (with CD-ROM)

by Annelise Anderson

Book Overview

This book is a friendly, task-oriented introduction to FreeBSD, a free, open-source, industrial strength operating system that runs on a personal computer (the same computer that runs Microsoft... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0971204519
• ISBN13: 9780971204515
• Release Date: December 2001
• Publisher: The Bit Tree Press
• Length: 443 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Get this book!

This book is a must if you are learning BSD Unix. All the commands you'll ever use are covered in this book. This book is easy to read and explains important topics without being exhaustive (a skill some authors never learn). A great book for newbies to BSD Unix!

Perfect Book for a Newbie Like Me

I opened this book and followed from page one until about page 60. Now I have a great BSD install that works perfectly. I refer to it when I have a question that google doesn't have an instant result for. I am a BSD newbie but I do have unix knowledge. I find this book absolutely perfect for the newest of new Unix users. The book is fairly priced and definitely has my two thumbs up. The writing was perfect for a layman like myself. The author explains the install process very clearly. Thank you Annelise.

Finally a FreeBSD HOWTO for normal people

This book finally gives provides an introduction and guide to FreeBSD for normal people.Where Greg Leheys book is for IT-professionals and Ted Middlestaedts book focuses on FreeBSD in a corporate network, this book does a very good job at making FreeBSD available to the average computer literate person out there.While not quite the "this is a keyboard" level of a "for dummies" book, this book never fails to explain things at a level which will be understandable for the normal people.As a developer of FreeBSD since the very beginning, it is a great pleasure for me to see our code being made available to a larger audience, rather than just the rather select elite who have until now discovered and used FreeBSD.Highly recommended!

Excellent, simply the best for starting up and using FreeBSD

I think FreeBSD is the best OS on the market and this book is a must have if you are thinking of using FreeBSD or even if you just started using FreeBSD. It is written in a non-technical way that is easy to read and will quickly get you going and walk you through the first important steps of a very powerful operating system. It will help you better understand the next book that you should have for operating FreeBSD, Greg Lehey's "The Complete FreeBSD."It steps you through the entire process of getting FreeBSD up and running the first time and explains why or why not to choose an option during the setup process. The author helps you with basic commands that you will use over and over again.This book is as good as having someone there to walk you through your first steps of using FreeBSD. I applaud the author.

An Absolutely Superb Beginner's Book for FreeBSD

If you're a new user to FreeBSD, or have been thinking about trying it, "FreeBSD: An Open-Source Operating System for Your Personal Computer" is the one book you MUST squander your hard-earned money on.This superbly written book is an excellent introduction to the FreeBSD operating system. It covers almost everything that a new user needs to know to get a FreeBSD system up and running: installing and configuring, setting up printers, setting up networking and getting connected to the Internet for mail and web browsing, adding additional software (such as shells) using ports and packages, compiling custom kernels, and administering the system with user management and recovering from crises. It even covers upgrading the entire installation to a newer version!All this is done in a thoroughly professional manner. The book is written in non-technical, but literate, English and does not waste the reader's time by poorly written explanations that need be read and re-read while the reader attempts to puzzle out what the author REALLY meant -- the material is very clear throughout, and consists of discussions followed by easy to carry out steps explaining exactly what and how to do. And, most amazingly, these steps actually work as advertised: I was able to do all of the things that I mentioned in the first paragraph by following the instructions in the book.Readers who finish this book will find that they can then handle the more advanced books on FreeBSD, such as the "FreeBSD Handbook", "The Complete FreeBSD," (neither of which I would recommend as beginning-level books) and "FreeBSD Unleashed." Their understanding will also allow full use of the wide variety of resources available on the web in areas which the book does not cover in detail, such as security and firewalls."FreeBSD: An Open-Source Operating System for Your Personal Computer" also includes a CD with FreeBSD 4.3 on it. This CD contains all that is needed to get started and has the software needed to work through the entire book.In conclusion, I would simply say that this is the best beginner-level book on FreeBSD on the market. I'd give the book 5 stars.