Ubuntu Hacks

• Authors: Jonathan Oxer, Kyle Rankin & Bill Childers.
• Publisher: 2006 O'Reilly Media, Sebastopol CA
• ISBN 0-596-52720

Easy to read and follow!

This book from the O'Reilly Hacks series is helpful in configuring and tweaking Ubuntu to suit. The included hacks are rated by difficulty: Beginner --> Moderate --> Expert. Covered hacks include getting iTunes working with CrossOver Office on Ubuntu (# 31), and getting sleep (# 38) and hibernate (#39) to work on your laptop. Chapters on Ubuntu Package Management, System Administration, and virtualization and Emulation are included.

This book was written for the Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu release 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon is scheduled for release in October '07, bear in mind that the code examples included in the book may not work. Still the examples give a good idea of what is possible and a general idea of how to proceed.

I found the book to be well written. The code examples are short and to the point, well explained and presented in a step-by-step format. The hacks rated beginner difficulty include screen shots and should be clear enough for a W****** user to follow. The moderate and expert hacks are sure to save time, giving a clear idea of what needs to be done to accomplish the desired configuration. (For those of us using newer releases of Ubuntu it what documentation to web search for.)

Ubuntu Hacks should be a great resource if you have recently migrated to Ubuntu. The hacks are crossed indexed so if you are careful you will be doing things in order, and be up to speed quickly.

Links

Books Table of Contents (with sample hacks included), can be found here.

Online book at Safari Books can be found here.

Reviewed by: Kenneth Bernard, Peninsula Linux Users' Group, Sept. 28, 2007.