Re: Linux Books

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

>>>>> Darren writes:

   > BTW, is there still a Linux Users Group metting scheduled for the 17th
   > March? When and where?

If there is, the long awaited Turnbull-Matsumura bout for
"Featherflame Champee--n of the World" isn't going to take place.  My
fiancee will be in town and I have family commitments this weekend.
I'm looking forward to my next meeting, though.

I would like to apologize to Ted for the tone, and to the innocent
bystanders for the length, of the last few messages on "transparency."
I'm sure Ted didn't take it personally, but that's OK, I should calm
down (and grow up, eh, oldtimer? ;-) a little.

   > Jim Tittsler recommended some disks and books, and Slackware v3.0 and
   > InfoMagics Linux Developers Resource sounds suitable.

I have an old (Sept 95) version of the Infomagic series.  I have found
both the Slackware 2.3 on those disks and the Infomagic organization
itself to be lacking.
 o one of the boot kernels seemed to be missing a crucial driver, the
   iso9660 fs!
 o for some reason crucial libraries did not get properly installed in
   a partial installation, that might have been my fault
 o the alleged "live" file system on the CD-ROM actually consists only
   of /usr, but it's not convenient to "ln -s /cdrom/usr /usr" because
   some crucial software gets installed on /usr by setup---again,
   maybe my fault
Even if a lot was my fault, that distribution is too easy to mess up.

Has that improved with later releases, especially the Slackware 3.0?

There is nothing *missing* as far as I can tell, and after a couple
years' experience with Linux and Slackware in particular I had very
little trouble making up for the lacks.  But they could be annoying to 
a Linux newbie who wants to get up and running quickly.

   > Does anyone know where to buy it in Tokyo?

Any good Linux collection will have the "Linux Installation and
Getting Started Guide" and other LinuxDoc Project products somewhere
on it.  I strongly recommend hard copy (you can't use your console in
the ofuro ;-), but for starters at least you can get it there.  So you
can order from Infomagic or another US vendor (if you're willing to
risk the credit card number to Internet or fax), get the books in a
couple of weeks.  I don't recommend ordering from any Japanese vendors 
if you're in a hurry, I've found the lags to be long and variable for
Kinokuniya and Maruzen (Tsukuba-ten, though, maybe Tokyo does
better?).

Steve