Who Should Read This Book

If you’re reading this in a bookstore and are unsure which Linux distribution to get started with, or whether to use Linux at all, this book is for you. Ubuntu is a complete, visually friendly, and community-oriented distribution that makes it easy for you to get started using Linux. Ubuntu is designed to be a distribution for users, but as you’ll see throughout this book, you can do anything that you want with it, from running your desktop to running servers and network services for the enterprise, thanks to the inherent power of Linux. Ubuntu comes with a tremendous selection of up-to-date software, and plenty more is quickly downloaded and installed thanks to its easy-to-use administrative tools. Ubuntu is frequently updated, and there is no such thing as a Linux virus or “accidentally-installed spyware.” Linux is inherently secure.

Ubuntu’s rich user community is a big win for new and existing Ubuntu users. There are places to ask questions and actually get answers. People seem to want to help. The Ubuntu forums and mailing lists are a live, constant demonstration of the philosophical and social aspects of Ubuntu, which are discussed in Chapter 1.

In a nutshell, every Linux distribution has fans, devotees, forums, and mailing lists, but Ubuntu’s are the most exciting, usable, and useful that I’ve ever seen in my years of using Linux. You can feel the excitement.

Ubuntu brings the promise of Internationalization alive—you can get versions of Ubuntu for many languages and character sets, and more are actively on the way.

If you’re already using Ubuntu, this book should be equally useful to you because it explains how to use the standard applications provided with Ubuntu, how to do common system configuration and system administration tasks, and so on. If you’re already using Ubuntu on your desktop and do more with it, this book clearly explains how to install common servers for file-sharing, electronic mail handling, Web servers, and much more.

Дата добавления: 2015-08-27