January 2002 Issue of Daemon News

questionlp writes: "The January 2002 issue of Dæmon News Ezine has been published. This month's issue has the continuation of the tcsh article, test driving NetBSD, NetBSD's 2001 timeline, an article on embedded BSD, DOSSIER and the Meta project, and a book review of FreeBSD Unleashed."

So which book to get?

[Shanep]

I have The Complete FreeBSD and I was going to get the FreeBSD Handbook 2nd ed, however this new book FreeBSD Unleashed sounds excellent from reading that review and reader reviews at Amazon.

Is there any point in getting the Handbook if I get Unleashed?

Re:So which book to get?

[questionlp]

Probably the best thing to do is to download the Handbook as a PDF (or a PS file) from here [freebsd.org] and use that to print out pieces that you want.

Being the person who wrote the review for Unleashed, I do think Unleashed is a good book, but it doesn't cover the software that I use daily like Postfix, Python and ProFTPD :(

I have The Complete FreeBSD (2nd and 3rd editions), FreeBSD Corp Net Guide, FreeBSD OS for PC book, FreeBSD Unleashed and both editions of the Handbook print edition. I prefer to use the soft version of the Handbook (primarily the HTML version).

Re:So which book to get?

[Shanep]

I prefer to use the soft version of the Handbook (primarily the HTML version).

Wow, I have it as PDF already, though I like to sit somewhere are read through a dead tree. As much as I hate to say that, I find reading off the screen distracting and difficult, compared with a book. Which is a pitty.

I wonder why that is? I find printed man pages make a lot more sense to me. : }

Would you say that the 2nd ed of the Handbook (online), covers just as much as Unleashed?

I have this big list of things I want to get done in Linux and FreeBSD, (like setting up a seperate print queue that filters to PDF files, desktop faxing, design of a FreeBSD based CD server, etc) but never get around to them, getting it all done by hand. Do you know from memory if any of the books cover those topics?

Thanks for the reply BTW.

Re:So which book to get?

[questionlp]

I think the Handbook covers more topics, but sometimes it's a little slim in some spots. Unleashed is great to cover the "basics" of FreeBSD and touches more in-depth in a handful of topics like security and Gnome.

I know The Complete FreeBSD covers Hylafax for desktop faxing. Setting up separate print queues tends to be more of a manual thing (unless if you use Webmin or the like).

I haven't seen a document on setting up a FreeBSD-based CD server but I doubt if it's too hard to setup.

From the book review...

[Shanep]

Unfortunately, the killall command is not covered, even though it uses the same signals

Yeah...?

as kill but it can be more dangerous.

Might be a precaution for anyone out there also using Solaris, since it will literally kill all. Along with the other risks involved with this sweeping of Gods hand.

Re:From the book review...

[questionlp]

Might be a precaution for anyone out there also using Solaris, since it will literally kill all. Along with the other risks involved with this sweeping of Gods hand.

Speaking as the writer of the review, it was meant as caution for all... I remember nearly dying after I typed in "killall" as root on one of the Solaris servers at work... not knowing that the same command name did entirely different things on FreeBSD and on Solaris :)

Some people are quite used to use "killall" rather than killing one process at a time.

Re:From the book review...

[Shanep]

I'm glad I read here about killall and Solaris a while back, before I would have done the same, having the bad habit of using killall too much.

Growing slowly

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wait impatiently for the 1st of the month to check out the new ezine, and wish there was more to read. Why come here and see if anything new comes up? Since Deamon News is tilted toward FreeBSD, I guess I will have to write my own OpenBSD articles and submit them.

It seems that the race between tortise*BSD and hare*Linux may be getting a bit more interesting. What I wish were articles and websites on OpenBSD as a workstation. In fact what do you use when you:

o need to browse the web?
o need to print out your resume?
o need to print a flyer for anything?
o need to games? (I'll admit, that is a trick...)

What are the best options for an office automation suite, that might give MS Office a run, for most simple tasks. eh Kreskin? give us your wisdom..

:)

Re:Growing slowly

[glitchvern]

Try deadly.org [deadly.org]