Comments about oreilly Linux Desktop Pocket Guide:

This is an awesome little book. It speaks about pretty much every main distro and every important program for linux. This is a very completed book :).

Comments about oreilly Linux Desktop Pocket Guide:

Linux Desktop Pocket Guide is is a 4 inch by 7 inch book powerpacked with a lot of information and resources. It is very well thought out and organized. Mr. Brickner has taken 5 popular distributions of Linux: Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, Suse, and UBuntu and not only compared them generally, but also by their features. For example, he talks about the different package managers and how they install software. He touches on the two popular desktop environments, Gnome and KDE, what they look like, how they work, and how to configure them. There is 4 pages on how to configure Konqueror, the popular file manager/web browser. 3 pages on the KDE control center. There is a good 26 pages in all on application programs and the package management systems of the various distributions. Chapter 7 deals with configuring the different distros, and the edge of the pages on the great index section are highlighted in grey.

If you are looking for an overview of Linux, or you don't know what distro to use, this is a great book. If you don't want to read a 40 pound book, but want something to point the way, to show you where the resources are or to get you started, then this is also a great book. Obviously in 181 pages it is not comprehensive, but it does point the way. Good job!