full circle magazine #65

43

REVIEW

through the book and we’re

getting terminal commands? Hang

on, installing pyWings via terminal?

But we’ve not even touched on

office/graphics/media stuff yet!

Only after doing complex terminal

stuff does it explain how to change

the desktop wallpaper which

seems a bit backwards.

After installing a printer and

changing the localization we get to

play with LibreOffice. It does a

good job of explaining the

different parts that make up the

office suite, and quickly explains

how to use each part.

At the halfway mark the bo o k

begins explaining how to import

photos from digital cameras and

how to go about getting images

published online. Although,

Facebook for publishing photos?

Why not Flickr or something more

suited to photographs? Next, after

some GIMP talk, comes audio with

Rhythmbox and the ripping of

audio CDs. When the book

discusses the connection of

Android devices I did like how it

mentioned the current trend of

using MTP (rather than the old USB

storage option) explaining that as

of 12.04 MTP is much more

Android friendly. Several pages on

and we find that some Apple

devices fare just as badly with

HFS+ formatting which doesn’t get

along well with the Linux kernel.

After video playback we enter

into the realm of Linux games.

Several titles are mentioned from

various genres.

It’s inevitable that, at some

point, your Linux machine will

come into contact with a Windows

machine. Chapter 19 explains how

to mount Windows drives and

touches upon installing and using

Wine.

Heading into the final straight,

the book discusses the community

and how to get help. A big thanks

to No Starch Press for including

Full Circle Magazine in its list of

newsworthy sites. Definitely an

honor!

The final chapters show what to

do if your Ubuntu comes a cropper

and you need some assistance or,

worse still, safe mode.

I like the information that’s

contained in “Ubuntu Made Easy,”

but I’m not sure that it’s a good

idea to begin with trying to explain

what Linux/Ubuntu is. I think a

better starting point would have

been explaining how to try Ubuntu;

then, later on, explaining what

Linux is after the user has tried it.

The other chapters are great, but

maybe a little rearrangement

would have been in order. I’d

probably have told people how to

hook up Apple/Android devices

and use the office apps before

teaching them about installing

pyWings via the command line.

Definitely a great book for

beginners, but you’ll probably

have to explain to them not to

panic about the early mentions of

the terminal.

Many thanks to No Starch Press

for the review copy of “Ubuntu

Made Easy.” Please support No

Starch by buying their books via:

http://nostarch.com