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Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!
 
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Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! [Paperback]

Marcel Gagné
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 512 pages
  • Publisher: Addison Wesley; 2 edition (1 Aug 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0321356403
  • ISBN-13: 978-0321356406
  • Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 17.9 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,988,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • See Complete Table of Contents

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Marcel Gagné
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Praise for Marcel Gagné’s Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!

“This is kind of a funny book for me to be recommending to readers of a Windows newsletter, but a lot of people ask me about this topic, so here goes. Author Marcel Gagné is a columnist for Linux Journal, and in Moving to Linux he’s prepared a step-by-step guide to converting a Windows PC to Linux—or just trying it! The book includes a bootable CD with a version of Linux that you can poke around in without touching or changing anything about your Windows installation. If your boss is asking, ‘What’s with this Linux stuff?’, moving to Linux is a great way to show that you know what you’re talking about.”
—Brian Livingston, Editor, WindowsSecrets.com
“Pros: Too many to list in the available space. We liked the book from the very first page right through to the end. Gagné has done a solid job of exposing Linux and all its components in a way that is both inviting, useful, and easy to understand . . . We really liked this book—highly recommended.”
—Howard Carson, Kickstart News, www.kickstartnews.com
“Marcel walks the user through each technique in a very chatty and comfortable style. In fact, when I put the book down, I had a momentary impression that I’d just finished watching a good cooking show with an entertaining chef. (Australian readers may understand if I say that it felt like having just watched Ian Parmenter do an episode of ‘Consuming Passions.’)”
—Jenn Vesperman, Linuxchix.org
“Gagné’s Moving to Linux is a straightforward exposition of just how a non-hacker PC user can get rid of ‘The Blue Screen of Death’. If you have a friend, a co-worker, a significant other, or a relative who periodically screams, sighs, bursts into tears, or asks for help, here’s the simple solution. It comes with a bootable CD of Knoppix, Klaus Knopper’s variant of Debian.”
—Peter H. Salus, writing in ;login: The Usenix Magazine
“This is a book aimed not at you, dear developer/techie/guru, but at your friends, acquaintances, and family who are lowly users of Windows. Yes, such people do exist even in the tightest of families. Fear not, however, because salvation is at hand should any of them decide that this Linux thing might be worth investigating. No longer will you be faced with the unenviable task of walking them through the process of switching OS. Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! is a big, bold, and friendly guide to help them along. The emphasis is firmly on using Linux as a desktop system—this isn’t a book about Linux as a file, print, or Web server.”
—Tech Book Reports

Say Goodbye to Windows®-Related Crashes, Viruses, Hassles, and Costs!

Today, Linux is more powerful, useful, and practical than ever before! Moving to Linux, Second Edition, can help you migrate from Windows to the latest and best versions of Linux in just hours. By the time you’re finished, you’ll be able to do virtually anything in Linux—without the aggravation, crashes, security risks, or high costs of running Windows!

This is not a book for techies! It’s for people who write documents, create spreadsheets, surf the Web, use email, listen to music, watch movies, and play games—and want to do it in Linux, without becoming technical experts.

  • Convert your Windows PC to a Linux system that does more for less money—one step at a time
  • Take control of Linux the easy way, with the quick, efficient KDE graphical environment
  • Browse the Internet using Firefox, the fast, powerful browser that’s quickly replacing Microsoft Internet Explorer
  • Send and receive email and instant messages using your existing AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! accounts
  • Manage all your digital photos, without the hassle, using digikam
  • Rip music, burn and play CDs, and watch movies
  • Discover the world of Linux games and learn how to run Windows games on your Linux PC

There’s more! Create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with OpenOffice.org 2.0—the free office suite for Linux that’s now easier, more powerful, and even more compatible with Microsoft Office.

Say goodbye to expensive software upgrades, burdensome Microsoft licensing, Windows viruses, and “blue screens of death.” Say hello to computing the way it’s supposed to be—with Linux!



From the Back Cover

Praise for Marcel Gagné’s Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!

“This is kind of a funny book for me to be recommending to readers of a Windows newsletter, but a lot of people ask me about this topic, so here goes. Author Marcel Gagné is a columnist for Linux Journal, and in Moving to Linux he’s prepared a step-by-step guide to converting a Windows PC to Linux—or just trying it! The book includes a bootable CD with a version of Linux that you can poke around in without touching or changing anything about your Windows installation. If your boss is asking, ‘What’s with this Linux stuff?’, moving to Linux is a great way to show that you know what you’re talking about.”
—Brian Livingston, Editor, WindowsSecrets.com
“Pros: Too many to list in the available space. We liked the book from the very first page right through to the end. Gagné has done a solid job of exposing Linux and all its components in a way that is both inviting, useful, and easy to understand . . . We really liked this book—highly recommended.”
—Howard Carson, Kickstart News, www.kickstartnews.com
“Marcel walks the user through each technique in a very chatty and comfortable style. In fact, when I put the book down, I had a momentary impression that I’d just finished watching a good cooking show with an entertaining chef. (Australian readers may understand if I say that it felt like having just watched Ian Parmenter do an episode of ‘Consuming Passions.’)”
—Jenn Vesperman, Linuxchix.org
“Gagné’s Moving to Linux is a straightforward exposition of just how a non-hacker PC user can get rid of ‘The Blue Screen of Death’. If you have a friend, a co-worker, a significant other, or a relative who periodically screams, sighs, bursts into tears, or asks for help, here’s the simple solution. It comes with a bootable CD of Knoppix, Klaus Knopper’s variant of Debian.”
—Peter H. Salus, writing in ;login: The Usenix Magazine
“This is a book aimed not at you, dear developer/techie/guru, but at your friends, acquaintances, and family who are lowly users of Windows. Yes, such people do exist even in the tightest of families. Fear not, however, because salvation is at hand should any of them decide that this Linux thing might be worth investigating. No longer will you be faced with the unenviable task of walking them through the process of switching OS. Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! is a big, bold, and friendly guide to help them along. The emphasis is firmly on using Linux as a desktop system—this isn’t a book about Linux as a file, print, or Web server.”
—Tech Book Reports

Say Goodbye to Windows®-Related Crashes, Viruses, Hassles, and Costs!

Today, Linux is more powerful, useful, and practical than ever before! Moving to Linux, Second Edition, can help you migrate from Windows to the latest and best versions of Linux in just hours. By the time you’re finished, you’ll be able to do virtually anything in Linux—without the aggravation, crashes, security risks, or high costs of running Windows!

This is not a book for techies! It’s for people who write documents, create spreadsheets, surf the Web, use email, listen to music, watch movies, and play games—and want to do it in Linux, without becoming technical experts.

  • Convert your Windows PC to a Linux system that does more for less money—one step at a time
  • Take control of Linux the easy way, with the quick, efficient KDE graphical environment
  • Browse the Internet using Firefox, the fast, powerful browser that’s quickly replacing Microsoft Internet Explorer
  • Send and receive email and instant messages using your existing AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! accounts
  • Manage all your digital photos, without the hassle, using digikam
  • Rip music, burn and play CDs, and watch movies
  • Discover the world of Linux games and learn how to run Windows games on your Linux PC

There’s more! Create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with OpenOffice.org 2.0—the free office suite for Linux that’s now easier, more powerful, and even more compatible with Microsoft Office.

Say goodbye to expensive software upgrades, burdensome Microsoft licensing, Windows viruses, and “blue screens of death.” Say hello to computing the way it’s supposed to be—with Linux!




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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is very simple and could have been of some use to Linux beginners if it was not over-encumbered with words and poor in useful guidance. The very lengthy paragraphs do provide some tips, e.g. for the basic commands, but I expected to find more technical explanations, even though-or maybe because-I am myself a Linux "newbie".

One of the things I disliked is, for instance, the level at which the chapter on the desktop environment is pitched. The book is supposedly geared towards people who are using Windows. As such, I do not see the usefulness of explaining in pedantic verbose details how to resize a window or click on an icon. These and similar tasks that are certainly well-known by most readers!

I had just installed my favourite Linux distribution and found an excellent driver for my USB ADSL mouse. I realised I had to update the kernel because the one that cane with my distribution did not include support for a necessary module. I looked at the index of this book and found nothing to help me in the first difficult task switching from Windows and still wanting to use the modem I already used in the previous operating system.

This is just one of several possible example I could give of the lack of many important technical instructions in this book.

I did find more tips and many more useful features in the excellent book "The Linux Bible" by Christopher Negus (ISBN 0764579495), currently on Amazon marketplace as "brand new" for £5.01 vs. £7.54 for this one! I was very happy to be able to return this book to the seller for a full refund under the Distance Selling Directive.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent introduction and tutorial on Linux but it's useless if the enclosed CD is missing or damaged.
So, as soon as you get it, make sure that the CD is enclosed and that it's readable on your PC !
The CD is a customised version of the Gnoppix Live CD, with quite up-to-date software, including The GIMP and OpenOffice 2.0
Tip - Once loaded, use Kfloppy to format a floppy diskette, open two Konqueror windows and 'drag and drop' to save copies of files created in the learning process !
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:  9 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Great book! Very beginner-friendly... 21 Feb 2006
By R. J. Bennett - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I had never used the Linux operating system before I bought this book. This book introduces all aspects of Linux in a way that is easy to understand. It comes with a CD that simulates having Knoppix (a distribution of Linux) loaded, and allows you to "test-drive" Linux without actually loading the operating system or making any changes to your existing Windows setup.

With detailed illustration (and a sense of humor), the author does a great job of helping a newbe become familiar with the Linux operating system. I ended up loading SUSE Linux 10.0 from Novell. There are a few small differences between SUSE and Knoppix (and the many other Linux distributions) but most of what is in the book still applies.

If you are considering Linux as your operating system, I would recommend this book.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
has a bootable linux CD 17 Aug 2005
By W Boudville - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
[A review of the 2ND EDITION, August 2005.]

A nice feature of the second edition is that it comes with a BOOTABLE CD. Another linux enthusiast, Klaus Knopper, came up with a popular variant of linux, now named Knoppix, that can be booted from a CD. Gagne uses this approach so that you can "test drive" much, though not all, of what he shows in the book. In other words, on your Microsoft computer, you can boot off the book's CD and try the various linux applications and environment for yourself. Without having to install linux or do anything to your existing Microsoft installation. Cool.

The utility of this is hard to overstate. If you have no background in linux, you might naturally be trepid in converting to it. But now, you are not limited to just reading the text and admiring the screen shots. You can actively try out the Knoppix linux desktop. And the OpenOffice applications that come with it. These have much of the functionality of the Microsoft Office suite. But OpenOffice is free. Gagne stresses this. A very capable free word processor. Ditto for a spreadsheet. Etc.

Linux even has a portfolio of games. Gagne describes a bunch of them. Poker. Mahjongg. Solitaire and others. Comparable to the default games that come with a Microsoft operating system. Though, in fullness, you should be aware that the latest non-Microsoft games, especially the twitch ones, tend to be written for the Microsoft platform. There are not really that many powerful, popular games for linux.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Moving to Linux, Second Edition by Marcel Gagne' 24 Sep 2005
By Tarael - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent book for anyone interested in getting away from the Microsoft monopoly, viruses, spyware, Blue Screen of Death, etc. Easy to read, well organized, simple yet concise with a smattering of humor. If you have some knowledge on how to use MS Windows and want to put it to use in a better/safer way, Try Linux with this Book. Comes with bootable CD that allows you to test your hardware for Linux compatability and try it out. Linux has come a long way and is ready for the GUI only user. The best "newbie" book I've seen.
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