Canllaith.org

I recently went looking for a good beginner’s resource for a budding Linux user, and came across Linux in Easy Steps by Mike McGrath. It’s an excellent primer for the new Linux user. Focused on the Ubuntu Linux distribution, Linux in Easy Steps covers installation, desktop configuration, and basic command line use in a slim volume with plenty of screenshots.

The ground covered makes an excellent prerequisite for more serious tomes on Linux systems. At the end of the book the reader should have managed to install Ubuntu and customise it to their liking, and have a general understanding of the Linux filesystem heirachy, the command line, and vi with which to embark on more complicated projects.

The pace is thorough without unnecessarily belabouring simple concepts. Preparing your system for Ubuntu is covered in reasonable depth, and the install process is detailed with step-by-step explanations. Once installed, the basics of desktop customisation are covered before moving on to a discussion of the Linux file structure and manipulating files in the graphical file browser.

OpenOffice is covered in some detail, and the last desktop-centric section rounds off with a look at working with internet and media applications, including how to get proprietary codecs.

Fully half of the book covers the shell and administration, and is a credible crash course in the basics of understanding the shell, manipulating text and files, and performing administration tasks. A command reference finishes the shell section wiith a clear, well formatted list of useful utilities.

Every section in this volume is colour-coded, making it easy to turn back to as a reference. Current Linux users who are shell savvy will find nothing here, but to the person holding an Ubuntu CD thinking ‘Now what?’ this may just be the book for you.

I struggled to get through Bill Bryson’s journal of his travels through Australia, so his general primer on science - ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ - sat unread for my bookshelf for the better part of a year. I recently acquired the illustrated edition and used that as my impetus to start reading. In a word?

Wow.

While at some junctures Bryson generalises to the point of inaccuracy, A Short History of Nearly Everything is a commendable effort to answering the question “How did we get here?” while giving the reader a whirlwind tour through classical and modern science along the way.

Bryson’s whimsical and leisurely style is well suited to the contact, and his ability to so clearly and simply express complex ideas makes this work accessible to those who studied no further than high-school science. It’s fascinating to read at the outset that the book came out of Bryson’s dissatisfaction with his ignorance of natural sciences. It’s a testament to his extraordinary skills at researching and presenting materials that this work is so comprehensive and so well laid out.

The book traces the history of science by the stories of the scientists who furthered it, with engaging tid-bits about them as people that provide levity without allowing the narrative to flounder in an excess of trivial detail. A picture emerges of the women and men who’s names I’d seen only in passing in textbooks as interesting, complicated, and above all human, beings.

The gentle pacing of this work belies the amount of ground it covers and I finished it feeling I’d learned at least as much as I’d been entertained. This is not a book for science buffs, but those of us with an interest in the world around us who haven’t studied much science will find a gentle but rich experience here.

I wish my early high-school general science had presented material a little more like this. Seeing those who so indelibly marked themselves on the history of science as flawed and human might have made me a little more likely to see it as a possible career for myself. As it was, it was an interesting experience having my childish faith in Einstein, Newton, and Curie being infallible slowly fade away to an understanding of great people being still people too.