* O'Reilly's 'Linux in a Windows world' book
“You buy them books, and buy them books but all they do is eat the covers.” – anon.
This week we will, nevertheless, take a look at a couple of books that probably belong on your bookshelf where you and your staff can get to them as needed. Not, I hasten to add, for late night snacking but as an aid to doing the job.
First up is one you’ll probably need more and more as time goes on. Tim O’Reilly and his tribe have published just about every definitive book on Unix – its utilities, services, applications and derivatives, such as Linux. Why should you care? Because the latest is entitled “Linux in a Windows World” and subtitled “A system administrator’s guide to heterogeneous networking.”
Linux is, like it or not, here to stay. But there’s no need to be grudging about its growth. While a homogeneous network is easier to maintain and administer, a heterogeneous one is more amenable to different types of users. Windows, and lots of it, isn’t bad but a little Macintosh here, Linux there, and the occasional mainframe or minicomputer simply makes the organization’s business easier to handle. Your job, then, is to see it all runs well and also that each user’s needs are satisfied in an optimal way.
You can’t do that last thing without knowing the capabilities and idiosyncrasies of the various platforms, services and applications that are available.
“Linux in a Windows World” won’t teach you basic Linux administration (the author recommends O’Reilly’s “Running Linux” or Sybex’s “Linux System Administration” for that). Nor will it teach basic networking. Rather, it’s targeted directly at the Windows network manager. Specifically, author Roderick Smith sets out to explore “…the most cost-effective ways to add Linux to your network” while describing “…the basics of how to get started configuring specific servers.”
The book doesn’t favor one Linux distribution over another.
It does begin with a discussion of Linux’s place in your Windows network (for those who still aren’t sure) then goes on to the basic functions provided or needed on the network: file and printer sharing, centralized administration, remote login, etc. Special attention is given to the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) approach to security in a Linux environment and how to integrate that with Windows’ own mechanisms.
You can go online (https://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxwinworld/) and view the cover, table of contents and even download a chapter (“Using NT Domains for Linux Authentication” https://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxwinworld/chapter/ch07.pdf) and I suggest you do.
Next issue, I’ll talk about a book that I think should be on your shelf, but that I hope you’ll never have to use.
