Ebook: FreeBSD Unleashed

This is an excellent book! It explains many things I've noticed but didn't comprehend well in FreeBSD and Linux. The authors are very gifted at communicating, a rare gift concerning tech book and online doc authors (generally, such works so dull, they may merely serve (too often) as ambiguous reference material). The authors also give some interesting history about FreeBSD and its competitors; they give a very compelling case for the OS, which was first being developed in the era of the first moon landing and in the heart of the cold war.

The authors give the steps for setting up the GUI, and many options for this (this is bedeviling for many of us--a default GUI doesn't "pop-up" after install as in commercially-supported Linux, Windows, and the Mac OS--one "builds" the GUI from a low level with desired features), and, also, the authors explain the reasons for having to set up the GUI (the OS is favored by server users who prefer a lean command-line interface).

The bewildering VI editor is thoughtfully explained in some detail as well: It is a high-powered, yet, heavily keyboard-command dependent (and user-unfriendly) text editor that often is necessary for system configuration and software development. It's not user friendly (or "intuitive") because it was developed in the aforementioned cold-war era of really limited computer power and storage: Needless to say, it hasn't changed much....

The book, which I haven't yet finished but am eagerly reading daily, gives many caveats (such as configuring the sync settings of monitors correctly). FreeBSD is not a good OS for a PC newbie to learn to use (at least not without a knowledgeable mentor); nevertheless, I think this is a very good intro book for gamers and high-level techies--these may wish to use FreeBSD in advanced ways such as for servers, developing firewalls, as well as for common internet/e-mail and other networking tasks (such tasks are inherently more secure and speedy on FreeBSD)--or for those well-exposed to Linux, or Apple OSX--cousin-OSes or, in the latter case, a direct descendant....