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Debian GNU/Linux books in English, German and FrenchDebian GNU/Linux is arguably one of the best documented distribution currently available not only because of the extensive documentation available for the 18000+ Debian packages on the distro itself, but also thanks to the many high quality Debian books available in various languages. I decided to take a closer look at what was out there in English, German and French. Most of the books I evaluated are recent publications, but some older but still useful ones are included in this review. Books in English: Learning Debian GNU/Linux Published in 1999, this is the oldest of all the books I assessed. On one hand, being 7 years old is truly ancient for Debian purposes, but on the other hand this is still a solid O'Reilly publication which can be now obtained very cheaply. It could also remain useful for anyone installing an older version of Debian (for example on older hardware) or using CLI utilities such as pppconfig/pon. The book covers basic UNIX concepts and commands, the Bash shell and Samba. It also discusses dselect and apt basics. Other parts of the book, such as the installation of Debian, desktop use or GNOME are so dated as to become useless. Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 Unleashed Another 'ancient' book, but packed with so much valuable information as to remain highly useful for any Debian newbie. This 1000 pages long volume ships with a CD of Debian 2.1 and covers pretty much 'everything' which could be covered six years ago including basic UNIX commands, shell usage and scripting, system administration, security issues, programming basics (C++, Java, Python, Scheme, tcl, tk, Expect) or CVS project management. Even more importantly, the authors of the book looked beyond purely technical issues and included a presentation of what makes Debian unique among other GNU/Linux distros such as the commitment to free software or the DFSG. Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 Unleashed is subdivided into 6 parts: The Basics, Debian System Administration, Security Issues, Development Environment, Linux Applications, and Appendixes. With the exception of the appendixes, each of these part could be published as a separate book or could form the core of 5 Debian GNU/Linux courses . Since this is now considered an 'old' book it can be purchased used for pennies (I got my copy for a little over 2 dollars!). In my opinion, the breadth of information covered in his excellent book makes it a 'must have' for any Debian newbie. This excellent volume comes with a CD of Debian 2.1 Debian GNU/Linux Bible This book is rather typical for the 'Bible' series which mostly means that it is an overview of many topics but without much depth. This is not necessarily a bad thing, this only means that Hunger's book, which is almost half the size of the “Unleashed” volume, covers less topics and, sometimes, covers them with less details (in fact, I would submit that Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 Unleashed is much more of a Debian 'Bible' than this volume). Huger organized his book around 5 sections: Getting Started, Working with Debian, Administering Linux, Maintenance and Upgrade and Linux Server. Issues specific to Debian, such as, for example, the Debian package management, are covered only in a couple of short paragraphs and any person new to Debian will need other books to become moderately experienced with Debian. Debian GNU/Linux Bible is shipped with the version 2.2r2 of Debian on a CD. Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible This new edition of a Debian “Bible” is a vast improvement over the preceding version. First, the books features a well-written introductory section called “The Fundamentals” which includes something which I believe every Debian book must have: a introduction of the Debian Project. Furthermore, the 25th chapter of the book, entitled “The Debian Community”, goes into many more interesting details and provides an excellent outline of the environment which makes Debian unique among other distros. An appendix to the book even reprints the Debian Constitution. The other sections of this book are The Linux Desktop, the Internet Server, the Intranet Server and The Developer. The Linux Desktop covers graphics and sound configuration, KDE and GNOME, Internet applications, publishing, Digital Photography and Multimedia, and Games. The Internet Servers section covers security issues, E-Mail, Apache, FTP, DNS, BIND and SSH servers. The Intranet sections includes DHCP, file serving and sharing, OpenLDAP, Intranet Email, printing and databases. The Developer sections includes the chapter on the Debian community, building packages, and Debian archives. Remarkably, all this is still packed in the same 600 page volume as the first 'Debian Bible' version. It is important to note here that Debian GNU/Linux Bible is the first book to cover the radically new Debian Installer introduced with Debian Sarge 3.1. This excellent reference book comes with not one, but two CDs: a Debian install CD with the new installer and the most popular packages and a Knoppix live-CD. The inclusion of a Debian-based live-CD is a very useful choice as it gives the newbie the possibility to 'play around' with Debian without having to install anything while giving the more experience user a very convenient rescue CD. While some, including myself, would have personally preferred a Debian DVD instead of a CD, the choice of a CD is probably better to meet the needs of most readers. Besides, with APT (or Synaptic) installing more packages is so easy that all that is really needed is the base system which easily fits on a regular 700MB CD. All in all, this is probably the best 'general' and up top date Debian book since the 2000 publication of the 'Unleashed' book. The Debian System This volume written by a Ph.D student at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, is truly a superb book and the best overview of the Debian project and community ever published. It is also the only in-depth discussion of all the technical aspects which set Debian apart from other GNU/Linux distributions. After a short introduction of the book itself, the reader is presented a detailed and very well written overview of the Debian Project's history and philosophy, followed by an in-depth explanation of the importance of free software and licensing issues. Next comes a presentation of Debian community and the Debian Project including its organization and an explanation of the role Debian officers, delegates, developers and users. This section concludes with a discussion of the social aspects of the Debian Project and community and how users can become contributors to the Project. Krafft's contribution to the understanding of the Debian community by those outside it cannot be overstated. Even among Debian users many have very little understanding of the unique nature of what could be called the 'Debian collaborative model'. How did Debian succeed against seemingly impossible odds by bringing together over 1000 developers scattered over five continents to produce what is, in my opinion, the largest and most capable distribution ever developed? How did Debian become the 2nd most used GNU/Linux distro (after RedHat) without any marketing efforts and even without a real budget or even a single paid employee? How does one coordinate the work needed to maintain 4 official releases (experimental, unstable, testing, stable) and one unofficial one (backports) across eleven computer architectures while remaining totally 'democratic' in its day to day activities? Only Martin Krafft's book provides an in-depth answer to this question. Krafft also look at technical aspects unique to Debian including package management and system administration. However, it must be stressed here that this is an advanced discussion which assumes a solid understanding of the GNU/Linux operating system. Topics covered include dependencies management and package tools, security and advanced concepts (building kernel packages, mixing releases, manual packaging, etc.) This book is ideal for anyone who already has a solid understanding of the UNIX, BSD or GNU operating systems who is interested in looking into under the 'hood' of the Debian distribution and community. The Debian System includes a DVD of Debian 3.1r0a. Books in German: In 2005 three top-quality Debian GNU/Linux books were published in German each with a slightly different objective: the first one describes itself as 'Taschenbuch' or paperback pocketbook, the second one as a 'Praxisbuch' or practice book while the third one is an 'Anwenderhandbuch' or user's reference handbook. This terminology accurately reflects the specificity of each book. We will begin by looking at the pocketbook. Debian GNU/Linux This book is something of a mix between the two excellent O'Reilly “running” and “in a nutshell” series and, like the O'Reilly volumes, it is 700 pages long 'nutshell'. Like the “in a nutshell” books it contains many GNU commands, but in addition to that this books also features a general outline of the various applications and administration tools a Debian user will need. The books has 5 main sections: Installation and First Steps, Techniques and Practice, Advanced Networking and Servers, Tricks and Configuration and a CLI reference. This book is definitely aimed at the beginner level and even the “Advanced” section features only basic concepts. It comes with two Debian-Sarge “Testing” CDs. Debian GNU/Linux – Das Praxisbuch This superb hardback volume is an extremely well designed and clearly written 'general' Debian book covering all the essentials. The aim of the book is to “show the overall potential of the [Debian] distribution” and it fully achieves this goal within a compact format of only 600 pages. While this book is designed as a gradual step by step introduction to Debian, its excellent organization and clear presentation also make it a perfect desktop reference manual. It is arranged into 3 main sections (Installation and Configuration, Debian GNU/Linux as desktop and Administration) and 23 chapters covering all beginner to intermediate level topics. A very nice feature of this book is the “Galileo book update”: a 12-digit book code is printed on the inside cover of the book which gives access to additional materials related to the book contents on the Galileo website (www.galileocomputing.de). This book comes with a Debian-Sarge 3.1r2 DVD. Debian GNU/Linux Anwenderhandbuch Frank Ronneburg is a well-known Debian expert who for several years now has been making his book available online (only the original German text). The latest 2005 version of his magnum opus is another masterpiece. The book begins with a good overview of the history of free software, GNU, the Free Software Foundation and the Linux kernel followed by an presentation of the Debian distribution. Next follows the usual Debian installation chapter but with a unique twist: it covers all of the following situations: the upgrade from Debian 2.2 'Potato' to 3.0 'Woody', the update of Debian 2.2 'Potato' with a Linux kernel 2.4, the upgrade from Debian 3.0 'Woody' to Debian 3.1 'Sarge' and, of course, the installation of Debian 3.1 'Sarge'. This systematic and highly useful to all likely situations is very much reflected in the rest of this extremely thorough and well designed book. The other topics covered in this book are: basic usage, packet management, Debian package management in details, system administration, networking, servers, graphic interfaces, Internet, printing, office suites, multimedia, security and additional topics. The book concludes with a good index. Books in French: Debian GNU/Linux, installation, administration, exploitation This is the French translation of Frank Ronneburg's original German text. The two main differences between the German and the French editions is that the French one does not provide an online version of the book but, unlike the German one, ships with a DVD of Debian Sarge 3.1. The other differences is that the German version is printed on thicker paper and is almost twice as big as the French one. There are, here and there, smaller differences between the two versions (judging by the original ISBN version of the text translated into French is seems that the French translation is based on a different edition of the German book), but other than that all the comments made about the original text apply to this edition also. Linux-Debian – TCP/IP – Les Services Réseaux As the title clearly states, this is a very specialized book: it deals with networking issues and how to integrate Debian into the network(s) of a company. Although this is not a book for Debian newbies, it does begin with a good step-by-step overview of the Debian 'Woody' 3.0 installation. On one hand, considering the dramatic changes brought by the new Debian installer this makes the book a little dated, but on the other hand anyone capable of understanding the installation of 'Woody' will have absolutely no problems installing 'Sarge' anyway, so this is not a big issue. After going over some Debian basics, the book soon plunges into networking issues: the TCP/IP protocol, networking basics, DHCP, Intranet, DNS, PPP, ISDN, ADSL, PPPoE, Apache, Squid, Samba, NFS, SMTP, POP, IMAP, Postfix, NTP, SNTP, and SSH are all covered in detail. The text is clearly written and logically organized and all the examples are, of course, Debian based. All this makes this book a most valuable reference for any Debian sysadmin. GNU/Linux Debian (2nd edition) Raphaël Hertzog chose an original approach for his book: it is structured around a fictional case study of a medium sized company whose growth has brought about the need to redefine its IT infrastructure. This company has now decided to gradually migrate all its computers to Debian and the reader is put in the situation of a sysadmin directing this migration. Through this hands-on approach to Debian, Hertzog cover all the main issues covered by other books, but with a practical twist which makes it both a pleasant reading and a good guide. Migrating a system can be one of the most daunting and frustrating task for any sysadmin and this book clearly warns of the methodological mistakes to be avoided at all cost. This book ships with a Debian 3.1rc3 'Sarge' CD. Bookmark/Search this post with: 
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Great overview, Andrei.
Great overview, Andrei. Thanks. I have the Debian/GNU Linux 3.1 bible and it has been very helpful.