If you're reading this book, I bet that you already have a Unix operating system installed on a system you run. Whether it's a shared server that you're renting space on for your Web site, a file server in your office, or even a PC that you've used as a Unix test platform, this first section will possibly be the least interesting one in this book.
However, it's also possible that you've read through some Unix books (perhaps even my own Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Sections), and are eager to learn more about the internals of Unix and how you can ensure that yours is stable.
This first section, therefore, is going to go through a typical Red Hat Linux installation on a PC, with all the default configuration options specified. Then we'll look at some of the great online Unix and Linux help sites. If you have a different flavor of Unix you're interested in, your installation will doubtless be different (I have experimented with SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and NetBSD, to name a few). The basic concepts, however, will prove similar in almost all cases. And as a reminder, this is the only section in this book where we'll only look at a single operating system. All subsequent material will explore Red Hat Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X as the three reference flavors of Unix. In this section, you will learn:
Unix Installation Options
Basic Red Hat Linux installation
Installation Help Online
