"The Complete FreeBSD": errata and addenda

[Dmitry Mityugov]

On 6/10/05, Greg Lehey <grog at freebsd.org> wrote:
> The trouble with books is that you can't update them the way you can a web page
> or any other online documentation.  The result is that most leading edge
> computer books are out of date almost before they are printed.  Unfortunately,
> The Complete FreeBSD, published by O'Reilly, is no exception.  Inevitably, a
> number of bugs and changes have surfaced.
> 
> "The Complete FreeBSD" has been through a total of five editions, including its
> predecessor "Installing and Running FreeBSD".  Two of these have been reprinted
> with corrections.  I maintain a series of errata pages.  Start at
> http://www.lemis.com/errata-4.html to find out how to get the errata
> information.
> 
> Have you found a problem with the book, or maybe something confusing?  Please
> let me know: I'm constantly updating it.

This is a very good book. Here it gets off the shelf again and again.
But sometimes I think I do this only because I have nothing better. In
my opinion, this book is far from the complete state; for example, you
have to scroll at least 50+ pages back and forth to configure both
servers and clients for a particular service if you need to (just
because configuring servers and clients for a particular service,
strangely, are separate chapters in this book). In addition, even
after studying this book, I had to study a lot from other sources (Dru
and others, thank you!) before I started to really understand what I
could do with FreeBSD, even base things like updating the OS. And last
but not least, the "unusual" Engihsh language used in this book was
quite noticeabe even to me, who only accidentally spoke it.

In my opinion, the name of the book is not quite correct. I am truly
sorry but only "Better than Nothing FreeBSD" comes to mind.

Hopefully this is a feedback you were also looking for.

-- 
Dmitry

"We live less by imagination than despite it" - Rockwell Kent, "N by E"