The rest of this book is organized into three major chapters:
Chapter 2: Package Management Tools
Chapter 3: Installation
Chapter 4: Basic System Administration
Chapter 2 contains three major sections, covering the three principle tools used in managing packages. Starting with dpkg, the command-line utility that performs the principle package management tasks; the chapter continues with a discussion of dselect, the first user interface to the distribution archives; and finishing up with an introduction to apt-get, the newest package installing utility which provides a smoother handling of dependencies, among other useful features. These discussions are only intended to give the reader an introduction to these tools, with enough examples to explain installation, upgrading, and removing packages with these tools. For a detailed understanding of the advanced features of these tools the reader must wait until they have a Debian system installed. A search for documents on these tools will teach the novice user many useful things.
Chapter 3 provides detailed information about the installation of your own Debian system. The installation process proceeds in two major steps. After information intended to prepare the user and the machine for the upcoming installation, this chapter covers both stages of the installation, as seen from a CDROM installation. Debian provides many different methods of installation, both from local media as well as several network methods. While all of these methods are basically similar, there are minor differences that make it difficult to deliver a general description. Since most editions of this book will come with some kind of Debian CD, this method was chosen so that a straight forward description of the install process could be presented. Helpful alternatives are outlined at the end of this chapter.
Chapter 4 offers an introduction to the basics of administering your new Debian system. Many of the commands described in this chapter are also useful in daily user operations, so this chapter is useful information even when the target machine is a private workstation with no network connections. In addition, examples are provided for adding users, assigning group permissions and other rudimentary tools for administering a multi-user system like Linux.
In addition to these three chapters there are several appendices, covering various details useful to the installation process. Also contained in these appendices are several Debian documents of interest, as well as a copy of the license under which this book is delivered.
Dwarf hopes the reader will find the material in this book to be useful in their discovery of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system.
Luck,
Dwarf