This book patiently explains the material that appears on the RHCE exam with a practical eye--it's clear that the authors have spent time working and experimenting with Red Hat systems and know their subject well. At one point, for example, they advocate creating an account with a username root, giving that account no access privileges at all, and assigning real administrative rights to another account. The idea is that a bad guy could spend all night trying to break into the root account, only to find it useless. This is no mere rehash of company exam specifications.
The book is forthright with the facts and procedures you're expected to know cold on the exam, presenting how-to information (such as disk partitioning strategies for Linux boxes that will play various roles) as recipes ready for you to try. You also get file-system mount options and other detail sets in tabular form. Each chapter concludes with a "Two-Minute Drill" that recounts key facts and important features of the operating system, plus practice questions with answers neatly listed (and discussions) in an appendix. Altogether, this one's a winner--it's a fine choice for RHCE candidates and all Red Hat administrators. --David Wall
Topics covered: The contents of the RHCE exam, including open-source legal issues, hardware compatibility, installation, file management, user management, kernel compilation, X Windows, Internet services, and troubleshooting. Linux 6.1 is used in the examples.