Acknowledgments

Everyone should write a book. It's great. You get to bother all of your friends and family to help be test cases for you. You get to sound like you have "important" things to do. You get to spend way too much time at coffee houses with your laptop. I had a lot of wonderful help, support, and encouragement from many people in writing this book.

Eben Hewitt is a great writer, a great man, and a great friend. He has not only served to contribute good feedback and encouragement, but he is also an inspiration in everything he does. Some people try to do the best that they can; Eben works to do everything better than it has ever been done before. His ideas resulted in this unique series of books. Eben, thank you for talking me into it.

I had three great technical editors working with me on this book. Shafer Stockton, Jonathan Garrison, and Jonathan Bailes not only checked for technical errors; they went above and beyond what was required to make constructive suggestions and convey new ideas.

Everyone at Pearson, Prentice Hall, and Addison Wesley has been terrific. John Neidhart, Lori Lyons, and the rest of the professionals in the company have shown what an efficient and creative team of people they are.

I have been lucky to have the support of a wonderful group of friends and family. Thanks to Shafer for introducing me to Linux and being patient when the newbie needed tech support over the years. Trevor deserves violence and gratitude for making me use the Gimp until I liked it. It's hard for a designer to walk away from Photoshop. The excitement that both of those Linux geeks show for Linux and for open source software is an example for everyone to look to. I want to thank both Jenny and Bill for wanting to and trying to help be test users. They might not have been able to get Linux running, but now they can try again with this book to help them.

My biggest thanks go to Joshua. You were supportive through the late nights, the grumpy sleepless weeks, and the frequent trips to the coffee houses. I love you. You are the reason for everything I do, and you're darned cute, too.