Concept and Approach

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As a language teacher, I have always preferred programming books, mathematics books, and old-fashioned foreign-language-learning texts because of their straightforward, skill-based orientation, in which each chapter builds upon the skills acquired in the previous chapter. I have tried to organize this book in that manner so that you will never be called upon to do something that you have not already learned. I also like such books because they not only teach the reader how to do something, but also provide him or her with the chance to put those morsels of knowledge into practice in the form of exercises. I have therefore included several exercises, or projects, in this book, where appropriate, to give the reader opportunities to apply their knowledge. This book will serve as a reference text and will also provide a dynamic learning experience, so that you can learn by doing, as they say.

The projects throughout the book have a secondary purpose as well — to round out your Fedora Core system so that it can do anything you want it to. As you will see when you install Fedora Core, your new system (despite having more software than you will ever know what to do with) lacks certain applications and

support files that you’ll need to get the same or greater functionality as you had in your previous operating system. When you’ve completed all of the projects in the book, that will no longer be the case.

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