This nice-looking 330-page paperback book arrived in pristine shape, probably as a remaindered item since it cost less than a buck. It had instructions in it which allowed me to download an additional free electronic copy of the book from the publisher's website. This worked flawlessly in 2009 for a book published in 2004.

The author bio makes it clear he is a seasoned IT professional who has done a lot of writing. There are tidbits of history and open-source philosophy that many readers will find interesting.

The promise from the title is that Windows Power Users will get to learn all about the guts of Linux. Well it should have said Fedora Linux so I would have known enough not to buy the book. It seems that Fedora is so complicated to install that it takes one hundred pages to tell someone how to do it. Glad I got Ubuntu, it didn't require even one sentence of explanation to install it.

Onward to the Gnome GUI. Unfortunately the Gnome described bears little resemblance to the Gnome v2 of today and so his descriptions and screen shots only create confusion for today's readers.

Now we are at page 135-Chapter 6 about Files and Directories. This is a very helpful chapter based on unchanging core principles of Linux and is well worth reading. It includes a glowing description of the features of a file manager called Konqueror which runs under KDE instead of Gnome. What he neglects in his enthusiasm is to say how to install and launch it under Gnome.

Then comes write-ups on about two dozen bundled utilities and their use. Again these descriptions are subject to dating, some might be useful, others not. There were probably some good things there that I missed, hard to tell what is out-of-date unless you are already an expert. Then on page 311 we come to Chapter 14 "Under the hood" where we are given a very brief taste of the most common bash shell commands. This is another core knowledge area well worth reading about, but is way too short a treatment for power users.

So was I happy with the book? In 2009, I found about fifty pages of interesting pertinent material which made for a fast read at a bargain price. It took a lot of panning to find the gold. The safest course is to consult the current on-line documentation for the release you are using, but as the author points out, this can be spotty. I found that whole chapters can be missing in currently available Linux distributions and the man pages read like Greek with no examples and no sample printouts of what is produced by the commands. Many ardent supporters think Linux is ready for prime time, but official Linux documentation has never meet that standard. Book publishers still play a critical role in educating the Linux user. If you are running an old version of Fedora, this could be a very helpful book indeed, otherwise look for a newer book.

The author is kind enough to supply his personal email address in case you have urgent questions you are unable to answer and he points readers to a link for "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" which teaches readers lessons in research and self-sufficiency. The book is actually written by Whil Hentzen, not by Martin Brown.