What is in this book?

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 util 

ity which provides a smoother handling of dependencies, among other useful

features. These discussions are only intended to give the reader an introduc 

tion 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.

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