About this Book
I believe Das's book is something entirely new in the corpus not only of
GNU-Linux primers in regional languages, but of all computer-education books
in all languages (well of course I have no idea whether something similar or
better exists in Icelandic or Burmese, but I have seen quite a few works that
are supposed to be top-of-the-line, including the O'reilly range).
Das's approach is not pedagogic and pedantic, but friendly and casual. One
remarkable element of his style is that his language is never cock-sure, but
continuously modifies itself under the pressure of emerging concepts. A clear
example of this can be found in the way in which he re-schedules his lesson
plans in many of the pre- and post-scripts found attached to the actual
lessons. In a way, this is a re-working of the learning process itself, and
the resulting air of informality will probably be very reassuring to the
newbie reader.
This apparent haphazardness, however, does not prevent Das from being learned
and thorough. He begins at the beginning - of computers. starting with
Charles babbage and Ada Lovelace (with a little bit of
Blaise Pascal and Von Neumann thrown in),
he continues in his trademark moody-yet-methodical style
down the generations till he has professed the Free Software philosophy,
talked about hardware interrupts, and given his pupils the basics of
bash scripting.
The book is a fine technical introduction to the intricacies of GNU-Linux, but
Das refuses to be bogged down by technicalities (too common a phenomenon in
books on computers), and takes every opportunity to look at the big picture.
He will as soon talk about the rise of imperialism after the European
renaissance being the big driving force behind the mechanisation of
calculating methods, as about the auto-loading of kernel modules. And all
this is blended in finely with his cocky, sometimes irreverent, brand of
humour which brings the work as close to having literary value as is possible
for a book on computers to have.
Most importantly, Das is ideologically motivated. He is the founder of
GLT-Madhyamgram, a Free Software forum in his locality. there is hardly a paragraph
in the book that doesn't reflect his support of software freedom. he is not
content dealing with the 'how' of the matter, but examines the 'why' and the
'wherefore' equally deeply.
Extremely well-written and a pleasure to read, the book should be treasured by
the discerning reader, and be very useful for the aspiring student. It
deserves to receive the full support, financial and otherwise, of FSF-India.
(From an open mail by Tathagata Banerjee, Coordinator, FSF-I,
West Bengal Chapter, to Dr. Nagarjuna, Chairman, FSF-I)