I've looked at all the other books but this is the only one worth considering if you want to learn how to install and use FreeBSD. It is thorough, very readable, but doesn't go so deep as to confuse or frustrate you. You will have enough understanding that, if anything in the book should go out of date or change, you will be able to figure out what to do or where to get online help. Just by using this book, I went from knowing virtually nothing about FreeBSD/Unix to running an online web server with Apache and Postgresql and Gnome/X Windows.

Some ask whether The Complete FreeBSD by Lehey might be as good or better than this one. While Leheys book is good, I found it went deeper into the subject than I was prepared for at the time and I don't recommend it for beginners. I do, however, refer to Leheys book from time to time. I reviewed his book there.

Found the book to be really useful. First had to iron out the differences from Linux which they covered. Then it covered the essential services i.e. SSH, DNS, SMTP, Firewalls and the the BSD disk structure. Even after trawling through the Net I found this book had covered most of what most serious administrators would be interested in. Switched over 7 of 12 Internet servers from Linux to FreeBSD. Highly recommend this book.

I have found the topics covered in this book very useful. Most of the common applications are covered: Apache, Bind, DHCP, FTP, MySQL/Postgre, VPN, etc. While not an advanced book, the coverage is thorough. I run each of the apps listed above except for VPN and I used this book to install/config each app.

This book has taught me not only about FreeBSD, but also the FreeBSD way to doing things like the strict use of the filesystem and installing all apps under /usr/local. I have not mastered any of the topics written about in this book, but after reading this book I understand a great deal more about them. For example, the differences in the startup scripts between Linux and FreeBSD and how applications are installed with ports and packages compared to APT-GET and RPM.

Finally, I enjoyed the fact that the writing style was not cut and dry or overly humorous and drawn out.

Great book that, once read, becomes a great reference.

I think it is very good introductory book for freebsd expect the fact that there is a great amount of pages spent on the X windows system and its utilities. My opinion is that the title 'unleased' doesn't feet with aspects such as 'how to start mozilla and print' , 'gnome' , etc. I can understand the need of presenting the X window system as an important piece of the whole presentation of freebsd but I think that reference was too long to focus with. So , only for the freebsd-related staff that help me a lot I put 5 starts, and as for the complete book I put 3 stars. If those "lost" pages where filled with useful content and secrets about freebsd I would definitly put 5 stars.

I have been using FreeBSD for about 2 years now, I have about 7 different books in my shell. I have to tell you the truth, this is the best, detail, organized, professional book I have ever read of freeBSD, not even the handbook give you so much detail as this book. If you are a begineer and want to really learn this OS, but this book. It is the best you can get.

I bought this book to increase my FreeBSD knowledge and skills as this book is listed for intermediate to advanced level users. That is not the case. The book focuses only on the specific preferences of it's authors, ignoring many important aspects of the OS. For a person new to UNIX who doesn't have a prefered shell, editor, X client, etc, this would be a decent book to begin with, however for those of us who have those preferences get ready to read about Authors' bias against them. Further, there are several places where information is not correct at all. The index is horrible, making FreeBSD Unleashed unusable even as a reference guide. Save your money, and buy a book written by someone who knows what they're doing.

As has been said by another reviewer, this is a Swiss Army knife type book. At the same time, it isn't overwhelming. I haven't encountered the errors, but then again I haven't used all of the examples or checked the publication date of my copy (so I may have a later version).
What I like about this book is that it covers enough of everything to get a system up and configured with the essentials for Internet computing.
I used to be a regular UNIX user, but haven't done much of it for over 6 years, so the general UNIX sections were good refreshers. The product and application specific areas were invaluable Overall, tremendous value.

Of all the books out there on FreeBSD, this one is probably the most authoritative. This has sections on configuring SAMBA, Print Sharing, Apache, Sendmail, and BSD administration.

The only other book out there of this quality is "Absolute BSD" by No-Starch Press. However, that one has a few misprints in the Crontab section that can be confusing.

A definite must have. The layout of content was pretty standard. The topics pretty standard. But the authors did a good job at keeping it simple and not assuming anything. They defined issues, concepts, and explained various ways to accomplish specific tasks. They did not try to impress / aneshetize me with over the top verbage or 1001 ways to use the ls command. They told me what I needed to do, why I need to do it, where everthing is, and how to go about doing it. Within a few days i was shell scripting, building kernels, loading ports and packages, configuring my network, configuring my mail server and web server, and a lot of other fun stuff. Hope you enjoy this book as much as i did. Take it easy.

This book does do a great job of walking you through the rather complicated process of installing freeBSD and it gives you enough of an idea of how to get a couple of basic services configured. However, it is woefully inadequate when it comes to administering the system once you've got it running. The section on configuring security and firewalls is surprisingly limited and many of the sections are so generalized that they're useless for trying configure anything but the most basic services.

The CD that was supplied with the book has a disk error. I'm sure if I contacted the publisher, they'd send me another but I just used a friend's copy.

I recommend this book to help you get an installation done. Its also great for becoming dangerous. As with any computer book, it can't teach you everything or purport to provide every solution to your specific problems.

You will get a good understanding of FreeBSD from this book. You will not become a system administrator by reading this book.

Unlike Windows OS's, FreeBSD changes DAILY. Writing a book for it is not an easy task, but FreeBSD Unleased does it well. I hope they keep coming out with updated ver's as FreeBSD's version number climbs. As of Summer 2002, you shouldn't use 5.0 as your daily OS or for a server, so the book really focuses on 4.5 (4.6 came out June 2002). It covers every topic, and has good info about PORTS! (programs that are not apart of the basic OS) like pop3/imap, ssl tunnels, php for apache, what types of security hacks/attacks you need to watch out for and how to combat them.

I've only been using FreeBSD for 3 months (I'm a old hat MCSE, CCNA) and I use 4 resources for 99% of what I learn ...I've looked at all the other FBSD books, none compair to the wide array of info here.

An awesome book, absolute must read. I've been working with FreeBSD now for a few years and i love that Operating System. I got this book, because it was interesting for me what i might not know about FreeBSD and it most of my questions when i reached page 942. However i have a feeling that something is missing in the book. I mean, for some people FreeBSD might be just another Operating System, but for some people it means a lot more. So if you are ever into FreeBSD this is a book you should get first. That's about all i could say about it, one more time, i personally recommend it to anybody, from a beginner to system administrator.

I've been casually using FreeBSD for about a year now and wanted to make it my primary workstation OS. After paging through all three books on FreeBSD at my local bookstore, I bought a copy of Unleashed. The biggest reason I bought it was that it covers FreeBSD 4.5 (the RELEASE version at the time of my purchase). It also has a lot of information on 5.0 CURRENT.

The strength of the book is its breadth. It's pretty much a Swiss Army Knife book. You could literally start with only a little knowledge of UNIX (or multi-user OSs) and build a rather complete server to host all kinds of services for a web site, or a local network using this book. (I recommend you DO build a hobby server to try out some of the examples in the book.)

There are several glaring problems, though. The biggest being technical errors strewn throughout the text. If you're entirely new to UNIX, you'll probably run into a few problems if you type in the commands exactly as listed. I'm a technical editor myself, so my "edit daemons" are always running in the background and pointing out problems while I read anything. I would say that the book has no less than 20 errors (either in command statements or technical theory) that are large enough to cause you problems if you're not sure what you're doing. Be careful when you're reading and if something looks a little odd, it probably is, so look it up somewhere else.

I would also say that it would have been nice to see some of the examples on the CDs that were promised in the text. (My CD-ROMs came with FreeBSD 4.5 RELEASE and FreeBSD 5.0 CURRENT.) The "phantom references" to the section on periodical service configuration would have been nice to see.

If you use or plan on using FreeBSD, either as a production-grade server or a stand-alone workstation, this book should be on your shelf. This either means that the book is really useful in spite of its problems, or that there just isn't enough choices when it comes to up-to-date books on the coolest OS out there: FreeBSD. (Help me, O'Reilly.)

I am a senior engineer for network security operations who uses FreeBSD daily. I want to encourage other authors to write FreeBSD books, since documentation helps administrators adopt unfamiliar operating systems. Unfortunately, "FreeBSD Unleashed" suffers too many flaws to warrant more than an average to below-average rating.

The book suffers from three major weaknesses. First, my 'First Printing, August 2001' edition contained typos on pages 357, 358, 363, 364, 378, 435, 730, and others. FreeBSD newbies may not always recognize these mistakes. Second, the book makes numerous references to scripts on an accompanying CD-ROM, but the discs sold with the volume only offer FreeBSD 4.4 RELEASE and FreeBSD 5.0 CURRENT. I could not find the missing scripts at the publisher's web site, either. Third, several sections refer to missing content. For example, chapter 14 apparently should have contained guidance on automating processes using 'periodic'. It's difficult to implement later recommendations that cite this missing documentation, such as pages 426-7.

Beyond these three flaws, the book does not suit its intended 'Intermediate-Advanced' audience. The material appears to be aimed at users trying to migrate away from Windows or perhaps Linux. 'Intermediate-Advanced' users do not need lessons on fundamentals of networking like hardware and protocols. I was also frustrated by the inclusion of a chapter on 'Perl Programming' which was too vague to be helpful. If the authors couldn't do anything useful with the 23 pages allotted to the topic, the chapter should have been dropped. (In contrast, I found the shell scripting chapter more practical.)

I really hoped to give this book a glowing review. My company's FreeBSD servers routinely exceed 100-plus days of uptime, and I believe the OS is an incredible platform for servers. While I found sections of "FreeBSD Unleashed" useful, they were not sufficient to make me overlook the book's weaknesses. Strangely enough, it's probably still a good idea to buy this book if you're a FreeBSD system administrator. It's important to collect and support documentation for this robust, powerful OS. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for the book that does it justice ...

This would have to be the most helpful computer resource i've read to date. Its approach is incredibly refreshing, practical, yet not afraid to get technical for the sake of quenching the 'but, why?' thirst. I think its focus is right on the mark.

I've read it front to back more than twice, still learning new and interesting information. If anything it utterly inspired me into loving FreeBSD, something other books have not done at all.

I have bought another copy of this book for my internet company as a resource to have around the office for general FreeBSD questions.

Staff are fighting over the copy, and the book can be found on the desk of my administrator, to my business partner who does not know much about UNIX and finds the book very helpful as a reference.

Books like these really help move the FreeBSD community forward into the 21st century.

For absolute newcomers to the operating system, I would not recommend this book. I'm somewhat familiar with FreeBSD/Unix and I knew some of the items/text in this book is wrong. Most notibly are typographical errors (typos). Examples are OK, the in-depth instruction is quite well. All of the documentation I've seen (printed, online, handbook excluded) seem to be dated. FreeBSD 4.3+ is current, and all the examples talk about FreeBSD v2, v3 and some v1. In hopes for an "all-around" solution, I would take this book with a grain of salt.

The back title states that it will show how to harness the power of FreeBSD. It does not do much regarding that. There is a lot of time spent explaining things like the difference between a hub and a switch. It also does not go into depth into many areas such as recompiling the kernel. It makes a recomendation to use StarOffice, but does not even mention many of the problems with trying to get this installed.

The book jumps around, and there does not seem to be a good cronological structure for the book.

With Linux (or MS for that matter) there are probably thousands of books, some for the neophyte, some for the expert, and some for almost every level in between. With FreeBSD, there are only a few--Ms. Anderson's book, which fills a niche for the beginner, Mr. Lehey's, which covers just about everything (it's rightfully called the Complete FreeBSD), Mr. Mittlestaedt's, designed for the Network/Sys Admin, the Handbook, also available on line and this one.

This book gives straighforward explanations of various aspects of running FreeBSD. I liked its section on firewalls, for example, more than I did the Handbook's section. It's a good reference to have around.

This book seems the perfect bridge between Ms. Anderson's and Mr. Lehey's.

This book is an absolute must if you're considering a FreeBSD installation. Although FreeBSD has many great features, ease of installation is not one of them - it's about where Linux was 2 years ago. I found this book to be invaluable in getting past installation glitches. In addition, it has very good advice about system configuration. It assumes a fair knowledge of Windows, but also points out differences with Linux that are helpful to experienced Penguin heads.

I was particularly pleased with the book's sections on common *nix applications such as Gnome and Samba. I found it significantly more comprehensible than the Linux books I've used. Highly recommended.

As a FreeBSD enthusiast I could say that everything is on the handbook, but I'd be a liar. Everything about FreeBSD is on FreeBSD.

For all those who have heard about FreeBSD and desire to start from scratch (i.e. moving from Windows), you'll need all the help you can get: you'll have to look for the Complete FreeBSD book, the Handbook (printed or online) and will be surfing the FreeBSD man pages after the instalation... and then you'll have to use your own creativity imagination and all the internet search engines available to understand and implement this beautiful OS. But the results are excellent, the stability and security that FreeBSD offers are outstanding.

FreeBSD Unleashed is certainly a book which has many updated information and shares many common points with the books mentioned above, however, all of them complement each other. I certainly recommend this book for everyone who needs a good reference book for FreeBSD and already owns the others mentioned.

Good Luck!

There is nothing left to desire after this book. It has everything you could ask for in the most profound FreeBSD reference guide available. Its true that some information is available online (great many thanks to the FreeBSD doc. team), it is nowhere near this extensive. All subject matter is explained with enough detail and troubleshooting information that I find it invaluable.