I haven't read this one yet, but I've been noticing a big improvement on the quality of documentation around Squeeze. Maybe I'm just being subjective here, but I don't recall Lenny's being as well presented.

Extra info around the book can be found here: http://debian-handbook.info/

It's out?! AWESOME! I've sponsored the translation (30euros) and plan to read/learn the entire thing. This is GREAT news for Debian and Linux in general.

10 minutes browsing through the handbook and I already found great info that I did not know:

The Debian package format is designed so that its content may be extracted on any Unix system that has the classic commands ar, tar, and gzip. This seemingly trivial property is important for portability and disaster recovery.

Hoping it will approach the quality of the formidable FreeBSD handbook. That would be great!

One comprehensive quality source of administration information. Yes please!

Haven't read through it, but it definitely looks like it was inspired by the FreeBSD Handbook, and aspires to it.

I'm glad it's out, I'll need something like this when I eventually move from Ubuntu to Debian.

I've been waiting for Linux distributions to pick up the idea behind FreeBSD's handbook (http://freebsd.org/handbook) which is an absolutely fantastic resource that has helped me even as a veteran FreeBSD user make sure I had all my ducks in a row before making modifications to my system.

After just superficially skimming through the FreeBSD handbook, it seems similar to Red Hat's Deployment Guide [0]. Red Hat has lots of other useful documentation on topics like storage and virtualization administration [1].

[0] http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6...

[1] http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/i...

Has anyone had a chance to read this yet? I've heard many things ago it. Either way, this is a great thing for Debian.

Reading the PDF version now. So far my main criticisms are:

Pretty ugly font for a manual.

Translation is a little iffy, bad spelling, bad grammar and strange sentence structure.

Graphics and diagrams are quite lossy and low resolution.

It could definitely do with another proofread or three.

But If you can get past these things it seems pretty thorough and has plenty of good info in there. Hopefully none of it was lost in translation.

I also donated and am happy to finally see it out there especially under creative commons.

If you see potential improvements, you can make them!

  git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/debian-handbook/debian-handbook.git

Thanks! I don't know if I could fix all the grammar, but the spelling nazi in me wants to correct those mistakes for sure.

Maybe the PDF is designed for smaller screens . It looks better on an iPad or android tablet. I used the .mobi instead to wipe out the font anguish. ;-)

There used to be a handbook at debian.org, are they the same thing? As always, decent document is great for the project.

No, this is a translation of a non-free French language book that was funded via a kickstarter-like site.

http://www.ulule.com/debian-handbook/

You're likely thinking of the Debian Reference.

"This Debian Reference (v2) (2012-03-25 12:47:43 UTC) is intended to provide a broad overview of the Debian system as a post-installation user's guide. It covers many aspects of system administration through shell-command examples for non-developers."

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/index.en....

It's unfortunate that the domain name is so spammy looking.

I am not sure I would say it’s spammy-looking, but there is something I don’t like about it.

I bought debianhandbook.(com|net|org) (without hyphen) and filed a bug report against debian-handbook asking if they would like me to redirect the three domains or transfer them to the webmaster of debian-handbook.info.

It's unfortunate your username is so...genocidal looking. Maybe you should relax your preconceptions about TLDs.