Small business owners today are like many other entrepreneurial or seasoned business owners, including medium-sized business owners. They want to find ways to cut costs wherever possible while still remaining competitive in the marketplace. Venture capitalists are always on the lookout for small businesses or prospective business owners who have great ideas for a product or service but, at the same time, know how to keep their eyes on the bottom line. This includes a solid business sense to grow their business without sacrificing the use of technology that has proven to help minimize the risk while maximizing the profits. One way a small business owner can keep costs down without sacrificing the advantages that computerization brings to the business through the use of applications that support file/data sharing, print sharing, word processing, SQL database management, spreadsheets, networking, the Web, and more is to find ways to reduce the costs of these applications and the operating systems they run on. The most viable cost solution for most small businesses is to learn to build their business systems using free and open-source software, including the operating systems and the applications that run on those operating systems. This is where the free and open-source Linux operating system and the free applications that run on Linux come into play.

This guidebook contains a treasure trove of information for small- and medium-sized business owners. It shows them how to build or expand their businesses and associated IT capabilities through the implementation of a small office/home office (SOHO) or SMB Linux infrastructure. This enters the exciting business sector of low- to zero-cost software running on Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, or CentOS Linux. The authors consider the components necessary to successfully launch a business operation while also training the company IT system administrator to become a Linux sysadmin to support these components.

The book, which consists of 19 chapters in two parts, starts with the basics of walking the reader through the installation and configuration of the Linux operating system. Part 1, “The Beginning,” covers such topics as: introducing Virtualbox, Git, and Vagrant; Linux basics; users and group management; startup and services; networking and firewalls; package management; and storage management and disaster recovery. Part 2, “Making Linux Work For You,” adds topics like: infrastructure services; web and SQL services; mail services; file sharing and printing; backup and recovery; networking and virtual private networks (VPNs); directory services; performance monitoring and optimization; logging and monitoring; and configuration management.

I found this book to be very easy to read and follow, extremely informative, up to date, and focused on the needs of the small- to medium-sized business owner and the IT staff to make them successful in today’s business world. It shows them how to accomplish what they need in the way of technology without breaking the bank through the use of free and open-source software. I would highly recommend this book to those looking for a way to start a business or to grow their existing business without having to rely on a costly Windows-based infrastructure to support it.

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