The blurb on the back cover makes it clear that the 'Hacks' in the title refers to the traditional meaning and has no relevance to script kiddies and their ilk. More subtle is the fact that this book does not cover the desktop at all. Instead, it covers an eclectic mix of topics ranging from networking, services such as BIND and Apache, and general administration issues such as backup, rsync, SSH, etc. The focus is on advanced administration of a Linux system.

The book itself is divided in to 100 short 'Hacks' (reminding me of O'Reilly's UNIX Power Tools book, albeit a much more portable version at 210 pages). This gives the book its main advantage - it's great to dip in to and there's always something of interest. Indeed, I'm already rereading some of the tips to implement the ideas on my systems. The downside is that topics cannot be covered in great depth but pointers to 'further reading' are provided and of course, some things simply won't be of interest to all readers.

That said, I really liked the book and would be happy to recommend it to Linux users. Anyone new to administration should look somewhere else first though and then come back to this book once they understand the basics.