1.1. Audience

This book is intended for a target audience of technical and system administrators who manage Linux servers, but it also includes enough material for home users and others. It discusses how to install and setup a Red Hat Linux Server with all the necessary security and optimization for a high performance Linux specific machine. Since we speak of optimization and security configuration, we have used only source distribution (tar.gz) programs; the most available type for critical server software, like Apache, BIND/DNS, Samba, Squid, OpenSSL etc. Source packages give us fast upgrades, security updates when necessary, and a better compilation, customization, and optimization option for our specific machines that often we can't have with RPM packages.