Mike Bilow wrote:
>
> Karl F. Larsen wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
>
> KFL> It has 1.000 pages. It has a forward from Linus Torvalds.
> KFL> It has 4 chapters on Shells and shell programming. It is
> KFL> very well written in plain english. All the jargon of Unix
> KFL> and Linux is discussed in plain english. There are questions
> KFL> at the end of every Chapter.
>
> Personally, I think that Sobell's book is not a good choice for a first book,
> since the newbie user is usually a year or so away from worrying about how to
> write shell programs. In general, Sobell assumes that the reader has some
> nodding familiarity with using Unix, although the book certainly can be used as
> a bare introductory text.
>
I think it depends on exactly what you are looking for in a Linux/Unix
book. For a quick Unix commend reference a book like "Unix in plain
English" is fine, but it will not guide you into the realm of Sys
Admin.
"Unix in a Nutshell" appears to be as good a shell programming/command
reference guide as any.
As far as Linux specific books go I would stay away from "Linux
Unleashed" by Sams Publishing co. I bought a copy a few years ago
complete with an early version of RH Linux and I found the book to be
virtually useless.(the Linux version was good). It just never worked
for me, anything I needed to know seemed to either be missing from the
book or, I could do better using the man pages, info, whatis, or local
and/or online documentation.
A much better Linux specific book is "Running Linux" by O'Reily. it
helped me a great deal with my first installation as well as many Sys
Admin tasks. How much up to data it is nowadays I am not sure. My copy
is somewhat old and I don't use it that much these days.
As far as Unix/Linux programming goes (my favorite topic) there are 2
books that I have found quite useful. One is "Beginning Linux
Programming", by Wrox Press, http://www.wrox.com
It covers a wide range of Unix programming topics and is easy enough
for the beginner provided that the beginner has some proficiency in C
programming which the book assumes that you have.
A more general Unix programming book that I use is "Practical Unix
Programming" by Prentice Hall. It is particularly useful in the
areas of concurrency, communications, threads, synchronization,
signals & processes. Again, a proficiency in C is mandatory.
Most other references that I require I find in the man pages, or
online documentation or on mailing lists such as this.
Anyway, that's my synopsis on Unix/Linux books...In a nutshell.
/John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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