Linux Books

I'm still studyng for the exam an this book if full of tips and information i will centaintly use, clear content and practical examples, it's a must if you are planning to get the LPI Certification.

This book is directed to people who wants to take the LPI certification. So, if you just want to learn linux, don't buy it.
Anyway, good book. Recomended.

I found this book is invaluable to learn all the ins and outs of Linux and administration. There may be better books to teach you how to take the LPI test but this book will last you thru your system admin career.

I have just finnished exams 101 (730 points/800) and 102 (740 points/800).
Theese seems to be quite good scores, according to the LPI website, and i owe it much to LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd edition.
The book is well written, with lots of relevant information if you want to pass the LPI level 1 exams. And even better, its a very nice book to use as reference in system administration tasks.

However, like someone has pointed out earlier. It doesn`t quite cover 100% of the exams. More like 85%, so if you want 700+ scores, i advice you to seek additinal literature on the web. There is plenty.

But this book is a great foundation and i am using it now on 201 and 202.

Folks,

The description from Amazon and the Editorial reviews are a cut/paste job, and they probably refer to the FIRST edition. I don't have much to say about the book (just received it), except I thought this might be useful:

As of June 2007, this book includes preparation for BOTH LPIC-1 AND LPIC-2 exams, i.e. exams 101, 102, 201, and 202.

So it's better than the description. I'm giving it 5 stars because you have to rate the book if you want the review published, and no O'Reilly product has ever disappointed me.

Enjoy :)

I've been a typical Win32 programmers living in a world of Microsoft development tools and APIs. Having had tried Linux development (as a hobby) numerous times in the past I always got stopped by the lack of quality books similar in quality to what Microsoft Press was pumping out for Windows programmers.

This one, however, is just excellent. It's not narrow as some Linux books are, and it's not one of those ancient UNIX programming books.

80/20 rule applies to many things including learning. You'll be using just 20% of "linux programming knowledge" at least 80% of the time. This book carefully picks those 20%, just the "right stuff" and captures it beautifully.

And it's a hardcover too. Buy it.

I bought this book to help me with my first C programming project under Linux. I actually read the first 4 chapters straight through, which is unusual for a programming book. The section on termio was excellent and helped me to avoid many of the pitfalls that are overlooked on several programming web sites. This was probably one of the most useful programming books I have bought in the last year. (I usually buy 15 to 20 a year).

Here the book I need for GNU/Linux System Programming :)

And if you have also "Advanced Programming in Unix Environment" the you have the complete bible to program in Linux Environment :)

I read both editions of this book. When I read the 1st edition, the 2nd was not out, yet. Then the 2nd came out, I read it, too, hoping it's much improved. I was not impressed, however, either. To me, there is plenty of what listed in the book, but not enough why on the things listed.
A better alternative, I think, is "Linux Programming by Example: The Fundamentals" by Arnold Robbins. Arnold says in that book he plans to write more subsequent volumes on the subject.

The Linux operating system provides a sophisticated framework for running programs. Within its sturdy covers, Linux Application Development by Michael K. Johnson and Erik W. Troan provides much of what intermediate to advanced programmers need to know to take advantage of that framework.

The book is divided into four major parts: Getting Started, Development Tools and Environment, System Programming and Development Libraries.

Part 1 - Getting Started, is a very high-level overview of Linux itself. The three chapters cover barely 20 pages, and discuss the history of Linux, its licensing, and the online documentation.

Part 2 - Development Tools and Environment gets more detailed, but ends up as a medium-level view of what tools you might use to actually create and debug your application. Six chapters covering about 75 pages discuss editors (Emacs and vi), make, the GNU debugger gdb, tracing, gcc options, glibc, memory debugging tools, libraries, and the environment. Each chapter feels a little light-weight except for the one on memory debugging tools.

If the first two parts seemed to just skim the surface somewhat, Part 3 - System Programming definitely dives into the deep end of the pool. Part 3 has 13 chapters and covers 450 pages, almost two-thirds of the total book. My major complaint with Part 3 is that related chapters appear to be separated by others. Five major groups of functionality are covered.

The Unix/Linux process model is explained in detail in Chapter 10, and should be followed by chapter 15, which goes into job control. File handling is introduced in chapter 11, expanded in chapter 13, and directory handling is covered in chapter 14. Interprocess communication is discussed in chapters 12 - Signal Processing (discussing simple semaphores) and chapter 17 - Networking with Sockets, which extends IPC across the network. User interfaces are covered in chapters 16 (terminals and pseudo-terminals), 20 (virtual consoles), and 21 (text-based interfaces for the Linux console). Timers, encryption, and writing secure programs are the topics of chapters 18, 19, and 22.

Finally, Part 4 covers the various development libraries commonly available to the programmer. Chapter 23 covers the ins and outs of string handling and regular expressions. Using S-Lang to handle the terminal is the main interest of the next chapter. Chapter 25 discusses database interfaces, specifically qdbm, which is licensed under the LGPL. Traditional option functions getopt and getopt_long and their cousin on steriods popt are detailed in the following chapter. The final two chapters cover dynamic loading of shared objects with the advantages that provides, and user identification and authentication, covering id-to-name translation, and Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM).

This book has a lot of information packed within its covers, When programming, one needs a number of reference books at hand, and Linux Application Development should definitely be one of the handiest. My only concerns were how the first two parts seemed skimpy compared to the rest of the book, and the part on System Programming could have been laid out better. That said, Linux Application Development rates a 4 out of 5.

If you want understand all the sed advanced commands, this book is for you !

I recommend using perl instead sed or awk

This book is a timeless classic, the information on sed is invaluable to anyone who regularly works with text files or streams (after all sed is short for stream editor). Not only is it very informative it's also a fun and easy read... You'll be seeing uses for sed almost every day once you learn how powerful it can be!


The last 1/2 or so is on awk and although it's also very well written and informative it's not quite as useful if you're already experienced with a high level language with excellent text processing facilities like Python or Perl. However, it's work reading even if you keep thinking "I could do this in _____" because sometimes awk really is the right answer.

I had to do some text processing and I wanted to learn sed & awk so I picked this book that is, to my knowledge, the only book completely dedicated to these tools. The chapter on 'advanced' sed programming is very scary because when using 'advanced' sed features, the syntax is cryptic. It is nice to know that these features are there but I want to stay away from them and perhaps use awk or perl for the tasks that would require those 'advanced' features. Still, when you stick with the 'basic' and 'intermediate' sed features, you can do cool things easily in shell scripts.

Overall, the book was not thrilling to read but it does a good job to teach you these text processing tools.

I have looked in this book again and again in an attempt to find out "how do I do xxx with awk or sed?" I just need a quick and dirty script to do something. The way the book is written prevents getting such answers. It is TERRIBLE as a resource for solutions to real problems. Presumably you can "learn sed and awk" from it, but what I want are answers, and this book gets in the way of that. It has literally never helped me solve a problem -- I always end up finding what I want with google somehow. Example: my latest experience was trying to write a script to simply go through a long shell script, and for each line, if it started with "if", "case" or "done", I wanted to prepend "echo line#" (echo the line number) to the line, so it would echo the line number when the script ran. If it had a certain other string in it, I wanted to replace that string with another, and if none, then just preserve the line. Should be pretty simple as a programmer, but I could not get the answer out of this book. It does not mention the FNS variable which allows you to echo the line number, for one thing. Sigh, I could go on... I'm in the minority, but I've made my point. I'm still looking for a good sed/awk reference.

In a nutshell, if you don't have this book, you are probably not a serious programmer or system administrator.

Both sed and awk have been around for ages, and they are part of the fundamental toolkit of any Unix/Linux professional. Furthermore, there are versions available both for native Windows and for Linux-like environments under Windows (cygwin, MKS, mingw.)

If you are a Perl hacker, you probably use Perl for a lot of the tasks that would otherwise be performed with one of these tools. Nevertheless, they are worth your time.

This book consists of one large section that is mostly distilled man pages, along with more specialized chapters later on. Emacs, vi, bash, sed and gawk are all covered in detail. This book is my main reference for bash, vi, sed and gawk, as I am an Emacs and Z Shell user. Despite the material in the "Commands" chapter being redundant with the online documentation of any GNU/Linux system, I like having a printed book to view. This is usually the first thing I go for when I'm using `find'.

I recommend getting a used copy or a previous edition, because the sections of real value in this book will still be valuable, even if they are three or four years old.

Getting a bit long in tooth, but Linux hasn't changed that much since this was published in 2005. Much of it is a reprint of what you'll find in the MAN pages, with better tyography and formatting. Not particularly helpful for the rank beginner, unless used as a secondary source.

As a handy reference to Linux - truly Linux in a nutshell - it still has no equal in terms of comprehensiveness and ease of use.

Jerry

This book is a constant companion on my physical desktop....if you deal with Linux in anyway at all this book is a necessity.

This book is as it promises, lots of information in a very (relatively) small space. The chapters are organized on topics that the newbie (read: me!) needs to know about and the explanations are thorough and well-written. While the old hand will understand the material covered easily and without much review, the newbie will have to read and re-read to get it all. Chapter 3 lists the most common LINUX commands and details arguments that go with them. The index and the fact that the commands lists are alphabetical make it very easy to look up a specific command or function and find out what you need to know to make it work on the spot. The chapters on Shells and on the VIM Editor are very informative and make two tough topics easy to understand. Reading through the VIM editor chapter as I did a lab practical made the process almost fun. For me, the best part was that I could understand the book, and my way experienced friend also finds it a useful reference for his more advanced work. So, I'll be able to use it while I grow into it as a LINUX user.

If you've been in the tech field for any length of time you own at least one Nutshell book. If you like them, you own several; if you don't, you probably stopped at one.

Linux Kernel Development (2nd Edition) is a great book. It is written in as easy a style as possible for a topic as technical as the internal details of the Linux kernel. If you are someone with some programming experience who wants to learn how the Linux kernel works, this is a great place to start.

The book goes into good detail for pretty much all of the main tasks the kernel performs. It includes simple code examples, with easy to understand explanations. If you need a book that goes line by line through the kernel... this is not for you. But, if you need a book that explains the basics thoroughly, but doesn't bore you to death with detail after detail, then buy this book already.

Note: This book covers up to 2.6.10, which is starting to get a bit old. 2.6.26 is current as of this review, so some of this info is out of date, but still is helpful.

This book is just great! I've been reading linux kernel source codes for a while and this book put all things together.

Hi,
eveything is good,
the price, the shipment, and the time to delivery.
very impressed.
Thanks,
Sridhar

I heartily recommend this book to anyone doing Linux Kernel or Kernel module development. Although the Modules chapter could be expanded upon, the rest of the book gives excellent insight into the workings of the 2.6 Kernel. Also, the three appendices provide good examples and additional information. This book has provided invaluable information for completing and documenting a complex project I've been working on.

Excellent book for Linux rampups(esp with years on other OS'es).
A flowing style that explains effortlessly about scheduler, slabs, dentry.

In Chap 12, it would be nice to have filesys comparison in table format(e.g. Reiser, ext3, jfs wrt performance, journalling), although this strictly is not kernel.
Chap 18(Debugging) could also be more polluted with real life tools info, e.g Kprobes, LTT, lcrash or LKCD or the coolest toy on sourceforge)

Overall, money very well spent on this book.

Akkana Peck has provided a needed tutorial to this fascinating open-source image editing program. The GIMP user interface is a bit different and this book helps make sense out of the multiple windows you see. Topics include improving digital photos, selections, layers, drawing, filters, etc. This book not only tells you how to use the GIMP image editing tools, but also tells you what to watch out for. The book is on glossy paper with hundreds of high quality color images, including helpful screen shots. Since the GIMP program is free, you only have to pay for the book. Such a deal!

This book is an invaluable tool in learning to use the image manipulation software "Gimp". I would like to see tool use exercises/lessons in the early part of the book. I needed a CD with the book, when I had no Internet access...

I am using a 64-bit version of Mepis 7 a easy desktop Linux operating system, and found this book invaluable while I continue to learn. Gimp was one of the graphic software package included with the Linux Distribution I use at home. I have also downloaded Gimp and installed it in the neighbors Windows XP system and find it works the same.

That experience of installing this graphic tool in two different operating systems was different, The ability to move from my Linux system to the neighbors Windows system and have the same tools and functions available with this book was amazing... If you Need to learn this graphic software package, this published book will certainly assist you...

The Healing tool is one I use often and I would like chapter devoted to cone and the heal tools. Clone is touched upon, but with the healing and clone tool, there are things that can be accomplish I could not imagine possible...

In the next revision, also add an expanded easier method for the user to understand, to allow the student to become accomplished using paths. Please include more steps and exercises for the users to cope with this vast feature...

I am using Gimp 2.4.5 and looking forward to version 3 of Gimp and will be lined up to purchase the new book.

MT

I used this book for a class, it was good but vague at times. I had to look up some tutorials online to help me out.

This is a book about GNU Image Manipulation Program, an open source replacement for the expensive Photoshop software. I played with GIMP for a couple of years with some on-line tutorials. I didn't get very far and I was frustrated. With "Beginning Gimp, From Novice to Professional", I'm finding that the power of the software is amazing. It's also not hard to learn. Really! Now I'm doing great work and spending very little time getting it done. If you have done some photo editing, you know that getting great results quickly is a big deal.

The on-line instructions are out of date so forget it. Whether you are creating art with dazzling special effects, touching up vacation photos, adding text, making fliers and advertising copy, or all of the above, read this book. This is obviously a big endorsement of GIMP software too. [...]

This book is a must-have for anyone using GIMP for more than cropping and removing red-eye.

I've been using GIMP for about 3 months. I've been figuring out how to do different actions by trial and error, through web searches, and by reading PhotoShop books and tutorials. I tired of experimenting to understand the details of tools, and bought this book. It is OUTSTANDING. It contains clear explanations of many GIMP functions, and gives details and examples about the settings that control each one. I find the author's instructions very clearly written, well organized and complete.

Ms. Peck's technical skills and knowledge are reflected in her writing - she knows software development and software use, and communicates it well.

So far this book has greatly improved my use of many GIMP features and tools including: Layers, Clone, Selection tools, Selection Editing, Quick Mask, brushes, and paths, to name just a few.

My only criticism is that I have had a few advanced questions that are not covered, but this has been very rare. I'd welcome this book being twice as long - and I'd buy that new edition in a heartbeat. But until this outstanding author writes that book, the current edition is a great resource for learning and using GIMP.

I purchased this book to get a better understanding of how Linux, and especially Ubuntu, works - I got exactly that. This book offers a broad basic introduction and a fairly in-depth insight into not just Ubuntu, but also to Linux as a hole.

It describes the differences between Linux and windows, and gives some insight into why Linux does things a little different.

If you a looking for a beginners guide into Ubuntu, this will do the trick!

Jesper
Denmark

The title says it all: "BEGINNING Ubuntu Linux". It really is about using Ubuntu Linux as a substitute for Microsoft Windows. There are advantages to doing so, namely cost. Ubuntu Linux is free.

Ubuntu has gained popularity because it is a straight-forward installation, a welcome relief to many people who have previously tried to install Linux or are simply accustomed to the sort of hand-holding insallation of Microsoft products (when nothing goes wrong).

Keir Thomas tries to cover a lot of territory and therein is the major weakness of the book. Linux, the operating system, by itself is a huge subject. Add to that sections on the BASH Shell, running various forms of multimedia, OpenOffice and a few other subjects and guess what? Nothing is covered in great depth. Usable, yes. But not great depth.

Also, Thomas has a slightly idiosyncratic style. This is particularly bothersome in chapters where he is dipping into more or less pure Linux, such as using the BASH Shell. The examples can occasionally be a bit hard to follow, though they all eventually do make sense.

Overall, for the inexperienced Linux user who is seeking a replacement for Microsoft Windows and Office, "Beginning Ubuntu Linux" is worthwhile. For the person seeking a more extensive knowledge of Linux, per se, there are better books available.

Jerry

To start off this is a great book for beginners Much better 100 times than the Dummy book Great Reccommend, Good Reference & training book

Ubuntu Linux is the easiest Linux distribution yet. I'm a computer programmer by trade and I have played with Linux in the past and felt it just wasn't ready for the mainstream public. Linux has come a long way in the last couple of years and Ubuntu proves that Linux IS a mature O/S that can be learned and loved by anyone.

Beginning Ubuntu Linux is one of the best books I have ever read about any Linux distribution. It introduces you to this foreign O/S called Linux. It helps you with the install and then it leads you on a journey of installing software that you will really use every day. The best part of all is you don't have to pay anyone for the use of the software this book shows you because it's almost all free. That's right I said free. The author has went to great lengths to find free software that the everyday Jane or Joe will use and then he takes it a step farther and gives you information about the software and he also provides links to other software that may be of use to you.

This book is so easy that even my wife (a non-technical person) could pick it up and start working with Ubuntu.

I wish Ubuntu and this book would have been around 2 or 3 years ago.

I'd heard about Linux for years and had been wanting to use it. I didn't know where to start, though. My biggest concern was not damaging my current Windows XP configuration. I also wanted to know how I could use Linux on a daily basis. All these issues were addressed by this book. If you're an semi-experienced Windows user but know nothing about Linux, this book is for you. It is written in an easy to understand way that covers Linux's inception and installation. All in all, I would recommend this book.

Very well written book. I found answers to all my questions regarding iptables. A lot of examples. Well done!

I set up a simple host-based firewall using this book.

Overall, the book is excellent. It has a nice balance between explaining concepts and giving actual firewall rules.

I think the non-firewall security topics are superfluous and would best be left out of the book, though.

I have 'fiddled' with Linux systems for some time, almost exclusively as servers (My personal preference is OSX/Win for work stations), but I have never before felt like I knew enough to put together a gateway firewall system on my own, so I have always had help with that.

This book has helped me to truly begin to understand how iptables works. I have previously used a Shorewall interface for working on a firewall, but I found that things were just a step or two too abstract for my liking. Linux Firewalls gave me a good (not excessive!) helping of background/theory, and then started showing me actual firewall scripts, interspersed with explanations for almost every command issued.

The book is not for a complete Linux/networking novice. It really does not help you if you don't already know how to do important administrative tasks like assure that the firewall script is executed at the proper time, or know how to fill in the blanks of things that are not strictly Firewall related. That's what I liked about this book, personally: It did not explain to me what a Shell was, or take 50 pages to describe the OSI model (yet again!), and it does not lecture too much on what is or is not the proper way to do things. It just shows you how to do various things, and gives you the information you need to be able to go from there.

I had a lot of questions and firewalls before I bought this book. I found the answers and then some. The technologies and concepts are clearly and thoroughly explained.

I give this 5 stars not because I think its the best book available on the subject but because I got exactly what I expected and found no issues with it.

The book is part tutorial and mostly configurations. If you are looking to implement a firewall and would like a walk-through for different services then this is your book. At the beginning of each chapter, the author discusses the topics in generalities and then each specific service you are configuring is discussed in short detail followed by the setup of the firewall rules.

The author starts with a simple firewall and builds upon that model throughout the book so you can get as simple as you like to as complicated as the book gets. It's not really targeted towards a business firewall but I found that it probably has enough information in it to help configure a small to small-medium business firewall.

What this book isn't is an in depth discussion of firewalls or specific strategies. He talks about different approaches to doing things but it is by no means the point of the book.

The documentation that comes with Python leaves a lot to be desired. Try understanding and using internationalisation, for example. Any help that comes along will be welcome, especially in the form of examples.
Alex Martelli really knows his stuff and it's very convenient to have the information by your side in this format, so even if it's a little condensed at times I would recommend this book as well as Python Cookbook, for advanced examples.
I do wish that Python 2.1 Bible would come out in a new edition: it was fantastic for basic sample code.

'Python In A Nutshell' is one of those de facto standard O'Reilly books that is required reading/owning for anyone that develops in said language. In this case it's the long time popular scripting language Python. Originally released in 1991, this language has grown and expanded into the juggernaut it is today. With around 700 pages of material, this book will show you the ins and outs of everything yummy that Python can do. From the basics of talking about to define variables and create conditional statements to object oriented programming, you are going to quickly see why Python is popular and USABLE.

This book goes further than just a teaching book and/or just a language reference. It's meant to bridge both necessities as you learn to progam in Python or want to improve your existing skillset. With this book you will achieve all your Python goalssssssssssssssssssssss (pathetic snake joke attempt here)

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This is simply the best reference book for Python.

As a reference book it not suitable for learning Python from scratch, even if there is a not-so-short introduction to the basic language features. The book is well organized and informations can be found quickly.

The only con is a bad index. It is really complete, but sub-topics are organized as a tree without any graphical feedback of the current indentation level, and often you do not understand wich topic they belong to.

The 2nd edition of the book was published on July 14, 2006 and is obviously highly recommended: Python in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly))

The author Alex Martelli is Uber Technical Lead at Google, Inc. Martelli holds a laurea in Ingegneria Elettronica from Bologna University. He wrote Python in a Nutshell two editions, and also co-edited the Python Cookbook. He's a member of the Python Software Foundation, and won the 2002 Activators' Choice Award. Martelli spent 8 years with IBM Research, earning three Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, and on.

The book is a great reference and full of insights and good programming techniques. It moves pretty fast to make a good introductory book, but once one has a reasonable understanding of Python fundamentals, anyone wishing to advance their understanding and application of the language can benefit from Python in a Nutshell.

I found that this book has been able to cover every thing from fundamentals of the Python language to a comprehensive description of some of the more esoteric newer language features and at the same time address many of the applications of the language. The presentation style is clear and very readable with concise examples, and not full of extraneous fluff. The subjects are well laid out beginning with a swift comprehensive introduction to the language, and a good description of the basic elements including classes, methods exceptions, modules, decorators and built-ins. There are sections on the Python library and extension modules, Network and web programming including some discussion of some of the existing python web frame works and socket programming. There is material on extending and embedding Python and alternate ways to extend python beyond c-extensions. The book was released just prior to the final release of Python 2.5, but there is considerable material covering most if not all of the latest 2.5 features such as the with statement.

I have found Python in a nutshell 2nd edition a valuable learning tool and reference resource and would recommend it for anyone interested in using Python to its fullest.


Reviewed by Max Slimmer user and proponent of Python since release 1.3.

I keep coming back to this book, either to clarify what other books needlessly complicate or simply don't include. As a nutshell book, I would say it is more of a fairly comprehensive reference. Its discussion and explanation of python elements, which tend to make it more of a comprehensive manual and less of a nutshell are very much appreciated. The book's well thought out layout and well self-sustained sections allow you to actually sit down and read this book to learn from and not just use as a passing reference from time to time. I pair this book with Beazley's Python, Essential Reference, which I think actually takes more of a 'nutshell spirit of presentation'. Between the two, they are my most often go-to books while in the coding process.

I bought this book to warm up myself as I am going to do some CentOS5.1 system-tunning for the Linux and I have been away from admin of Linux for several years. This book covers every aspects of Redhat5 however you have to go to other books or internet or manual if you want to know more samples or details.

I found this book very helpful in preparation for RHCE. It is really easy to pass the test if you follow the book carefully.

This book is quite good for RHCT.
For RHCE - I found that it doesn't explain well following topics :
1) squid and especially acl for squid
2) bind chapter is just a bunch of text, I could not understand anything out of this chapter. Had to take book on Fedora Core 6 which explained step by step how to setup bind.
3) sendmail. It has only basic stuff, again book on Fedora Core 6 has much better explanation.
4) Some of the stuff on LVM is not accurate in the book (for instance, you can resize volume without need to reformat it, just use resize2fs). I suggest to read LVM howto as a substitute for this chapter.


Overall this book is OK, but I would say that alone it's not enough to pass RHCE.
Download Installation guide & Deployment guide from Red Hat and whenever read this book also reference those 2 docs.

I picked this book up about a month before my RHCE exam was scheduled. I had been studying using the course objectives and the Red Hat Deployment Guide, but felt I was missing that extra jump to put me ahead of the game. This book was EXACTLY that extra jump. As a direct result of studying this book, I nailed the first half of the RHCE (100%), and got 93%/89% on the RHCT/RHCE portions of the second half, respectively. I'm an RHCE now, and I owe it in part to the author of this book. This book is no substitute for real experience. I have been working with Linux for well over 15 years, and running a 50% Linux datacenter for that last 9. But experience isn't everything, because most people, even in a high-linux datacenter environment, don't use all of the technologies that are tested on this exam. Do yourself a favor, buy this book.

Pay special attention to his break/fix instructions and the "Exam tips." You will thank me later for that advice.

I took the RH300 and failed my exam. I then read this book cover-to-cover and repeated the sample exams over and over until I knew everything by heart. I went in and re-took the RHCE exam and am now certified. Without this book, it just wouldn't have happened.