Linux Books

This item is a definite must for coursework dealing with scanning and parsing. I thought that I would be fine if I just relied on web sources to assist me in Lex assignments, but as a deadline approached and I still had no results I turned to this book. The content is clear, concise, and absolutely fantastic. If you want to know how to work with Lex and Yacc, this is the book you need.

This book is a little out-dated. That is fine, though - this book goes over all the essential proponents of Lex and Yacc and Bison and FLEX and all the other variations ... which you will certainly know a lot more about by the end of this book. This books enabled me to read FLEX input from a c-string, which has played a role in a few of my projects. It is great when you just need a quick reminder of the syntax is the tools. This book does not go over how the programs work, which is a good thing, because that would make the book more oriented towards Finite Autonoma and Context Sensive Languages - leave that sort of thing to autonoma theory and compiler design. This is an excellent reference, so buy it if you really need it.

To me a great book flows into your mind, magically providing the information in the order you need it. Of course it depends on whose reading it, but this book, though well worth the 96 cents bargain bin price I paid for it, does not build the constructs in my head the way I'd like.

Authors should always proofread their books with novices, not the experts. Experts fill in the gaps as they read and don't notice if the logic is missing a link. In chap 2, "Using Lex", there is the sentence: "Lex itself doesn't produce an executable program; instead it translates the lex specification into a file containing a C routine called yylex(). Your program calls yylex() to run the lexer."

I waited with baited breath for what it means to "run the lexer". Does it return a token each time you call it? Does it analyze all the input then return? The text ignores this detail and merrily goes on into other details. The chapter is called "Using Lex", but the authors omit how you use it! Of course you can scrounge around in the examples and finally root it out, but a book should paint a crystal clear picture, get you oriented, then drop in the details to build your understanding.

The book looks so promising, sort of like the beauty of the original "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie, but disappoints in it's fragmented exposition.

I did take a compiler course with the "dragon book" years ago and write a parser, so I'm not totally in the dark, but I expected this book to lay the subject out in a much clearer way. But it is still a good book to have and read "offline".

I hope the authors take a crack at another edition and explain it all better.

I like this book because it is a good compromise between lex & yacc man pages and the theory found in books such as the Dragon book. You will get valuable information about the how and why of the tools that will help you to produce a quality grammar without being overwhelmed by details.

Yacc (yet another compiler compiler) and its companion lex (lexical analyzer) are primarily intended to allow quick and easy development of small special-purpose languages. The common mistake is assuming that they are only useful for creating compilers for massively complex eccentric languages. This is not the case, though you could no doubt use them for such a purpose.

Lex and Yacc are commonly used together. Yacc uses a formal grammar to parse an input stream, something which lex cannot do using simple regular expressions since lex is limited to simple finite state automata. However, yacc cannot read from a simple input stream - it requires a series of tokens. Lex is often used to provide yacc with these tokens. As a result, building an application in lex and yacc is often used as an exercise in classes on programming languages and the theory of computation to demonstrate key concepts.

The book starts out building a simple character-driven calculator, and then moves on to build a menu generation language that produces C code that uses the standard "curses" library to draw menus on the screen. The final application is a SQL parser which includes a quick overview of both relational databases and SQL. Some readers will dislike the fact that Lex and Yacc are only capable of generating C code. Thus, the logical conclusion is that you must be able to write C code in order to use these tools. While it would be nice if the sections about the menu generation language and the SQL parser had some information about how to do typechecking and other such things, this book is not about writing a compiler/interpreter using Lex & Yacc. Rather it is just a beginner's guide.

The sections about shift/reduce and reduce/reduce conflicts are especially helpful, as are the sections going over the differences and caveats relating to the major versions of lex and yacc such as AT&T's Lex & YACC, GNU's Flex & Bison, and Berkeley's Yacc. In summary, if you've never used lex or yacc before and think they might be useful tools for you, and you already know the C programming language, this is a handy book to have.

The Linux+ exam isn't easy ANYMORE. I took version 2 and there was NO WAY that this book could get you past the exam. There are lots of errors and some important content is not even discussed. I read a lot more than this book before I passed the exam. I even took a Linux+ 5-day 40 hour class. I suggest you download as many of the free Linux+ and LPI practice exams that you can find on the Internet before attempting the exam.

Stay away from this book! It has a million errors in it. It frequently makes reference to concepts as if you already know them, even though they are either never explained or explained at a later point in the book. Some of the sections seem to have been written by someone who can't even speak English. I was so worried I wouldn't pass the Linux+ test with this heap of trash that I went out and bought another book. This book is frustrating as heck!

Overall: Useful as fuel for a fire, if that.

Excellent study guide. Very easy to read and straight to the point. I passed the exam Feb/2004 using this book.

Trevor Kay's work with the Server+ Bible was a primary reason for my reading through the Linux+ Bible though the book fell short of my expectations. Numerous syntax errors abound and you must be careful when going through the examples in the book. However, this book continues his easy-going writing style which made the reading seem very quick.

Having taken the exam recently (and passing!), you really do need a solid understanding with the command line (switches, switches, switches!), system administration/management and troubleshooting along with hardware fundamentals. For the most part, this book starts it all off for you, but you will likely need other resources to finish off the Linux+.

Do not be lulled, the end of chapter questions, practice test and CD-ROM have way too many easy questions which are not indicative of the Linux+ exam.

I found this book to be too shallow for any serious Linux exam.... I felt that the book was expecially weak on some of the hardware parts :- a major portion of the exam (although some hardware issues like SCSI, memory types were well covered).

The worst part was the sample tests program on the CD didn't run on Linux! It didn't even run under Wine. What would any writer include a crucial piece of software for a Linux book that doesn't run under Linux?? I don't own any OS other than Linux, so I had to borrow a Win98 laptop from someone just to take the tests. The sample tests contained many poorly worded questions with many spelling and layout mistakes. The questions were mostly too easy and would not adequately prepare you for any real admin work.

Luckily I passed the exam, but that's because I also read Smith's Linux+ Stugy Guide in a library. Although Smith's book was also missing certain parts, I felt that Smith's material was written in greater depth, and the sample questions in the book were harder.

If you're a Linux-only user like myself, do NOT buy this book. Its a waste of money because you can't run the test program on the CD.

Ever wonder about the relative popularity of various computer languages? Tired of the interminable discussions in newsgroups about which language is better than another? It turns out that the most distinctive feature of Raymond's book is Chapter 14. It gives a semiquantitative assessment of C, C++, Perl, Tcl, Python, Java and emacs Lisp, as of March 2003.

A fascinating and provocative look at the relative rise and fall. Raymond compares this to an earlier survey in 1997. He shows that C, C++, Java and Lisp have been roughly stable. While Tcl is declining. And Python rose impressively. He suggests that the Perl usage is under long term threat from Python, as the best writers in Perl might migrate to Python.

There is no coverage of C#. It did not exist in 1997 and scarcely so in 2003. Likewise for Ajax.

Very few computer books offer such assessments. Useful if you are going to commit to a particular language.

A good book to read, but certainly not in anyway essential or required reading. The title is hideously misleading as the book should really be titled something like "Observations on what makes UNIX successful" or "UNIX culture" as it has nothing to do with UNIX programming and more with the design patterns and practices that have made UNIX successful. In fact some of the cases you are given as examples are far enough from what can generously considered to be UNIX that you really have to wonder why Raymond (the author) has brought them into the discussion.

There are a couple of things that IMHO drag the book down. 1) Raymond seems to have conveniently decided that the only Unix in existence since 1995 is Linux, ignoring the contribution of the *BSD communities and the emergence of Mac OS X as a mainstream desktop UNIX. In fact classic Mac OS gets more discussion than the UNIX based OS X which is somewhat bizarre given the rich history around its development from NextStep 2) Later sections of the book drift dangerously into Open Source dogma territory as discussions of licenses take over. Again the content is worth reading, but it makes you again wonder why the book claims to be a UNIX programming title in the first place.

What observations Raymond does make are very well presented and relevant, but are not presented in any great depth as he quickly moves onto other topics. Overall the book feels like a bunch of notes that Raymond has attempted to pull together under a single theme, in some cases it works, in some cases it doesn't, but the points that he makes are valid enough that he does somewhat get away with it. Worth a read, but there are other more essential books that should be read first.

Learning what this book had to teach was a pivotal point in my software development career... it was the first time I came to an awareness of looking at HOW the design and development process occurred in my job, and really thinking about WHY we did certain things the way we did. My own development methods changed drastically after reading this book, and my own visible changes have had an impact on those that work with me (i.e. it got them thinking as well about how they did their development). ESR's book spent a fair amount of time in the details of some specific software, but those parts came across to me as examples backing up earlier points he had made rather being "I recommend using this software" endorsements. I've learned from ESR's writings that there's almost always an upper-level awareness to be discovered, whether he's explicitly making a point to back up something he's saying, or whether it's something implicit that steers your own thinking towards something he's said. I highly recommend this book to anyone who's been doing software development (especially in a group environment and steered/constrained by that group's processes) for at least a year, perhaps two. If you've been doing this kind of work for more than two years, and never thought deeply at WHY you design your software creations the WAY you do, it's time for you to pick up this book and see what you can glean from it.

When I first started reading this book, I expected to hear a considerable amount of Microsoft trashing and everything else that follows from fanatical Microsoft haters. However, what I found was an easy to follow book that illustrates many aspects of Unix programming, explains why they work, and shows examples of all of them.

The organization of the chapters is logical and the emphasis on the Unix philosophy helps with the flow of the book. Raymond starts out by enumerating the philosophy and writing a bit about each one. Many are universal, as "The Rule of Separation", "The Rule of Diversity" or "The Rule of Least Surprise" in user interfaces. However, many others are specific to Unix and its descendants such as "The Rule of Silence" and others. From there on, Raymond takes off to talk about how Unix is designed and implemented guided by the items of the Unix philosophy.

The book also includes a nice history of Unix section, which is pretty much the history of modern computing. Reading it made me all warm and fuzzy inside; it was both entertaining and informative. A must-read.

Where this book falls shortly is in some criticisms of non-Unix related topics. Object oriented programming is apparently not appreciated by Raymond. I don't agree with a lot of his claims about how object oriented programming over-complicates things. In my opinion, writing in procedural languages is messy stuff. Also, this man seems to think everything in Unix is simply perfect. Although a bit annoying at times, in many instances the result is positive becase his passion for the topic is clear.

Even though there is no code, it didn't take anything away from reading. The knowledge gained from it is HUGE because of the amount of material covered, and it WILL make you a better programmer, independent of whatever OS background you are from.

I join the other reviewer who complained about the book having no code at all.

What a misleading title.
The reason i came here to read the reviews is that i saw it on sale for just $10, and after going thru the pages found that it's not much use for a professional developer's day job.

Good book, but a little hard to understand. Considering the subject matter that is unavoidable. Part of the problem is due to UNIX/LINUX forks. By that I mean no two versions of UNIX/LINUX are exactly alike.
This book is mostly for system administrators. However those of us below that level can glean a few nuggets of usefull information out of it.

This is a prime example of how technical books should be written. The material is not easy, but the authors' mastery of the subject matter is clear. It is superbly well organized and very well written. I was only interested in OpenSSH and not Tectia, but the way the material is presented, it was easy to skip over material covering the latter. If you need to know more than what is in this book, you better start working with the development team.

This is not just a "how to" book where you follow a recipe to do task X. But it DOES tell you how to do most anything you'd ever want to get done. It would not surprise me if it is being used as a college course book on SSH. You will probably have to read it more than once to absorb everything. A nice blend of history, theory, and practice - even a bit of techno-geek humor. (I honestly do not understand the (few) poor reviews given for this book. I don't know how anyone could ask for more.)

Very highly recommended. Well worth the money.

This book is great if you need to set up an SSH client or server. If you are new to SSH this is
the book for you. As an experienced Linux sysadmin this book still helps. It walks you through
key setup, agents, and explains the differences between the different versions/flavors of SSH.

This book really take me thro' for what I need to know in order to support the deployed SFTP solution. Now, I have clear idea in selecting options while building the package.

This is good for beginners and administrators to get an understanding of the SSH. After reading it, you will know, how to set up and configure the SSH.

However, it will not give you details of the SSH protocol for an implementor. I had to look into chapter 7 of "VPNs Illustrated: Tunnels, VPNs, and IPsec by Jon C. Snader" to get an overview of how the SSH protocol really works behind the doors. This chapter gave pictorial descriptions as opposed to textual descriptions in the SSH RFCs.

In the next version, I would expect this book to contain a chapter giving implementation details of the SSH protocol.

This asterisk title is not for the faint hearted, assuming you have a working knowledge of linux and not afraid to jump in to some command line configuration. That said, there is some great explanation for basic set up to advanced features and to hook up to various VoIP providers.

From my perspective I was hoping for more details such as configuring time conditions for holidays and things of that nature, so I felt the book stopped before it covered topics I wanted. For what it does to, it does it well with detailed examples and descriptions as to why things work they do.

Don't look for this title to be a novice walk through guide, but if you want some good reference for setting up your own small to large business installation having this book on hand is a good idea.

I'm enjoying the book and learning a lot from it, but this newest edition has some editing problems, such as typos:

Page 99: "providers may insteadSession Initiation Protocol" - and I don't know enough about the subject yet to figure out what they meant to say

and logical errors:

Page 71: "if you want to build an IP-only configuration, you can skip to the section on configuring SIP." - but if you do, expect to be coming back to this page because you'll have skipped over some important stuff and will have no idea what's going on

But these are comparatively minor problems with an otherwise great book.

I was looking to this book to gain an overview of Asterisk. As is usually the case with O' Reilly books, this one did not disappoint. I would definitely recommend this to anybody who is starting to explore Asterisk.

Additionally, there are references and details useful for continuing your understanding of this wonderful platform. There is a lot of information that can get you started with a hands-on Asterisk experience.

This is a very good book well suitable to even beginners. contents are explained very well. I made my asterisk system work by referring this book.

The asterisk software has progressed substantially, but worse, the organization of what's important and what's not makes this book hold the distinct honor of being in the top five worst books by O'Reilly Press.

This book provided a solid resource to start writing shell scripts in bash. It is well written, and also provides understanding into some bash features that go beyond just a reference book.

I first bought this book over 12 years ago, and I still use it as the standard by which other books are measured. It must be one of my top 5 favorite computer books, ever.

The author clearly understands the material, and makes it approachable, direct, and easy to learn without being too light or condescending. I wish the same could be said of Java books.

"Learning the bash Shell" is the right size and right price, too. Perfect in every way.

O'Reilly kind of took a turn for the worse in the late '90s / early 2000s, but this was originally published back when they were good the first time. (They've since recovered, IMO)

If you have need to learn the bash shell, you can't go wrong with this one.

shipping fast!! =D nice comunication and information :D
sorry for later review:)
-]Raul[-

I have owned this book for awhile, and over the years it has been my only reference to the bash shell I have felt a need for.

The only down points I have seen in this book is that some of the info seems to be seperated out a bit, making some info hard to find at times (although if you have a hard time using an index, well, bash may be a bit advanced for you), but everything is covered well, and the appendixes are fairly good.

More than you ever wanted to learn about the bash shell. Good reference for sysadmins.

If you want to get a handle on internetworking Windows and Linux/UNIX machines, firewalls, multiple-homed hosts and everything in between you'll want to get this book! It starts with a simple two computer network concept and then expands through successive chapters to help you understand the concepts and tools used to connect large networks together and to the internet! Some of the information is a little dated as it relies on PPP (dial-up) connections to the internet and not dedicated access (i.e. ISDN, Cable Modems and T1/T3) and some of the programs and features it discusses have been upgraded and/or replaced but the concepts still remain the same. If you can gain an understanding of the concepts in this book and apply the information contained in the updated manpages provided with your copy of Linux/UNIX then you'll want this terrific book!

This book begins from the simple to the complex. It is great for a beginner and great for the accomplished professional. I constantly refer back to it when I want to configure my Samba server differently. Excellent book that is valuable even when new Samba releases appear

This is a very good introduction to networking Linux and Win95. You can understand this book even without any previous knowledge on networing.

Linux Network Toolkit is not bad, but it is not particularly useful for those of us who actually want to contruct a network of Linux computers. This book is useful for those who want to network a bunch of Win95 machines with one Linux/Samba server.

There is less than one page devoted to setting up a Linux client (part of pages 407 and 408). The author covers this setup by writing, "I leave it up to you to configure a Linux box as a client."

Buy this book if you want to connect Win9X clients to a Samba server, and if you want to do so with an outdated kernel with the intent to upgrade after you learn the fundamentals.

If you want to to build a network of Linux machines, and intend to use NFS, keep shopping.

I purchased this book for two reasons, firewalling and samba. Both areas are covered quite well at an introductory level but the books is beginning to show its age. All of the firewalling and masquerading information is dated because it utilizes the usage of ipfwadm and since the book was published, ipchains has become somewhat of the standard for ip filtering under Linux.

But don't get me wrong, the book is well written and if you are using an older distribution of Linux, it will be quite handy.

Also, there are some great sections on beginner level functions of linux as well.

Overall, I would say it is a must have for the libraries of Beginner to Intermediate Linux users.

This is a great book for learning by example, particularly as a follow-on to something more geared toward complete beginners to get you started. It provides a number of useful scripts (even though some of them duplicate functionality of common system utilities), with explanations of how and why they work, and even notes on how you might alter the code to suit your own purposes. If you're a relatively new programmer or system administrator that already has the basics of shell scripting in mind, but find yourself at loose ends wondering what to do next to help cement what you know and start learning more, this book may be exactly what you need. It's also useful for figuring out some of the basic principles of translating code to or from some other programming language, thanks to the code explanations.

The scripts themselves, however, are not exactly what I would call "wicked cool". The title is an obvious marketing conceit, designed to make the book seem more enticing. Most of the scripts, in fact, are surprisingly mundane -- but that doesn't mean they aren't useful. You may actually find yourself using some of them, with minor alterations, in your day-to-day life. Just don't expect to be wowed by the scripts themselves.

If you've read my review of Wicked Cool Perl Scripts, you may note that this is an almost word-for-word duplication. That was intentional: the books are very similar in quality, format, and usefulness, right down to the "wicked coolness" (or not) of the scripts.

Taylor does some neat stuff with shell scripts, but he doesn't spend much time explaining what goes on in them. Each is accompanied by a terse paragraph explaining "how it works", which generally only addresses one particular aspect of the script (ie, POSIX-style "variable slicing"). Shell syntax is terse and many of the reserved keywords and functions are not self-evident. If you don't know, for example, what "${#remainder}" returns, Taylor won't help you; you will have to look it up in a tutorial or a reference work elsewhere.

According to the blurb on the back of the book, Taylor has an MA in education, but there is little evidence of his didactic skills in this text. On the face of it, he is more a geek than a teacher, and hence this book more useful to his fellow hackers than people new to Bash.

WICKED COOL SHELL SCRIPTS is a collection of pre-made bash scripts for various tasks similar to one of O'Reilly's "cookbooks". All scripts here use bash--the author rejects csh because of Tom Christiansen's classic essay "Csh Programming Considered Harmful" and the Korn shell because he considers it fine for interactive use but not so good for scripting.

The basic format of each entry is first the problem--what the user wants to do--then the code, followed sometimes by an explanation and advice on hacking the code. The book is not really an introduction to Bash scripting. If you want a systematic primer I'd recommend O'Reilly's LEARNING THE BASH SHELL or any of a dozen libre tutorials.

Some of the scripts are useful and solve problems I've occasionally faced. For example, the GNU units program can't do temperature conversions, but a script is given here which uses bc to provide a solution. Quite elegant is a script with which the user can find the time anywhere in the world by querying in a friendly manner the system's zoneinfo files. In spite of some neat gimmicks, however, I don't think I can really recommend the book unless you're someone about to take a voyage on the south seas and won't have Internet access. Many of these scripts can be found on the Web, and far too many scripts here solve problems already long solved by available programs. The author describes a secure version of locate, when slocate is already easily installable on most *nix systems. A script for rotating log files is done when metalog and other common log programs do this automatically. Take out all these unnecessary scripts, and the amount of useful content in the book turns out to be very low indeed.

I have spent thousands of dollars on computer and technical references; I have a library full of them. There is one book however that sits on my office desk and has never made it to the library - Wicked Cool Shell Scripts. I have read, referenced and recommended it many times.

The book is extremely informative and is written in such a way that it can be very valuable, whether your a brand new shell script programmer or are an experienced administrator looking for a better way to accomplish a task. I have used ideas and methods from the book to streamline tasks that I do regularly and to improve the scripts I already use. It has been, by far, the best investment in a reference book I have ever made and was enjoyable enough to read cover to cover.

If your IT reference shelf is full, throw something out and fill the space with this book.

This is a collection of very basic shell scripts I found completely useless. The author presents the book in an advanced format, not giving much underlying information or hand-holding; however the information contained is very beginner level.

The author David Taylor also has many bad habits in his scripting and tends to take a wordy approach. Many of the scripts Taylor advertises in his book can be compiled into a command or two on a single small line of code. For example why would you pipe a grep command to awk when awk has a more powerful search function than grep already built in?

I did not find any advanced commands in his entire book. There were a couple very basic 'sed' and 'awk' commands but nothing which made me think anything about them was 'wicked cool'

If you know nothing about Linux, little about computers and want info on the caldera distribution then this book is an okay starter. But it will not give you enough details to be the source you rely on when running/installing Linux. Not quite three months after purchasing, my copy of the Idiot's Guide looks brand new while my O'Reilly Linux books are painfully dog-eared.

I have several books on UNIX/Linux, but this is the one that helped me get up to speed! With the other books I got stuck several times, but this book is very easy to understand, and gives you all the necessary information to get started. If you are totally new to UNIX/Linux this book is a good place to start!

Way into late nineties, most books on Linux still read like this: Here is Linux, which is zillion times better than MS-DOS, and here is the command shell, which is so much more powerful than COMMAND.COM in MS-DOS, then here are X Windows, which are like MS Windows in DOS, only better... A reader less acquainted with the history of computing might have asked "Wow, that's cool, but what is this MS-DOS thing you keep mentioning?"

When the first edition of this book appeared in late 1998, Manuel Alberto Ricart was among the first authors to admit that Windows 95 and 98 actually *did* happen. Rather than comparing bare-bones Linux with a historic relic, he chose a decent peer for a modern Windows environment: Linux with a desktop environment KDE.

Mr. Ricart starts with the elements of the KDE desktop, spends considerable time explaining basic operations with it, then proceeds to the programs of KDE base suite: file manager, text editor etc. The inevitable command line only comes in in part two. After explaining the basic commands -- file utilities -- some Unix concepts like pipes and regular expressions are discussed, while the programming in command shell is omitted. The section on programming editors Vi and Emacs is probably too short to be useful. The last part, part three, deals with the system administration tasks. Installation of Linux is added as an appendix.

What is the advantage of using command shell despite the existance of graphical interface? Mr. Ricart unfortunately cannot give a convincing answer, although it is probably clear to every second reader -- command shell contains a powerful macro language, which is superb for performing repetitive tasks. This is a pity -- spending 30-40 more pages on the Bash programming would actually give a meaning for including the complete Part 2. But I guess there has to be something idiotic in each of the books of Complete Idiot's series, right?

Leaving this aside, the book is perhaps the best introduction to Linux for beginners. Of all the distributions, Caldera Open Linux that comes with the book allegedly has the most user-friendly installation program -- unless you have some unfortunate exotic hardware, with which it won't work. Bear in mind though that every Linux CD included in a book is likely to be one year old or more when it arrives in your hands, and one year is a long time in Linux development. So the system you have just installed is already outdated... Watch the Web to find out what is really going on.

XFree86 version 3.3.4 (free Open Source version of X Window System version 11) that came on the cd for some odd reason didn't work on my computer with a Sis 5597/5598 using either Lizard or LISA and kept freezing it. The book's first chapter does a very good job of describing the process of inventorying hardware, checking hardware compatibility, repartitioning your hard drive using Fips, if necessary, explaining the difference between primary, extended, and logical partitions, taking you step by step through a Lizard install with plenty of pictures, and explaining what happens at each stage of the install process. The second chapter introduces you to the KDE desktop. The appendix at the end of the books shows you how to install using LISA (text based installer), though if you want to try LISA make sure to go to Caldera's hardware compatibility list at www.caldera.com/support/hardware/2.3/. If you choose to install that way all modules for hardware must be loaded manually and it may be a long process, you've been warned. Unfortunately sometimes hardware compatibility issues may pop up with Lizard so it's good to know how to do it just in case Lizard doesn't work. I haven't finished this book yet, but it's very interesting and in my opinion worth the read. Overall a good book and the cheapest I was able to find. Be wary of the fact that OpenLinux 2.3 may not work with the latest hardware. Other than that your install should go quite smoothly and I'd say the older the hardware you use the better the chances of your being successful (I'd recommend a Pentium 233 with MMX or PII 300 or equivalent or earlier). Please note that my review only applies to the Second Edition of this book (not the First Edition).

Ok, If you are a windoze user and you want to upgrade to Linux, START here. Buy a copy of Red Hat 6.2, this book, and a more advanced book, like Learning Red Hat Visually (Includes a copy of Red Hat 6.2).

Read the idiots guide so you can start to4 move around and THEN use the Visual book that will show you screen shots of what you need to do for more advanced use. When you've mastered the visual book, get a book on hard core programming.

You will not find one book for newbies and old pro's. Stop looking for one. I started with the Visual book, big mistake. I got stuck and droped it for a few months. Do things in order and be patient. You won't learn how to edit your x11 files overnight, but if you can't seem to get your screen out of 648x480 at 60Hz eventually you will need to look there...Today, however, learn what PDW and LS really do before you start playing.

This book was recommended to me by my coworker who knew Unix pretty well that didn't come from a Unix background. After having taken a couple CBTs and owning some reference manuals, I still wasn't all "THAT" savvy with Unix. I'm nearly finished with the book and I can say that now while I don't completely understand all the inner workings of Unix. This book DEFINITELY succeeded where all the other resources I mentined above failed.

The strength in this book are the exercises that reinforce whats being discussed. If you're looking for a "hand-on" way to learn Unix, this is the book you need.

Being an absolute novice at UNIX/Linux I can work my way around vi, the directory system, permissions, basic utilities, shell programming and be comfortable discussing issues in the office with the Unix staff after using this book. After reading some of the other reviews it became evident that these people were looking for a reference book, well this isn't that book and the "About This Book" clearly states this, "If you are looking for a quick reference text, put this book back on the shelf." And to the people that felt that you were not able to learn from this book, you probably did not do all the exercises in the book. This book is not organized as a reference book, it is a text book. I for one benefited greatly from this book and higly recommend it to anyone that is intent on learning the UNIX/Linux system.

I used this book for a Unix class in my local community college. This is the worst text book ever written, I got lost many times. It was difficult to find related text and difficult to keep pace throughout the course. I am a seasoned Linux user and Linux certified, but I recieved no help through this book. If you want to learn Linux, I would reccommend any book by Michael Jang. He writes in an easy and detailed manner. John Muster may teach Unix, but he is a terrible author, go back to english prep John or take a lesson from Michael Jang.

This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to get comfortable with the UNIX commandline environment. The book is primarily geared toward the novice. And as such, it will show you the ropes -- by first explaining something, then having you actually perform a series of steps that demonstrate and reinforce what you've just learned. In a nutshell, this is a tutorial-based approach to learning UNIX. And I've long been an advocate of this approach to learning computers, especially when learning something unfamiliar. In my opinion, it is simply the very best approach to getting you up to speed quickly.

Most other books on the subject of UNIX seem to be references, rather than tutorials. While the reference books are essential for an intermediate to advanced user, a good tutorial-based book is much better for the novice student. In that regard, this book is perfect.

Lastly, the text printed on the pages is larger than you'll find in other books, but it's essential to how you will work with this book. You'll be looking back-and-forth between the book and the computer monitor, and the larger text will help you easily find where you last left the page.

I have been teaching with this book for many years, over 700 students. Class evaluations always rate the book very highly with comments about how clear explanations are. Students learn so much doing the exercises that class discussions are at a much higher level. We use this text in classroom and internet distance learning with great success. The few students over the years who had trouble in the class were trying to avoid doing the work by just looking up answers. That approach isnot effective because the book is built skill upon skill. Students must start at the beginning and actually do the work at the terminal. At first a few students tried to just read it. That approach did not work either. Now I make it very clear that the book is a detailed, hands-on, guide coupled with exact explanations. It must be worked through carefully, at the terminal. When students are willing to put in the effort and do that, they are well rewarded with knowledge and the ability to really do UNIX. I suspect the two reviewers who found the book difficult were not using it properly. My students love it.