Unix Systems Books

I bought this book looking at the reviews, but hell no, the reviews are overly exageraating, all you get here are something you can get in simple man pages, examples are very simple and outdated, and does not cover any latest developments in this area. I am a Project manager with 12 years industry experience, so I did not really need a book on this, but just tried, and it was a big disappointment...

This and the Bruce Blinn book are the best books available on shell programming. Very thorough, well written, and well indexed. There are many usefull examples and no stupid fluff that is so pervasive in recent technical books.

This book will, if you've never written code or scripts, help
you write them will proper flow.
I highly recommen this book, for newbies to UNIX.

The best beginning with Unix Book on the market period!

I have purchased this book several times. That is because I keep giving it away to friends. It is the best basic bourne shell programming book I've come accross in 10+ years of Unix admin.
Most other books tend to focus on Ksh or Csh or some facsimile. This one I always keep at my desk for quick sh reference and fine examples.

I have been looking for a beginner's book for Linux for a long time. This is the third book on Linux I have purchased. I wish I had bought this one first. This book has everything for someone who is new to Linux. It gives detailed descriptions of the utilities, the shells, how to use different text editors as well as networking. It doesn't go over the installation process; you can get instructions for your version on the web. I found this book to be very helpful for someone like myself who is new to Linux. I would recommend this nook to anyone who is new to Linux.

Perhaps it's Mark Sobell's writing style or perhaps it's the nature of Linux. I've found so much knowledge here--written so clearly, concisely, and in such an organized manner--that I had to stop learning and write this review.

I'm using this book as a text by reading it chapter by chapter. And I'm also using its index to search for answers to questions while I play with Linux on my PC. Both uses are paying off because I'm learning Linux to my satisfaction and pleasure.

Thanks, Mark, for your efforts.

The author says right off the bat that this isn't a book that will help you install Linux. He refers you elsewhere. This book contains information that, in my opinion, everyone needs to know if their goal is to be a master user in Linux.

Other books concentrate on things that are specific to a certain distribution. This book concentrates mostly on things that should be done from the command-line, and different command-line programs. If you want to be good at Linux, or even aspire to be a Linux admin, you need to know this stuff.

I would like to see the author make an updated version of this book, and cover things like ssh, and remote administration.

This is an excellent book! I gave it a 4-star rating because I think it should have covered other info, like the kernel, and ways to tweak your system.

This is the best Linux tutorial/sys admin book around. Period.
My only wish is it were revised yearly to keep up with new features and commands. (it was published in 1997). Specifically it needs new material on secure shell and secure ftp.

Great work from Mark Sobell... this man is really good! . I'm constantly returning to this book as a reference. It's more recommended for newbies , as it goes through all unix world (concepts,basic commands,shells,etc..) but after you get experienced you'll use it as good reference for some doubts. the main commands are all there with all those -xxxxxx options indeed. I also agree with one of the reviews that said that it needs some new review as it was written is 1997, but it's still a very good value book. Every admin should have one in the shelf.

Information presented is solid for an older distribution, but is not relevant for v8.04. Ubuntu has made significant changes in the installation , partitioning, and setup areas - none of which are covered in this version of Ubuntu Hacks. Most serious is the omission of problems using the partition manager with ntfs partitions.

Well worth the money. This book is clear, informative, accurate, and well-written. Used in conjunction with "The Official Ubuntu Book", someone new to Ubuntu Linux will be up and running in no time, and able to do some very useful tweaking. This book addresses many practical issues to turn the standard Ubuntu install into a much more versatile machine. Very helpful for the basic administrative tasks as well. Highly Recommended.

I did not read this book cover-to-cover. I bounced around reading the chapters that interested me. Good stuff.

The book contains useful detail regarding common problems or tasks. It contained some answers that I needed at the moment, which left me pleased. I recommend combining Hacks with another general-overview Ubuntu book.

Some books contain numerous errors. I am too new to Ubuntu to review the accuracy of the step-by-step procedures in this book.

It is a slow read and really doesn't help you to understand what you are doing.

"Ubuntu Hacks" shows its age, but still packs a lot of useful information. The authors chose to base their hacks on the 6.06 LTS (Long Term Support) version of Ubuntu, which is supported by Canonical until June 2011. As of this writing, Canonical has released version 7.10 and is actively working on the next version, Herdy Heron.

Still, this book remains about 90% accurate (IMO). In most of the places where it is no longer accurate things have actually become easier to accomplish in the newer versions. For example, it is much easier in 7.10 to enable restricted drivers than it was in 6.06.

Highs:
* Focused on how things are done in Ubuntu.
* Still useful despite its age.
* Something for every level of user, but newer users will get more out of it.

Lows:
* True experts in Ubuntu may find themselves skipping a few chapters. I was able to find helpful tidbits in chapters I thought I could skip, however.
* The various authors have wildly different writing styles. A couple of the hacks could have had more information or detail, but most were well-written.

Overall, I recommend this book if you are seriously considering or already using Ubuntu as your primary OS on any machine. Ubuntu has been compared to Mac OS X in its look and feel. "Ubuntu Hacks" can be compared to a slim version of "The Macintosh Bible" for Ubuntu.

I just browsed through this book. Being tired of "that other OS out there" (no, not Apple ;-)) I desperately want to switch to FBSD. And I am only one of few, so I've learned during my journeys on the net. I think the author did a great job, 5 years ago, when he wrote this book. Back then, he wrote it for people who want to setup a server ("admins"). Since then, times have changed *considerably*. More and more people are looking at FBSD as their next OS (with Linux being often unstable, and OS-X being far to expensive (don't forget, you have to buy the machine that goes with it...;-)).

So, the author did a great job in writing an accessible book (as opposed to, many, many other books...). He writes in clear language (don't forget, not everybody knows all the "fancy academic words"), and I especially like the way how he writes in a task-centured way ("here's everything you need to know about filesystems, logically grouped in one chapter").

So I see on Amazon a new release is planned for later this year, and I only hope the author checks in here regularly to read reviews, because what I really would like to see is that the book is expanded to cover for the needs of the desktop user as well. So of course that means X, but also multimedia, DVD/CD burning, etcetera. In addition, the section about upgrades of ports and packages should be extended considerably (I'm fighting with stale dependencies all the time without really knowing how to solve it...).

The reason for my 3 star: I hope the author reads this post ;-)

Jimmy M. Fernández
San José CR
(...)

Buying a good book specific to FreeBSD is not a simple task.
There are dozens of books about FreeBSD but all of them are just some sort of copy of the HandBook.

This is really the first book that is different to almost all others publishied books -at least till today-.

I will recommend it to any one who is interested in having a deeper understandig (since a point of view of a SysAdmin, of course) of the system.

In fact, FreeBSD UNLEASHED, the Handbook, and Absolute BSD are 3 books that any FreeBSD SysAdmin should have.

By the way, its time for an updated version of this book, the Version 5 FreeBSD is out :)

A lot of effort went into compiling this book, and it shows. Virtually all aspects of FreeBSD administration are touched on. It is well written and concise (no fluff). Finally, a single source. No more scouring the web and newsgroups for answers on the basics. Well done.

My work requires me to read alot of technical books. I am so full of praise of this book that I am actually at a loss of words right at this moment.
Never have I seen a book that can actually keep my attention throughout every single chapter.
I guess it is the way it is written. Very light-hearted, practical, and concise. I wish every technical book is written like this. If you are looking for a FreeBSD book, look no further.
Great job, Michael :)

Buying a good book specific to FreeBSD is not a simple task.
There are dozens of books about FreeBSD but all of them are just some sort of copy of the HandBook.

This is really the first book that is different to almost all others publishied books -at least till today-.

I will recommend it to any one who is interested in having a deeper understandig (from a point of view of a SysAdmin, of course) of the system.

In fact, FreeBSD UNLEASHED, the Handbook, and Absolute BSD are 3 books that any FreeBSD SysAdmin should have.

By the way, its time for an updated version of this book, the Version 5 FreeBSD is out :)

Emacs comes with great documentation, and there is a ton of it on the web. Nevertheless a structured book that is well-designed with great illustrations and examples is priceless. Despite my level of skill with Emacs (I "live in Emacs," using it for all my basic computing tasks), I consult this book regularly. It's a regular part of my Emacs library!

This book covers more than just using the editor: building Emacs from source, the help system, and Emacs Lisp are covered as well. This book is always telling me about things that I didn't know Emacs could do.

Although I have read a few chapters from front-to-back, I mainly use this book as a reference.

It seemed odd to me during my Sophomore year at Penn State that the Computer Science Department wanted me to learn a text editor to do computer programming on UNIX computers. In the business classes students were taught to use an IDE on Windows computers. I remember asking myself why would I be one of the few to learn how to use a text editor to do computer programming when the masses where learning to use a GUI approach. I made up my mind that the computer scientists probably knew more about programming than the business professors, and taking the road less traveled has made all the difference.

While I am no where near a Emacs expert this book has made me into more than just a casual user. Learning how to do the keyboard macros has saved me countless hours of work over the years. Sometimes if I plan on doing a lot of typing for a business document I'll use emacs to get started so I don't have to lift my fingers off the keys, then paste the text into word for formatting.

Using this book to expand my previous knowledge of Emacs has had exponential return on investment. I highly recommend it, to anyone that is trying to learn or wants to improve their emacs skill level.

Most of the Unix/Linux senior level Wizzards that I know use Emacs and swear by it. There are others (vi users especially) who swear at it, but that's another story. Emacs is a huge package and is growing bigger. Although you can consider it a text editor, it's a big, massive package that does a lot more than just edit text.

At the start of the book the authors comment "Many people think that Emacs is an extremely difficult editor to learn. We don't see why." I think the WHY is that most people start with a simpler more fundamental text editor like vi. Then when they think of moving to Emacs their fingers have to un-learn the vi commands to replace them with the Emacs commands. The authors say they don't recommend the vi emulation mode built into Emacs, but fingers sometimes take a long time to un-learn.

If you've just decided to move to Linux, you might want to start with Emacs and never go the vi route. There is no question that Emacs has more power. Comparing to the Microsoft world, I think of vi like NotePad, while Emacs is like Word.

There's an interesting table near the front of the book that asks you what you want to do with Emacs. If you want to write HTML, read Preface and Chapters 1-3 & 8. Then after you are getting some work out of the package, you can go to other chapters as you need them - Chapter 12, for instance to use Emacs to compare files.

About half the book is on 'simple' text editing, where their 'simple' maybe isn't as 'simple' as the rest of us consider 'simple.' I do a lot of SQL, Chapter 9 talks about the editing support for SQL, and for other programming environments like Perl, Lisp, JDEE, etc.

This book is from O'Reilly. O'Reilly does professional quality books for professional programmers. If it's time to learn Emacs, you can't do better than this.

LEARNING GNU EMACS is an introduction to the most powerful text editor ever made, a fully-programmable environment that through contributions from thousands has become something of an operating system in itself. This third edition covers all the new enhancements made in version 21.3.

The book begins with an introduction to Emacs as it : a text editor. It gives basic commands for moving around, describes the look of the user interface, teaches how to search and replace, and how to make simple (and not-so-simple) macros. But Emacs isn't just a simple text editor, it also has extensions to do everything from drawing simple pictures to managing your schedule. In the next portion the book describes among other things Dired, the Emacs file manager, the calendar and diary functions, and how to execute commands from within Emacs.

Since Emacs functions as an integrated-development environment for many programming languages, a fairly large portion of the book focus on how Emacs can help the software developer. Concerning markup languages, this new edition covers the excellent nxml mode for XML documents, and in terms of computer languages it describes modes for C, C++, Java, Perl, SQL, and Lisp. Unfortunately, the Python mode is not discussed. An entire chapter is devoted to Emacs' interface to version control systems like CVS.

The book doesn't aim itself at only a beginner's market. It teaches one already proficient in editing to customize Emacs. At the simplest, this means tinkering with one's "~/.emacs" file, but it also includes using the power of Lisp to change all aspects of Emacs.

This book could only be perfect if it were twice as large as it is now, since Emacs has so much in it. I think it a pity that the book doesn't cover Gnus, a mail and news reader that takes advantage of Emacs' scriptable nature to offer immense configurability and power. In fact, it doesn't cover the popular Mew mail reader or Emacs' limited built-in mail reader at all. Also, the bit on search and replace doesn't give any small intro to regular expressions.

Emacs is not for everyone, and even with a fine book like this some people are not going to like it. But if you are comfortable doing basic editing with Emacs, and want to maximize your efficiency, then LEARNING GNU EMACS can help.

If a person is thinking of learning GNU Emacs, or if they have been using it and are looking to sharpen their skills and broaden their Emacs savvy, it is a fairly safe assumption that the individual is motivated. This person probably knows their way around a command prompt, and it is likely that they are aware that Lisp is more than just a speech impediment. This person needs a book that offers expert advice without wasting time or insulting the intellect of the reader. Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition is that book.

As a programmer, when firing up a monolithic word processor or graphical IDE to edit a simple script or properties file, one cannot help but wonder if these tools aren't overkill much of the time. For a growing number of users, the answer is yes. The tried-and-true text editor is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. One of the most extensible and customizable applications in the text editing category is the venerable GNU Emacs.

The tutorials and documentation for Emacs are abundant, but they often prove time-consuming and ineffective for actually learning Emacs. This book is a refreshing break from the documentation many have come to expect. Imagine you had a consortium of leading experts on Emacs at your disposal to teach you how to use it in a conversational, consultative style. That is what has been bundled into this latest edition of the book.

The extensibility of Emacs has been both a key strength and a criticism of the application. Its user and developer community have created all sorts of additional capabilities for Emacs, ranging from the impressive to the absurd. The authors have done well to judiciously select what to cover in this edition. For example, while Emacs does have the capability to function as an email client, other applications have long superceded its ability. The authors have chosen not to cover this topic, and instead devote the available space to learning Emacs' core functionality - powerful, efficient text editing. Other peripheral areas of Emacs have been left for the user to research after gaining their solid foundation on Emacs as editor and work environment, such as compatibility modes for programming languages other than Java and Perl.

This edition of the book uses the space gained by the removal of esoteric topics to flesh out areas of more common interest. Integration with the major version control systems has been expanded to include Subversion alongside of the age-old standards CVS, RCS, and SCCS. Coverage of support for Java and Perl has also improved, as well as sections for editing HTML and XML. Users wanting to tap into the power of Lisp programming for Emacs should find the coverage satisfying as well.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of this book is the chapter devoted to the use of Emacs on different platforms. Unix, Windows and Mac OS X users receive equal acknowledgement. The precautions and insights regarding Emacs nuances when used on particular platforms can reduce users' frustration when getting started with Emacs.

Even current Emacs users can benefit from this work. The mnemonic devices and conventions used in the book allow users to commit useful keyboard commands to memory. The memorization is further solidified by the exercises sprinkled appropriately through each chapter. Readers do not go for very many pages before it is time to be at the keyboard again, harnessing the power of muscle memory to reinforce the material presented.

This is the ultimate Red Hat 6 resource!

When I first purchased this book 2 years ago I was still a relative newbie on linux having only played around briefly with Red Hat 5.1. With this book I a have been able to configure a DNS server (book gives excellent info on DNS servers and BIND), firewall (basic configuration only), email server, Samba server, and FTP server as well as download and configure a new kernel. The first half of the book deals entirely with installing, configuring and administration of Red Hat 6.1. The first half of the book, and Linux System Commands by Patrick Volkerding and Kevin Reichard, will be the only 2 books that 80% of administrators will need to learn how to set up and administer a Red Hat 6.1 server.

My only complaint about this book? I couldn't get it in hardback. This book has been such a great reference that my current copy is almost destroyed!

Kabir has a second book for Red Hat 7 which is almost identical to this book. The only problem is that it is still based on the 2.2.x Linux kernel. So while it is still an excellent book I was dissapointed that there was no information on the 2.4 kernel.

I am hoping that Kabir releases a book on Red Hat 7.1 or 7.2 soon because his writing style is clear and to the point. All of his examples and instructions actually work when you try to reproduce them on your machines.

Only room for improvement? Perhaps a bit more information on using IPCHAINS to configure a firewall. But this is still the best book I have come across for using Red Hat 6.

This book is long on wind and low on useful information. Most info can be found in the how-to's. This is not a well written book and is hard to follow at times, and somewhat disjointed. If you want a good Linux book, keep looking. This book will take a major rewrite before it is useful to both the master and the newbie.

The book embraces the principal topics of Linux, and it shows how to do. Very well explained and detailed, simple and I practice. I recommend those that are interested in Linux that would like to know more on the subject, for the ones that they already work with linux, a reference book.

For a long time i was looking for a book which could teach me to become a good Linux servers administrator. I can tell I am not new to Linux world, but what I was missing was the background and UNDERSTANDING of what I was doing with my Linux machine.

This book gave me the eyes to UNDERSTAND Linux and answered most of my qestiones.

I successfully was able to put my own ISP server together. This book thought me a great deal about Linux and the world around her.

I personally think the author has done a great job, since the author is a guru in Linux world. The text is good easy reading reading and understandable. It covers most of the issues that an administrator must know.

I recomand this book to everyone who didn't get their answers from "man pages" and "HOW-TO's" and got confiused from people in news groups who themselfs needed this book to read.

therefor, for the lack of 10 stars in this site i give this book 5 starts.

I used this book as my bible to set up from scratch a web server serving multiple virtual hosts, it is simply excellent. It is obviously the result of a clever, competent, expert spending considerable time and effort to produce a book that is readable, reassuring, and pitched at just the correct level for a "new to" Linux Admin. I cannot speak highly enough of this book, add RH6.0 Unleashed as a back-up ref if you are totally "new to", and can afford it as well. I have bought 7 other books besides these 2 and all were @ 50-70% BELOW this standard, and by comparison poorly written, and practically useless, some were little more than a list of rehashed HOW-TO's plaigarized from the web ! His new book publishes in Nov 2000, advance purchase it now ! I have.

Ciaran Wilson - Ireland - Nov 2000..

What I like best about this book (I only have the 1st edition) is that there are practice exercises and analysis at the end of each chapter. For example, the book will ask you to create some scripts to do a certain task. Or, the questions will show you some scripts and ask you want you need to modify to make it work a certain way. The answers and explanations are in the back of the book in case you get stumped or want to check your answers. Going hands-on is the BEST way to learn scripting and programming!

I found the reading easy to absorb, but I do have a little background in BASIC and Visual Basic programming so it definitely helps. I think a completely new user to the Unix/Linux world would benefit from this book.

Becoming thouroghly proficent in various shells and being able to write shell scripts whether simple or of vast complexity is a fundemental requirement for becoming *NIX savvy. Whatever your flavor, Linux, OpenBSD, Solaris - you must know shell scripting to be taken seriously.

The title of this book, "Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours" is no joke. Even if you know nothing of this subject, a couple passes through this book will bring you all the way up to a moderate and respectable level of proficency. While this book only covers a tiny part of a massive skill, you will leave this book with the confidence and the ability to learn more and more without the help of another book. Of course, there are more advanced books out there, and it can't hurt to look, but I STRONGLY reccomend starting here.

I have not used shell scripting in the long time. I ordered this book and it helps me refresh a lot about Unix and shell scripting leanrt in school many years ago as undergraduate student. The book is well-written and will keep you excited. One important thing is: practice as you are reading. By the time you finish the book you should be able to grab much from the book. I downloaded the Sun Solaris 9 that I installed on x86 computer and I am playing with some flavors of shell writing small shell scripts.

I came from purely Windows environment and I know nothing about UNIX or Linux except a few C commands many years ago. I tried a few books like shell scripting, learning the shell and by example, but I gave up as their speed was too fast for a beginner like me. Only after a few intro pages, these books started to write complex commands which I was confused and unable to continue. The worst thing is, most of them don't explain in details what those commands do and expect readers to know. This book does not assume you know basic UNIX commands, and it covers the basics in first section. It has short chapters and each of them tries to teach you the basic concepts in one area with simple examples. This is the book that gives you confidence to move on and it does not try to feed you with too much knowledge at a time. After reading this book, you are equipped with basic idea of what shell scripting is and able to move on with advanced books. A very good step-by-step book for beginners who know very little or nothing about UNIX shell programming.

Very helpful book. I first tried using unix a year ago, it seemed really hard. Now after i read this book i understand how to use most of the commands in the shell terminal even though im only 12 years old! Really.
P.S. : No, I am not a nerd.

This book is for anyone who wants to know what happens "under the hood" in a UNIX based operating system. I especially like the pseudocode given for various system calls and other important kernel functions. The exercises given at the end of chapters are thought provoking. This book is not about how to learn/work in UNIX. Some of the topics such as streams may not be relevant in some of the current implementations of UNIX (or clones of UNIX), but most of the book is still relevant.

Maurice Bach's The Design of the Unix Operating System still holds the place of honor on my technical reference bookshelf. After almost 20 years, it provides a clear overview of basic Unix organization and operations and is a model for how technical books should be written. Readers who complain that the text is dated evidently did not bother to notice the 1986 copyright date. Its age, however, has not diminished its clarity of content or usefulness in understanding the Unix operating system. Bach deserves an award for excellence in technical writing.

I'm something of an OS freak (not an expert though) and I collect OS books. I've read many of the classics of the field but I think this book is the crowning achievement of OS literature. Here are the arguments to support my claim:

a) It does not go into explaining general OS theory, thus all space can be dedicated to explaining the details of one operating system (Unix System V Release 2). This of course makes it unsuitable for begginers as it assumes you have a good understanding of basic concepts like race conditions, mutual exclusion, data structures, etc. If you're a begginer don't buy this book yet; get "Operating Systems - Design and Implementation" by Tanenbaum & Woodhull or "Operating System Concepts" by Silberschatz, Galvin and Baer.

b) It details EVERY algorithm with C-like pseudocode and adds verbal explanations exemplifying operations running through the algorithms. This is unlike other OS books which sometimes just give general descriptions of algorithms with no examples.

c) Explanations are complemented by many diagrams of data structures in various states of manipulation by the algorithms. This is possibly the most valuable feature of the book as it does wonders to help you understand what the kernel is doing; you get to 'see' how the algorithms work. This sets it apart from practically all other OS books I've read that just mention in passing "... then function 'x' manipulates data structure 'y'" and leave you to find out the implications of these manipulations. Diagrams also make the book superior to mere code listings.

d) Each chapter 'uses' the algorithms explained in the previous chapter to explain higher level functionality. This is much unlike other OS books which are just unstructured and make you loose the big picture of how the various pieces fit together. Chapters also start with an introductory overall view of the current topic.

So, what is not to like about this book? The only thing I can think of is that it deals with a 'dead' OS. Unix System V only runs in a handful of computer installations these days (if any), while its derivatives have changed too much to serve as a reference while reading the book. Still, System V binaries and source are available on the internet, legally of course. Search for The Unix Heritage Society archives. If you want to get really hardcore you can even get a PDP-11 emulator and set up Sys V in it. There are, of course, other books that delve into present day operating systems; "Solaris Internals" , for instance.

Also, Unix-haters might point out this is just another book on Unix. Well, unfortunately there are no books that explain, say MS Windows, at this level of detail; blaim MS. But still, while dealing with the specifics of one single OS, you do get a general understanding of how other OS's might work.

In my humble opinion this book is the 'King of the Hill' of OS literature; it has helped me finally understand things like context switching and memory mapping. An absolute feast to read, particularly if you like Unix.

It is one of the greatest books that I have ever read on UNIX. It is a comprhensive yet simple depiction of Unix Operating System. This book is a MUST READ for UNIX / UNIX LIKE Operating System Engineers. It is worth possesing a copy as it can come handy quite regularly. I give it a full go go!

While there may be more detail to be found in "The Magic Garden," or more up-to-date coverage in the likes of Vahalia or Schimmel, Bach's opus is, in the view of this twenty-plus-year UNIX guru, unmatched. I say this because only while reading Bach's book do I experience the sense of philsophic structural perfection, of tool-orientation, of practicality-versus-theoretic-efficiency tradeoff, that characterizes the earliest UNIX monographs (Ritchie, Kernighan, Bourne, Lycklama, Ossana; that sort of thing) that busied me as a freshman. Bach imparts to the reader a glorious--and gloriously holistic--depiction of the structure of the UNIX kernel as a unit. Algorithmic details are provided where appropriate. Exceptionally well thought-out exercises stimulate the reader to extend the textual material where meet. The material is assuredly out of date, but I dare you to critize, say, Lions as being "out of date" (whether or not it describes a 25-year-old, 9K-LOC kernel, it is a scripture of paramount importance, a cornerstone of my computer engineering [n.b.: I didn't say "computer science"] library).

For those who are wont to compare Leffler and Bach--if for no other reason than that they are coevals--I heartily endorse Bach over its competitor. It's nice. It's clean. It's precise. You just couldn't ask for more. And, BTW, stay away from "The Magic Garden." I'm not sure that five hundred pages worth of out-of-context code excerpts, inundating the reader with thousands of kernel variables, accomplishes much by way of imparting conceptual understanding.

(I'm reminded: a customer of mine--an older gentleman with a Ph.D. in physics--once asked me for a concise description of the workings of UNIX, something that introduced the basic concepts at a scholarly but not overweight level. I told him I had a recommendation in mind. "You're going to give me 'The Magic Garden'," John complained; "Don't bother. It stinks!" Was John ever surprised when I pointed him to the third entry in Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems series. It has concise thirty or forty-page entries on UNIX, MS-DOS, and a handful of others. For those who want to know--from a scientist's viewpoint--what the fundamentals of the UNIX OS and superjacent environment are, what it can do, how one navigates within it, etc., at a _conceptual_ level that trucks not with the details of Bach or Leffler, seek ye Tanenbaum II.)

This book is not only for web Java script like most other books on the subject. I got it to help me understand script in After Effects. It is really good and simple.

I bought this book and was so surprised. it is definitely one of the easiest books I have ever read before. It is very straight forward. ABC. Its makes doing Javascipt as easy as writing HTML.

Of course I must say that I have had prior programming exprience with C++ nonetheless I think that it is very simple. It assumes you only know HTML (some anyway).

It doesn't have much practical use in terms of teaching you how to do a lot of complex programming. If that is what you are looking for this may not be the book. This is the first step. Learning how to integrate Javascript into your HTML pages.

If you have never done Javascript programming you will probably find this book fast, simple and useful. With a C++ backgound, i'm able to go through a chapter a day. After reading it you will be prepared to go on to more indepth books. Oh, and the author provides a good newsgroup that you can use to post questions about your javascript. It may come in handy for a good knowledge base.

I had other books but they didn't start you off learning how to place Javascript into your html pages. So to actually find what i needed to take my first steps, this book was more than i expected in ease. I think for that purpose (the audience it was written for) it can easily get 5 stars. No doubt!

I was truly impressed with this book. It is well written and in such a manner as that it was actually enjoyable to read! Before this book I tried learning javascript from the "teach yourself in 21 days" book(not to mention VB which I stopped at day 7).

By comparison, The Beginner's Guide is a far better instructor. The topics are laid out in a very logical order. I actually read this book cover to cover, and that's a first for me with any programming book. I may go back and re-read the "in 21 days" book to get a new angle on the topics I've already learned.
All the code examples in the book are explained with little description boxes pointing at the code, which I found very helpful.

If you're looking for a first book on learning javascript I fully recommend this book!! It truly is a testament to the author that it kept my interest up from cover to cover. I can't believe I actually read an entire programming book. (I'm still amazed by that!)

As someone experienced in design and layout using XHTML and CSS I purchased Beginning JavaScript (Paul Wilton, Wrox Press) thinking it would be a good place to start as I've had great experience with Wrox books in the past. Two chapters later I purchased this book knowing I needed something a little more basic and I found exactley what I was looking for. JS: A Beginner's Guide assumes a basic (at best) knowledge of HTML but other than that is extremely elementary with excellent examples, a great layout (from a progression standpoint), and continual reinforcement of previously covered standards throughout the book.
To truely absorve this book it is imperitave that the reader (like most other programming books) work through each and every example. For those who have the time to sit down and read this book at their computer (instead of on the couch) it will provide a great entry level knowledge to the topic. For those looking to pursue the matter I would still recommend Beginning JavaScript (Paul Wilton) AFTER reading this book. Some of the same standards will be covered however I am all about applying multiple resources to fully grasp an idea.

I had waited a while to actually come up with a book that i can speak about, and i must say that i found this one to be far more respectible than some of the other books i have read. It is often times difficult to know which reviews to really follow because you are never really sure of the mental health/quality of those who come up with the reviews. Seems like the prism of subjectivity is a difficult barrier to transcend. Very few people can honesty speak with authority, and objectivity in their criticisms of another.

At any rate, there are 2 books that i have actually bought on the subject of Ja--Script (aka Javascript), and out of the 2, this one by John Pollock was far more "clean-cut" with regards to its presentation of the subject matter than "JavaScript for the World Wide Web" by Tom Degrino, and Dori Smith. In terms of examples, and brief explanations, the aforementioned wasn't bad, but in terms of explanatory breadthe, and in terms of depth, and in terms of interconnectivity between one chapter and another, the book was lacking.

Additonally, this book (the one by Tom, and Dori)took up an aweful lot of space in including HTML tags when it presented a coded page example that i thought was stupid. For me, if a person already knows what a tag is, and they have in fact created Tables, then there was really no point to including an actual webpage code (in its entirety) so that a person knows the difference between the head section, and body section of a document. For me, if you really need the over-board use of illustratives idiagrams to make a point about how you can make a reference "call" between the body portion of a document, and the head portion, then seriously speaking, you need to learn HTML first before you get into Ja--Scripting. This too me was wasted typing space for a much more relevant inclusions of the subject matter. For this reason, i found John Pollocks book by far more commanding of my respect.

And this for the record is not to say that for whatever reasons there is not always an inclusion of an actual webpage code in it's entirity. Johns Book did include tags for contextualisation purposes, but still, it was not as bad the other book. This doesn't really make sense to me. Or at least, not totally. There is only a few things one needs to know that is of major importance, and that is the tags, and how to make a reference to an external file. And to be honest, all you would need is a few pages that explains how the tags are created, and where they are created. But over and beyond this, i find the excess use of HTML tags in an example about a different language annoying. This is like calling a book "BaseBall Basics," but half the book is filled up with concepts that relate to FootBall. If there is going to be inclusion of more than one subject specifically, then use a different title. Otherwise stick with the name of the title. But over all, John Pollocks book so far was the better of the 2.

If we are to speak of flaws, i would say that the primary flaw of the book was it's lack of interconnection between chapters. Don't get me wrong, as far as learning the name of rules, and syntical symbols of the language, the book was great. However, most of the subjects discussed in what he called "modules" instead of "chapters" did not really build on one another. These chapters for the most part were isolated concepts and did not necessarily interconnected them, so that you can see how a whole system of these concepts can build some rather impressive effects that are not achievable with HTML. The general feel of the book was really grammatical, and analogically referencial rather than an actual collection of class study examples that hammer down the main concepts of the programming language known as JavaScript. But over, and beyond this, i found the book far more effective in geting its lessons accross than the other book mentioned.

The key to the book is its title. It is geared towards an introduction into this language, and not necessarily towards those more interested in higher levels of programming skills. For this reason i think the book will fall short of really showing thorough examples of the over all power of this programming language. But if you want to practise in a bath tub before you jump into the ocean for a marathon of some sort, this is a great book for that. It really does a great job at discussing the alphabet of the language. But it doesnt really get you to reading at a decent level. This is my analogy for how this book should be viewed: This book is great if you don't want to be thrown to the sharks.

I have not read any of the books by Danny Goodman, but from what i have ran into on amazons linking adventures, he seems to be a popular author with DHTML, and Ja--Script. His books presumably are college level rather than kindergarten in the sense that all you are learning are the A,B,Cs of things. I will have to reread John Pollocks book again, before i jump onto the Bible series of this language.

This would be an okay book for my wife if she got interested in the linux command line.

It does not tell you much about setting up your system - but my wife can just get me to do that.

This book is getting old, but for a lot of command line stuff, that doesn't matter much, because it doesn't change a lot. And my wife can ask me whether there is something newer and spiffier.

It does not go into any depth. Things like tunneling a vnc session over ssh - no way it is going to tell you. But my wife doesn't care. And if for some reaswon she needed to open a desktop on a remote system securely, she would ask me to do it for her.

It does not tell you much about GUI tools. My wife does like GUI tools, but she's pretty good at figuring them out.

Its strength is the nice examples. There is never any doubt how to do something that is actually covered. I suspect its coverage of things like postscript and printing would help someone who needed to deal with those at a user level. So if my wife wanted to print out a DVI file, this would be the book for her.

For people like me, who want to know how to make that new printer work right, or start up a secure desktop session on a remote machine, this is not the book. A book with the same title but a different author (Schroeder) does a better job for us.

It's a book for beginners that concentrates on the console commands and programs. It was mostly review for me, and I'm just a novice in Linux. I've been kicking around with it for 6 or 7 years just on a very casual basis (a few minutes a week, really) and I guess I was hoping for something that could advance me to the next stage of understanding, but all it did was reincforce some things I already knew and introduced a few I didn't. Might be a real eye opener for an absolute beginner. In fact I would recommend it to anyone just getting started with Linux to get their feet wet in the console. Pretty good command index to keep at arm's reach.

Let me start with what this book is and is not. There is nothing on how to install, troubleshoot, or administer Linux and it is not supposed to have that information. This is a cookbook and is designed to be a resource when you have a specific goal in mind and want to know how to get there. The first several chapters focus on the very basic Linux information that everyone working in the operating system should know. This includes such common items as how to determine what processes are running and how to determine who you are logged in as. Of course anyone with even a minimum of Linux experience knows this stuff. For the more experienced Linux users the later chapters deal are a real treasure. It includes things like viewing and editing images, PostScript, working with sound, and cross-platform conversions. The recipe style layout really works well. Like a list of ingredients the author lists the program to be run, package manager name for the installation package, and the home page where the package can be found. This is one of the really nice features of the book. If you are looking for how to accomplish a specific task you can look it up, see if there is a program to accomplish it, locate and install the program if necessary, and follow through the specific directions to achieve your desired result. The Linux Cookbook, 2nd Edition is very highly recommended for the new Linux user, and recommended as a desk reference to keep available for the more experienced user who may just need to know how to convert that mp3 file to another format and burn the result to a CD.

I AM NOT A GEEK. That said, I'd have to say that this book fell short of providing me any really useful information. I've been a Linux user for about 5 years now, and I still find some aspects of it frustrating, but this book didn't really help me much. And, it certainly doesn't live up to the O'Reilley "Cookbook" series (not that it is pretending to be, just shares the name), which I always find helpful. There are numerous Linux books out there that are better than this one. To me, the hints provided don't help much. And, when I'm stumped about what's going on with my system, this book doesn't help either.

If I were just starting out, maybe it would be OK. But I think I would probably spring for something else, "Unix Power Tools" comes to mind.

When this book fell out of its shipping envelope, it made quite a thunk as it hit my desk. No wonder: at almost 800 pages, this is quite a chunk of reading material.

I had been impressed by the first edition. The only real complaint I had about that was its exclusive focus on Debian Linux; that's been corrected here. The first edition was available on-line in its entirety; this is not, although you can see a sample chapter and the table of contents at (...).

Unlike the first edition, this covers a lot more basic material. Don't let that turn you off if you have outgrown the beginner books - unless you are expert at everything, you'll find helpful material here. There are pointers to esoteric utilities you probably have never heard of mixed in with the "getting started" stuff.

I was interested that Amazon reviews were luke-warm. I think it deserves better. I would have liked to see less attention to the real basics, but that does make this useful to the beginner also. One Amazon review didn't like it because it was too geeky, a complaint I can't sympathise with. Another didn't like the concentration on command line tools - I hope that isn't a sign of things to come where Linux users join their Windows brethren in disdain of character based interfaces.