Unix Systems Books

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.

The main problem with this book is not that it is incomplete, but that you will probably have to wade through portions that do not apply to you to get to what you need to know.

The authors are knowledgable, and I had no problem with the presentation. However, I was looking for the format of ssh and scp commands for the purpose of programmng them in PERL and the needed security files that have to be present for those commands to work without the necessity of logging in every time. I found what I needed to know in this book, but I might have been better off if I had just done a web search for this information.

Likewise, network and UNIX administrators probably have the information they need in this book too, but they will have to wade through the information for programmers as well as the information for IT managers who are deciding whether or not to install SSH on their machines and why. I'd still recommend it since it is a well-written and well-illustrated book. Just be prepared to go digging for what applies to your specific situation.

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 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 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.

I like the microkernel approach to implement a UNIX-like OS. It is simple and elegant although it does sacrifice a little performance. However, the book is not particularly well-written. It lacked clarity in its explanation of both theory and implementation.

There is a whiff of "what-might-have-been" about this book, using the benefit of hindsight. Minix is thoroughly described as a small and impressively documented operating system. It is small enough that if you took the time, you could understand every nook and cranny. From a pedagogic standpoint, it is of great help in nailing down abstract design concepts. Amazingly, the kernel spans only 4000 lines. Nothing at all, compared to linux or other operating systems.

Tanenbaum criticises those, for a lack of modularity. With millions of lines of code put into one monolithic build running in kernel mode. But you might seriously wonder about this, especially where linux is concerned. In general, it is stable. Yes, with bugs that are inevitable with large code bases. But bugs that are severe enough to crash the OS are rare. Certainly rarer than Microsoft Windows. Anyhow, the book demonstrates the use of a microkernel. While linux uses a monolithic kernel.

But the "what-might-have-been" arises from how linux was inspired by minix. The marketplace has overwhelmingly preferred linux to minix. Industry giants like IBM and HP have now standardised on linux. No major company has done this for minix. It suggests a major design flaw in minix. Not a flaw in terms of not working. But a flaw at a higher level. Perhaps in extensibility or licensing. Tanenbaum must surely wonder that had he taken a different route with minix, it would have become what is linux today. Linus Torvalds is now far better known than him, and there is an entire industry of startups built using linux. Minix is something obscure, even amongst many computer programmers.

While this book is good explaining theory and demonstrating it in the author's operating system, MINIX, MINIX is an insanely small OS. Now there's nothing wrong with that by default, just keep in mind that any OS you were to write in industry, etc would be way more complex.

Also, beware, of the 1000+ pages, at least a quarter of that is a print out, line by line, of the MINIX 3 source code. (Approximately 30,000 lines...)

Bottom line: Good for basic theory and understanding, but you would need to know much more to write a friendly OS.

This was the text for an OS course that I took for my Masters. We had to implement 11 significant OS features for Minix (e.g. floppy disk cache, VGA driver, interprocess communication server,...) -- bugs were unacceptable (i.e. fail), as OSs must work. This class was 4 times more work that an other class I took for my Masters but I learned so much. I was already a very experienced Unix programmer when I took this, so I found it facinating to finally see what was under the hood (Minix/Unix is surprisingly small an compact -- very elegant). Tanenbaum is a real authority on the subject of operating systems and has a very engaging style. Probably the best computer science text book that I have read (I read this cover to cover, not just scanning but really reading). There is room for improvement though: the format could benefit from being updated, I had to use a lot of high-lighter. Clearer separation and indexing of key theories and sections would help. The OS basics are still relevant today (and could perhaps benefit from some expansion/clarification). I believe Tanenbaum has brought out new books since that go into some more contemporary / more advance areas.

This book is written by Tanenbaum, the main guy behind Minix, which is what Linux was based on. It provides good overviews for basic OS concepts like memory management, file systems, processes, etc. The concepts in this book book are intimately tied to examples of the Minix OS, which is a good thing.

To those who would rather see examples from Linux: Minix is a compact and modular OS, which is why it's a good choice for examples. The book contains the entire source code at the back for easy reference. Yes, the OS is that small. That's a good thing when you're trying to figure out how virtual memory works or what have you. You'd be lost trying to learn this stuff from Linux. Above everything else, the code is ***well-commented*** compared to Linux, a major plus. You won't find any "/* major hack */" comments, either. ;) Minix leaves out all the crap that Microsoft and Linux throw into the kernel that make it unstable in the first place. Learn about the bells and whistles later when you can do the basics.

I encountered two instances where the book wasn't updated to reflect changes in the OS, which were annoying to deal with. Also, I found a spelling or punctuation error about every ten pages, which was annoying for such a pricey book. Overall, however, the book is extremely usable and understandable. It's easy to pick up concepts from this text.

Perl is probably one of the best languages to learn if you just want to have a programming language in your toolkit and this book is a great resource for learning Perl.
If you're new to programming Perl introduces many of the concepts that you'll need to master while allowing a lot of flexibility.
I don't know if 24 hours is quite enough to complete this book, but the short focused lessons make learning fun.

I spent about 2000 hours learning Perl. I think PERL is a great scripting language which can teach you advanced programming techniques versus what you may have learned in basic or visual basic. It is easier than other languages like C to make simple or complex scripts which accomplish something useful without getting bogged down in writing a lot of extra code that might be the case in C.

I looked at this and other similar 24 hour computer books. I already knew how to program in basic so I understood the basics. My problem with this book is a false idea that a person with little or no programming ability could pick this book and learn the basics of Perl or any other advanced programming language in just 24 hours. Programming requires understanding and time and a great deal of practice. I think a book like this sets the reader up for failure by trying to achieve a realistic goal in an unrealistic time frame . I myself settled on a different book by Simon Cozens called Beginning Perl. The book uses PERL to teach programming basics chapter by chapter letting the reader set their own pace. If you want to learn programming know that it takes a lot of time and is very intimidating at times. The knowledge comes from a little reading and a tons of practice. If you want to learn programming do it for the love of the subject and not with the idea of making a lot of money as a programmer which is a long shot these days.

As someone that knew very little about computer programming bar some Fortran classes about 15 years ago, this is a great book. It takes you step by step through the aspects of Perl and explains the different computer language terminology to idiots like myself (e.g. arrays, scalers etc).
However, one thing I would say is that each chapter is not one hour.
If you work on each one properly (take notes, do the exercises etc) its more like 2 hours per chapter.

As with the other titles in the Sam's Teach Yourself xxx in 24 Hours series, this book aims at quickly arming you with enough knowledge of Perl to start programming in the language in no time. If you are a complete newbie to programming, this book is not for you, because it takes a "focus on the trees, ignore the forest" approach. In other words, you are thrown into coding right away. There's no high-level discussion of data structures and programming gotchas, etc. There's a lot of stuff crammed into each lesson, and some of the lessons will likely take more than an hour (and more than one pass) to understand. While this is not a reference at all, and many subtle details are omitted (which is actually a bad thing in the long run because Perl is such a complicated language), the book does get you started quickly. A lot of practical examples are given to show you how the language works, and many of the snippets included can be used in your actual programming endeavors. For example, you can take the code to find unique elements in a list as is and use it without any modification (save for using your own variable names).

If you already have some programming background and need just one book to learn Perl quickly, this is the book for you. After this, I'd recommend the "camel book", i.e., "Programming Perl" published by O'Reilly, which gives a forest-over-trees treatment to the language, plus it contains a useful reference on the language.

[A review of the 3RD EDITION 2005.]

Pierce gives an updated introduction for Perl, describing the latest version 5.8. Though realistically, if you are new to Perl, you'd be doing fine even if the book didn't reach up to that version. Perl is a very stable, mature language, which is probably what you want.

If you already know another language, then many or all of the concepts in this book will be familiar. It just becomes a question of plowing through the chapters, to learn the Perl syntax.

In Pierce's presentation, he quickly takes you to what Perl calls a "hash". In Java, the corresponding class is a Hashtable. Regardless of terminology, the idea is a very useful one, and if you intend to be a proficient Perl programmer, you need to have this down pat. Earlier material in the text, like scalars and arrays, are pretty trivial to understand and use. The hash table is trickier, but Pierce does a good job in conveying its usage. He avoids the maths theory behind this, but points out that it gives you quick access to a value associated with a key, where this access is not proportional [ie. linear] to the number of keys in the table. He doesn't actually say it's logarithmic, which it is. [For the theory, Cf. Knuth "Art of Computer Programming" vol 3.]

Learn the hash. Experienced programmers [in any language] already know its value. In all of the book, it is the best glimpse into advanced algorithmic coding.