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May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
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Good introductory book (or better books) save you a lot of trouble, especially if one try to learn Linux/Unix independently. Actually a good book can make a difference between success and failure in moving from widows to Unix environment. Unix is a complex OS and there is a tremendous difference in quality among introductory books. Please be careful. Some books are available in electronic format, see Unix CD bookshelf, 3d edition and Safari
One of my recommendations for very basic introductory books is Mark Sobell's books. He breaks one rule that I talked about in the introduction: the book value is strongly correlated with the quality of the authors web site, if any. The author web site www.sobell.com is weak, but the books are decent. You can read an interview with Mark G. Sobell.
All Mark Sobell Unix books contain two parts: the first is tutorial and the second is reference. Both are good. The reference is close to man pages, but always contain examples -- a sad omission in original Unix man pages (along with obsolete format -- HTML would be much better and more modern choice). Those examples alone are worth the price of the book.
For Solaris books see my Solaris page that I created after Sun's initiative to open Solaris. Solaris 8 is free on computers with up to 8 CPUs and is a very good OS, especially for using with commercial databases. IMHO Oracle on Linux is a rather shaky proposition despite all recent Oracle hype and handwaiving.
Most Unix vendors have documentation available online and the last thing you want is a reproduction of man pages in printed format. You need to check for such a correlation :-). See my Solaris links. Actually it was DEC that has the best documentation available online...
If you have no chance to browse book yourself in a nearby bookstore, open content books are definitely preferable -- at least you know what to expect and you can adapt/add to electronic text to suit your needs. See also Softpanorama CD Bookshelf
Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov
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Peter Salus A Quarter Century of UNIX
Jon Lasser Think UNIX
Mark Sobel Softpanorama Review: A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux 8
Mark Sobel A Practical Guide to Solaris
Arnold Robbins Classic Shell Scripting
Bill Rosenblatt Learning the Korn Shell
NIIT Special Edition Using Solaris 9
Are there any books you would recommend to someone interested in improving their understanding of Unix? Even though I use it every day, I feel like my understanding is incomplete. I would like to read one or two books, preferably under 300 pages each, that would make me a lot smarter when it comes to Unix. And I figure reading about Unix at bedtime would help me fall asleep faster.
The Real PC
Friday, May 28, 2004Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, Stevens.
SG
Friday, May 28, 2004I like "Linux System Administration - A User's Guide" by Marcel Gagne' (Addison Wesley).
It's not fat, and it's full of useful info. The downside is that Gagne's writing style is good enough that it might not help put you to sleep.yet another anon
Friday, May 28, 2004I always learned fun new things from Unix Power Tools.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/upt2/index.htmlm
Friday, May 28, 2004Keep in mind that while I've used multiple languages on unixes, I'm nowhere near being an expert, just gotten in 'n out. So I hope someone will point out if my mentions are outdated.
- Kernighan/Mashey "Unix Programming Environment" paper. Since it's a paper, it's rather short.
- Ritchie/Thompson original paper might put things in perspective.
- Kernighan/Pike _The Unix Programming Environment_ book.
- Maurice/Bach _The Design..._ book goes into detail.
- Nemeth/Snyder/... unix sysadmin book might be useful.
- Unix Hater's Handbook, gratis online.Tayssir John Gabbour
Friday, May 28, 2004If you use it every day, but you're looking for more, I recommend O'Reilly's "Essential System Administration." Describes the evolutions of the different branches of Unixes, and how they differ. Each part of the book describes how to do something in the different ways peculiar to different Unix-alikes. It does have a sysadmin bent, of course, but you still might want to check it out.
Rich
Friday, May 28, 2004I second the Unix Power Tools reccomendation. It has taught me more about unix than any other unix book I've bought, or any one site online.
Its not small, but its not designed to be read straight through. Its a collection of tips from newsgroups and email lists over the past 20+ years.
It won't teach you tons of sysadmin stuff, but it will make you a much more effective unix user, which will translate into a better sysadmin.
I cannot reccomend this book enough.Andrew Hurst
Friday, May 28, 2004I'll third Unix Power Tools. It makes learning Unix fun.
Herbert Sitz
Friday, May 28, 2004I have some of the nicest linux and unix books under the sun!! :D If you read through any 15% of them you'll be able to create a cluster of computers capable of curing AIDS.
They are gathering dust. *sigh* However I probably will not sell them. Maybe for a future project that might accidentally change the world.Li-fan Chen
Friday, May 28, 2004Ask me for the list, it's long.
Li-fan Chen
Friday, May 28, 2004> I feel like my understanding is incomplete
None of the books recommended so far gives you the "big picture", and (IMHO) you will never become proficient in UNIX (be it programming or system administration), until you have a good mental model of the whole.
The best book for the "high-level view" is "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.
His other books are very good as well, and "Structured Computer Organization" is worth a read no matter which OS you are using.Employed Russian
Friday, May 28, 2004I also like The Unix Philosophy which leans more towards the programming life, but sets a frame of reference for why unix is as it is.
m
Friday, May 28, 2004"The Unix Haters Handbook"
http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/uhh-download.html
;-)
Friday, May 28, 2004Eric Raymond's 'The Art of UNIX Programming' Is a bn="right">john
Saturday, May 29, 2004Linux Server Hacks
100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxsvrhack/Michael Moser
Saturday, May 29, 2004A personal favourite is "The UNIX Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike. Like UNIX itself, this compact book is either dated or timeless.
M. E.
Saturday, May 29, 2004I second the Unix Programming Environment, by Kernigan and Pike.
Unix power tools is a good one, as others have mentioned it's a collection of tips for using commands. Ever tried to figure out the find command from the manual? It bites, but Power Tools tells you how to do what you want done.
The Stevens book is great, but only for system programmers. That would be me.
Think Unix by Jon Lasser is another great book on overall Unix stuff.
Snotnose
Saturday, May 29, 2004Great free resources. In case of LINUX some guys are trying
to create something in the likes of MSDN.
Linux documentation project
http://en.tldp.org/
Developer works tutorials (need to register/fill out a form)
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/views/linux/tutorials.jsp
Developer works technical library (need to register/fill out a form)
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/technical/linux.htmlMichael Moser
Sunday, May 30, 2004Get "The Design and Implementation of the BSD Operating System". I haven't read the latest version, but it used to be pretty good in the old days.
Just me (Sir to you)
Monday, May 31, 2004
This is an expensive CD. The Unix CD Bookshelf packs six books: one excellent, two good and three semi-useless/obsolite. Version 3 provides convenient online access to seven books. It also includes the hard copy of Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition.
**** Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition;
??? Learning the Unix Operating System, 5th Edition;
??? Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition;
??? Mac OS X for Unix Geeks;
***** Learning the Korn Shell, 2nd Edition;
**** sed & awk, 2nd Edition;
*** Unix in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition.
The CD has a master index, a powerful search engine, and all the text is extensively hyperlinked, so you'll find what you're looking for quickly.
This is a hell of a book with its 1616 pages :-). But you can judge general quality of material by browsing chapters that Mark Sobell provides online:
| Copyright Notice |
| Table of Contents |
| Preface |
| Chapter 5: The Shell I |
| Chapter 7: GNOME Desktop Manager |
| Chapter 9: Networking and the Internet |
| Chapter 12: The Shell II: The Bourne Again Shell |
| Index |
Based on 3 reviews.
Write a review.
Vast improvement, June 27, 2002
Reviewer: Daniel O'Riordan from New York City, New York
I bought the Solaris 8 version of this book. It was OK but did not contain sufficient material on the new technologies. I ordered the Solaris 9 version of the book because it's the only Solaris 9 book around. I am happy to report that this book covers new technologies like RBAC, LDAP and the resource manager. These are so much more important for the enterprise than GNOME. Strong emphasis on disks - format, partition, volume management, backups - is good and logically ordered. The only thing I would like to see is more coverage on application servers, databases, message queues and other uses of Solaris in large firms. But that's probably an architecture book with a different focus.
by Aeleen Frisch
Based on 58 reviews. Probably the intermediate best sysadmin book on the market.
The New Edition is Great, September 13, 2002
Based on 58 reviews.
Write a review.
The New Edition is Great, September 13, 2002 Unix in general and Linux in particular is a complex OS and any introductory book that has, say, less than 800 pages is suspect. You just need to put a lot of stuff into the introductory Unix book. Some books like all Mark Sobell books are structured in two parts with the second part containing a reference. This is a good idea for the introductory book as man pages are often difficult to use for novices, but content of the first part suffers (Sobell's books do not contain chapters on AWK and SED -- a sad omission for the introductory book, but it contain a pretty decent information about this utilities in the reference part of the book). The problem is that Sobell authored a general Unix book (A Practical Guide to the Unix System, 1994 see below) and never updated it, his more recent books are about Linux and Solaris. They are covered in my Linux and Solaris pages. Here we will cover general introductory books.
The book also has pretty usable index and five appendixes. Appendix A (regular
expressions) actually deserves to be converted to a chapter.
This edition is a result of polishing the material from four previous editions
and that shows. For example in the Chapter 2 (p.38) the author mentions the
problem of using Ctrl-Z by the beginners who attempt to undo some command line
changes. But this is not a Windows environment and that actually postpone the
program -- a very puzzling situation for beginners for which very few Unix beginner
books authors provide a helpful advice. Useful tips can be found in almost any
chapter and it is this attention to details that really make this book an outstanding
example of the introductory Unix textbook.
Another interesting feature of the book is that the command line environment
is introduced after GUI (KDE/Gnome) environment. Such an approach is more modern
than "command line first" approach and provides an opportunity for students
immediately transfer their Windows-based skills to Linux and master command
line after that, saving a lot of frustration (vi as the first Unix editor is
a torture, I know that for sure :-). In this case beginners can postpone struggling
with vi until they get to speed with pipes and classical Unix utilities. Actually
this permit studying vi in more depth. We should not forget than most students
now study Unix after they learn Windows and Sobell's book in one of the few
that take into account this situation.
I used his previous Solaris-based book for several introductory Unix classes
at the university and can attest that students grasp most material very easily.
Exercises given after each chapter can serve as a basis of very useful homework
assignments.
As for shortcomings there are very few of them and they generally does not diminish
the high value of the book. For some reason gawk and sed are not covered in
the main chapters, but only in the reference part. I would change this is a
future edition(s).
Grep and find probably also can be covered a small separate chapter (or the
author may wish to swap it with the chapter 14 --the second shell (c shell)
might be an overkill for the introductory book (bash is now "good enough") and
it's better to move it into supplement :-). I would also convert the supplement
about regular expressions into a regular chapter and devote some space to Perl
(Z-shell can go to the supplement too; I doubt about wisdom of covering three
shells in an introductory book.)
It's really sad that Perl is not mentioned at all while the whole chapter is
devoted to zsh: in reality Perl killed shell scripting in all but simple and
special purpose (startup) cases. And although the decision whether to include
Perl chapter or not should probably be better left to the author (it complicates
the book as such has some drawbacks too), I think that it make sense at least
to provide a supplement with Perl overview in future editions.
Another minor thing: using pine as a newsreader as in Chapter 9 is fine if you
are limited to the command line. If not, than Netscape Communicator (in its
Mozilla incarnation) is much more user friendly and easier to use program.
All-in-all I hope everybody who is trying to master Linux will appreciate the
level of insight into this pretty complex environment that this book provides.
It beats similar books not only by weight :-). IMHO this book is as close to
a classic Linux book as one can get.
| Copyright Notice |
| Table of Contents |
| Preface |
| Chapter 5: The Shell I |
| Chapter 7: GNOME Desktop Manager |
| Chapter 9: Networking and the Internet |
| Chapter 12: The Shell II: The Bourne Again Shell |
| Index |
This edition is a result of polishing the material in three previous editions and that shows. For example in the Chapter 2 (p.23) the author mentions the problem of using Ctrl-Z by the beginners who attempt to undo some command line changes. But this is not a Windows environment and that actually postpone the program -- a very puzzling situation for beginners for which very few Unix beginner books authors provide a helpful advice. Another example of attention to details is that this is one of the few intro Unix books that recommends a reasonable .profile file that make Solaris/Unix more user friendly. All-in-all tremendous amount of useful tips can be found in almost any chapter and this attention to details really make this book an outstanding example of the introductory Unix textbook.
Another excellent feature of the book is that Solaris/Unix command line environment is studied along with X windows environment. such an approach is more modern than pure command line approach and it provides additional insights into how best use Solaris/Unix in a particular circumstances. For example I am convinced that the approach adopted in the book of using X-based editors first is an improvement over traditional methods of introducing students to vi from the beginning. In this case beginners can postpone struggling with vi until they get to speed with command line and that experience can simplify mastering vi features and permit to study vi in more depth. We should not forget than most people study Solaris/Unix after they learn Windows and Sobell's book in one of the few that make necessary adjustments for this situation.
What I really like about Mark Sobell's Unix books is that all of them contain two parts:
Good Reference Book, June 29, 2000A good thing about this book is that it is very patient; the author assumes that you have absolutely NO experience in computers. He is pretty elaborate even covering on how to enter a command in UNIX. He says it like this: Press the characters on the keyboard in a sequence that matches the name of the command you want to use and press ENTER button.
The purpose of the book wasn't to tell you EVERYTHING. Rather, it is designed to get you comfortable with UNIX so you can advance if you want. But this book already has plenty of information to start doing some productive work in UNIX. Overall, I recommend any later Solbell's book instead of this one if you are new to UNIX and just want an easy, no -frills guide. If you are interested in Solaris then the author Solaris book will be much better value.
This decent book. some parts of it (User classification(9.1),
how to write your resume(10.4), etc) are unique. Generally just those
two chapters(Ch.9 and 10) worth the price of the book. Here is the review
that catch the essence but put it in a negative way because reviewer did not
understand the fact that this is a reference book. In certain aspects this book
competes with Unix Tools.
| **
Watching another admin's work |
|
Reviewer: Michael B. 
from Los Angeles, CA (USA)
February 27, 2000 |
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| My statistics: out of 36 topics in the first 3 chapters 22 are covered superficially or wrongly in my view; 11 I would label "OK", out of which 6 were completely new for me; I stopped counting after that. This book offers a "How-To" rather than systematic approach; the scripts are mostly shells with some occasional perl. One more frustration - given as generic, commands are very often platform-specific without mentioning the platform. The general impression is that most of this knowledge is approx. pre-1995 (the year when the crowd noticed the Internet) - however it does include still relevant ideas; the chapter on security looks especially shallow in the year 2000. In brief, it is as interesting and as frustrating as watching another sysadmin working. After copying a few tips, I will not keep it. |
| ***
If you're a beginner, don't
buy this.....yet. |
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Reviewer: A reader from
midwest us
April 19, 1999 |
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| If you're a beginner
or even casual user of Unix then steer clear of this book. While
the information contained within is excellent, it's more suited towards
experienced users as it's not very well explained.
Also a major fault is the incredibly poor index. Frankly, it's one of the worst I've ever seen in any computer book. Pathetic. Instead of just indexing the terms, the descriptives should be listed as well. ... ... ... |
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