On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Sven Burgener wrote:
> Fellow debs,
>
> o First, can anyone tell me if the book "UNIX Power Tools" is any good?
> It's from O'Reilly. If not, what alternatives are there to it? Any other
> book(s) one simply *must* own? :)
>
> Topics: UNIX / Linux / Networking / C Programming
>
> My current collection comprises "DNS & BIND", "Linux in a Nutshell",
> "Learning the Bash shell", "Learning Debian/GNU Linux" (sucky) and
> finally "Linux Network Administrator's Guide", all from O'Reilly.
'Running Linux', Welsh et al., O'Reilly. This book in any edition is a
must read for every Linux beginner who aspires to Linux mastery.
'SuSE Linux: Installation, Configuration and First Steps', any post-6.1
edition. It is worth buying one official SuSE distro just to get this book.
You will find it especially valuable if you are gravitating from
Windows/Linux to Linux.
'Learning the vi Editor', 6th Edition, Lamb and Robbins, O'Reilly. Although
you can learn the basics of editing with vi in an hour, unfortunately, you
can then use vi for years without learning the rest of vi -- resources that
make it such an incredible productivity and power tool on Linux. This book
teaches those resources and then becomes a valuable reference.
'Mastering Regular Expressions', Friedl, O'Reilly. You can't get far with
Linux without mastering regular expressions, so suck it in and read this
book. It's as close to a royal road as you're going to get. I had used
Linux for several years, but it was only after reading this book that I
developed any ability with regular expressions. I need to read it again.
'Beginning Linux Programming', Matthew & Stones, WROX Press. Don't let the
'beginning' in the title fool you. This book will take you far.
'The Concise Guide to XFree86 for Linux', Hsiao, Que. This book stands
alone, I believe, to elucidate the secrets of XFree86 in one volume.
'The Linux Problem Solver', Ward, No Starch. I am sticking my neck out
putting this in a list of 'must have' books, as no one has probably heard
of it. But most books on systems administration for Linux are either a lot
of words and general concepts ('Linux System Administration', Carling et
al., New Riders) or primarily geared to UNIX and out of date for the fast
pace of Free Software ('UNIX System Administration Handbook', Nemeth et
al., Prentice Hall; 'Essential System Administration', Frisch, O'Reilly).
Here is a clear and well-written book that is both concrete in its approach
to solving specific, practical systems administration problems and also
written by someone (Brian Ward) with a thorough understanding of what he is
writing about.
'Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution', Dibona et al.,
editors, O'Reilly. However good you may become at Linux you are only half
educated unless you are steeped in the history, traditions and lore of the
Free Software movement. This book is the best introduction I know of under
one cover.
Other titles worth taking a look at for your reference library:
'The Complete FreeBSD', Lehey, Walnut Creek
'Maximum Linux Security', Anonymous, SAMS
'Linux Network Servers 24 Seven', Hunt, Network Press
'UNIX Shells by Example', Quigley, Prentice Hall
It is informative to read book reviews of these titles on Amazon.com (and
then actually buy them at bookpool.com or one of the stores at unamazon.com
:)).
Happy reading,
Dwight
--
Dwight Johnson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
