Linux beginner's book [was Re: Ubuntu Book by O'Reilly?]

[Gerard Sharpe]

> On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 09:12:41PM -0400, m-yg at emailias.com wrote:
> >As we are on the topic of linux books what can everyone recommend as a
> >good newbie book.  Like getting to know how linux works, file system,
> >directory structure, etc. I would like to learn the basics and work my
> >way up. Thanks.
> 
> Unfortunately I can't help with any good book. I have only one Linux
> book, on administrating Linux, and I bought it only because it was dirt
> cheap (it was outdated already). I did pick up some things, not on
> Linux, but on administrating in general. (A quick search on Amazon
> didn't show it, I'll have to dig through the loft if someone is
> interested in the exact title, let me know.)
> 
> However, I can point you to a few good manuals/tutorials that will teach
> you a lot about Linux. They might not be quite the holding-your-hand
> kind of newbie books that tend to be printed, but if you aren't afraid
> of a little learning-by-doing they are great. (Some of them aren't what
> you'd call up-to-date, but they still offer quite a bit of useful
> pointers. You should of course contribute changes to the authors if you
> find something that's wrong/out-of-date/etc.:-)
> 
> The page http://www.tldp.org/guides.html contains a lot of good starting
> material:
> 
>  Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide
>  Bash Guide for Beginners
>  Linux Dictionary
>  Linux Filesystem Hierarchy
>  The Linux System Administrators' Guide
>  The Linux Network Administrator's Guide, Second Edition
> 
> And of course the HOWTO's on
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html one that might be
> interesting is From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO.
> 
> Hope it helps.
> 
> /M
> 
> --
> Magnus Therning                  


Not the best first book (maybe second or third, but one I thought so highly
of I had to mention it here!) but one I'd recommend it to any user looking
at getting their hands dirty is the Linux Administration Handbook
by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein. 

This book is very well written and a great reference. It uses examples
throughout the book for Red Hat 7.2, SuSE 7.3, and Debian 3.0 and while not
exclusively aimed at Debian will provide you with an excellent background as
to how Linux as a whole works.

Along with the great support sites mentioned above and the Ubuntu support
wiki this book while not touted as a Ubuntu guide has plenty of Debian
examples (and getting down to it if you learn Debian you can apply that
knowledge directly to Ubuntu).

The above said this book is not aimed at setting up a pretty workstation,
its more about as the title says administration (the fun stuff :)).

Anyway I'm sounding like I work for the publisher so I'll wrap it up by
saying check it out at Amazon if your curious
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0130084662/qid=1115994528/sr=2-1/ref=
pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-3203768-3292118


R
Gerard