A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming

As a newcomer to Unix and Linux operating systems, I just needed a reference so I could be productive enough to perform tasks without relying on others. The book enabled me to do this. I read the other reviews about how the book works for both beginner and advanced users. I borrowed 2 books before buying this one. This one is the only one I use.

This is a very nice book for novice unix users. This book put everything in perspective/context. It starts with a short history of Linux/Unix/GNU and the relation between each other. It is also a very complete book. It covers the main commands, editors, shell programming, et. cetera. The nice thing (especially for novice people), is that there are a lot of examples with a description what it does. The examples are very usable. Because a lot of examples use multiple commands this book can also been seen as a cookbook how you can do certain task using e.g. the command line interface. So this book is not one big printed man pages (a lot of other books are). One little disadvantage is that this book need some updating. E.g. CVS is covered but the emerging Subversion not. Maybe it is a good idea to cover also subversion in the next edition.

This book is the best distro-agnostic foundational Linux reference I've ever seen, out of dozens of Linux-related books I've read. It's a constant battle to find a good Linux book that isn't wedded implicitly or explicitly to a specific distribution (usually something Red Hat related), more about KDE and GNOME applications and other specific applications the authors favor than about real Linux skills, or both. Finding this book was a real stroke of luck. If you want to really understand how to get things done at the command line, where the power and flexibility of free unixlike OSes really live, this book is among the best tools you'll find toward that end. About the only way it could be better is to be released under an open documentation license.

I recently was fortunate enough to receive a review copy of this book from Prentice Hall publishers, and am happy to submit this review. I found this very large volume (1008 pages!) to be quite interesting and a valuable source of information for both Linux beginners and veterans alike. As the title may suggest, it covers some of the most commonly used Linux commands, the two main editors (Vim and Emacs), and some shell programming techniques with the Bash and tcsh shells. I found it to be quite "distro-neutral", as the material presented should be available on virtually any Linux system, and does not reference distro-specific tools. The book seems very well organized into Parts and Chapters, and there are also some excellent appendices and additional matter at the end of the book, which I'll discuss later in this review. Part I is entitled "The Linux Operating System", and starts out with some introductory "welcome" and "getting started" material which is good reading for newbies but can easily be skipped by others. The next chapter in this part covers how to use the more commonly used commands such as ls, cp, rm, and tar. This is followed up by a chapter on the Linux filesystem, including the hierarchical layout, directories, pathnames, permissions, and file links. There is a nice section in this chapter which describes what is found in nearly all of the standard directories such as /boot, /etc, /home, /usr, and so on. Also notable here was an excellent description of how to set (and understand!) file and directory permissions. The final chapter in this part provides an introduction to the shell and command line. It covers standard input/output, redirection, pipes, and backgrounding of commands. Most of the information in these first 5 chapters will probably be a review for more experienced Linux users, but they are outstanding reading for newcomers. One thing I did notice as a great feature of the book is that there is a "Chapter Summary" at the end of each chapter which is really excellent, and a list of "Exercises" to help you see and use the information in a more hands-on way. Part II is called simply "The Editors", and devotes about 60 pages each to Vim and Emacs. A brief history of each is provided, and a pretty good tutorial of basic usage is walked through. Both chapters include a command referance/summary, and some customization tips. Even the well known "debate" about which editor to use is mentioned, although no preference is indicated. For the record, this writer prefers Vim... J There are more in-depth books available to explain each editor in greater detail, but these chapters provide a good introductory lesson. Part III contains two chapters, one each on the "bash" shell and the "tcsh" shell. Some of the procedures and concepts in this part may well be more information than is desired by many Linux users, but command-line types will want to read all of this material. The differences between these two shells

For some people knowing how to do something through a graphical interface is akin to knowing how to drive without knowing how an engine, transmission, etc. work together to make the car run. For them knowing how to get down to the command line and get things done that either the graphical interface does not allow or does not do the way you want it done is a matter of pride and represents the dividing line between a user and a power user. If you want to become a real Linux guru and know how to work the command line to do whatever you want including commands, editing, shell programming, and scripting this is one of the better books available. Readable, straight-forward, educational, it is a one-of-kind reference that blends the educational aspect of a typical book on learning Linux with a typical book of command line references. A Practical Guide to Linux is highly recommended.