Linux in a Nutshell

Unless you are a seasoned Linux guru who never forgets anything, then you should buy Linux in a Nutshell. This is quite possibly one of the most essential books for anyone working with Linux. If you are like me, reading documentation online can be tedious and having a handy reference volume is better than stumbling through Google search results. Linux in a Nutshell covers major user, programming, administration and networking tools for popular Linux distributions. At over 900 pages, this hefty volume can save you time and prevent you from making mistakes. Have you ever gotten regular expression wrong and deleted a bunch of files? This handy reference can help prevent future mistakes! At first glance Linux in a Nutshell may appear to be nothing more than Linux's manual pages in print form - but it's much more. The whopping 400-page third chapter provides a comprehensive reference guide to almost any standard Linux command you will need. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of commands are covered in this chapter. Arranged alphabetically for quick reference, you can easily find the proper documentation for a command. For example, consider the simple shell command 'ls' used to list contents of directories. Often you may find yourself wanting to list items in a specific way. If you pull up the man pages on your console terminal or SSH window, you will find yourself scrolling through a myriad of pages. Or with this book next to you, you could turn to page 258 and quickly run through all of the various listing options. There are nearly 50 different command options for the seemingly simply listing command. With this reference volume, you can scan through them all in seconds. Another excellent chapter covers package managers. It provides a solid introduction to Red Hat's rpm format and Debian's deb format. If you use Linux, then you probably grab packages frequently and install them. This chapter will guide you through many aspects of the package manager. Especially useful on Red Hat is rpm's verify command. If you suspect your system has been hacked, using rpm to verify md5 checksums can be a very quick way to check on specific files. Learning to use a text editor is essential to becoming a good system administrator. Linux in a Nutshell covers Emacs and vi. Linux text editors can be very powerful when you know the right commands. Also editors like vi tend to preserve a files format better than simpler editors like pico. Though these chapters will not replace a dedicated reference volume they are certainly handy when you need to find a quick way to change a text file. Linux in a Nutshell is an excellent reference volume. At first, you may not think you will use it, but once it is at your side, you will find yourself referring to it often. Even if you're a seasoned Linux user, you occasionally run across some command that you may not know well. Rather than stumbling though man pages and often-inappropriate online documentation, you could use this book and

I'm one of the authors on this book and I figured I should point out what's new in the 5th edition, and how we improved it over the 4th one. My favorite improvement is that in the reference section, we put in lots more examples, so it's easier to see the most common uses of commands. Also, we got kernel developer Robert Love to write a lot of the developer and kernel-related sections, so you know that they're applicable to real-life developer tasks. Changes to content for the 5th edition: power management now covers ACPI, printing covers CUPS, and the kernel section now focuses on kernel 2.6. The subversion version control tool and the GRUB bootloader get a lot more coverage, too. In my humble opinion, this is an indispensable reference, and in addition to being an update, it's an improvement in style and substance over the previous edition. This book is a good choice if you've ever asked questions like: What's a shell script and how do I write one? How do I use a version control system? How do I select an arbitrary rectangle in Emacs? How do I write a makefile? How do you build an RPM, anyway? This can also be good to have as a reference for new users-- read the introduction, read up on the tools you're using, then keep it there by your side, and you'll grow into this book as you learn to do more with Linux. (You may also want to consider "Running Linux," which is an overview and introduction, with more focus on GUI applications and end-user tools).

~~ Although not for "Newbies," of my dozen or so Linux books, "Linux In a Nutshell" is the most thourougly concise (is that a contradiction of terms?) of them all. A virtual "Bible" of commands, options, and information. This book will stay alongside your computer while the others will remain on your bookshelf. ~~ Lloyd W. Cary ~~

Lots of information about Linux including administrative information for all the hackers! Useful examples for most commands which helped a lot in understanding what each command does. It's great for leanring Unix as well.. more information than Unix In A Nutshell incl. all the basics of similar Unix commands.

Get this book if for nothing else than its great command section .. about 150 pages .. they show the command and any wild cards for that command and they explain what they do.. If you are going to be using linux then this is a MUST have book for new and old users .. I am new to linux . I was tried of looking all over the net for these commands .. I'm glad to see a book that has the most if not all the commands in it ..