Sams Teach Yourself Freebsd in 24 Hours [With CD-ROM]

If your interested in a NIX then this is a great starter book. By no means is this the be all end all. Get your feet wet and USE the OS. You will see that the file structure of NIX is superior to WIndows any day. More logical, just makes sense. Loved the book as I was new to FreeBSD. If you have used Linux or other flavors of NIX then this may be remedial for you. However, I seem to get something out of everything I read.

Installed and configured FreeBSD for the first time using this book. Very nice and easy to follow. Information goes far enough to allow the user/reader to take things further where needed - from other sources. The book covers the basics nicely. I came from linux and found the change over to be smooth. Nothing bad to say.

I do not know if all of the negative reviews are justified or well reasoned. I am somewhat familiar to Unix type OSes and was looking for something fundamental but not overly simple. This book starts with basic elements (basic commands, concept of user accounts) and lays a good foundation for further study. I very much appreciated the fact that it does not assume to much from its readers with regard to their knowledge of Unix. The chapters are concise and nicely arranged, logistically speaking. This topics are linear and are do not throw to much info at the reader at once. However the content is not dummed- down to the point of being condescending.

The content is good and 5.0 is covered (in passing). The only problems I have with the book could have been dealt with in the editing process.Example In the installation chapter - Do not create a user when offered, we will do that later in hour X using the adduser command. In the very next chapter (hour) on shells: "Login using the user account (not root) you created in the previous hour. There are many other examples like this as well.Also many times words are missing spaces between them. All in all quite good on content for a new comer like me. It just needs a scrub job on flow and a spell check.