The Unix CD Bookshelf [With UNIX in a Nutshell 3/E-624 Pages]

Any one or two of these books would cost more than this six-pack. And the CD-ROM is good for cut and past operations. The nice thing about this set is that as things progress and you diversify into other subjects, as perl you never lose the core skills that are displayed on this CD. The vi editor is always present and more powerful than the passing fads like emacs, which will be, replace in due time. And yes I thing each shell has its strength; however after the Borurne shell, The Korn shell is the most prolific. Now for those that think the tcsh and bash shells are in now are already behind as most shells regardless of what you type are based on the POSIX.2 standard. Even thought I have a gazillion reference books, this is nice because it is on line.

I was quite pleased with this collection of UNIX related books on a CD. I was also happy to have the printed copy of "UNIX in a Nutshell" that accompanies the CD (the Nutshell book as also contained ON the CD). I would recommend this product to anyone who is new to UNIX or Linux. Besides "Learning the Unix Operating System", the CD has the volumes "Learning the vi Editor" and "Sed and Awk", which are important utilities for programmers. The CD contains "Learning the Korn Shell", which I think may be much less useful.

I would give it five stars, but as others have noted it is getting up in age. On the other hand I know of no other single source with this much information. It is a five star value. I particularly appreciate the indexed CD, which I copied to my hard drive and bookmarked in my browser.

I have the previous edition of this book / CD. I was awaiting the next edition (this one); but I am disappointed with the new offerings. As a lot of people use perl or python these days, along with SED and AWK, I was hoping that the new addition would encompass these two topics. I'll wait to see what the 3rd edition is like.

Having read a number of books on Operating Systems in General and UNIX in particular, this book shines out in terms of clarity, focus and appeal to a cross section of users- from the hard-boiled pro to someone making a tentative foray in the myriad world of UNIX... I recommend it as a "must-have" ......!