Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Authors: Ellen Siever Stephen Figgins Aaron Weber Robert Love Arnold Robbins
List Price: $44.95
Amazon Price: $28.32
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Summary: O'Reilly Advocates on the lose
Hiya!
this book is a waste of money and space. what kind of an idiot would carry this book around? when all the information is in the linux system itself?? MAN pages and INFO pages.
observe. you can search for utilities in the Linux system by using APROPOS. can you automatically search for the utility you want in this thick thick book? lets say i want to use an editor. all you do from the command line is...
x@y:/$ apropos editor
the linux system automatically searches the database and man pages for the keyword "editor" and you get a whole list of editors you can choose from. try that with this book, all the utilities in this book are listed alphebetically... very good filtering / indexing system indeed *sarcasm*
you have to have pretty good knowledge and know the command and what you're looking for from the beginning to find this book useful. the irony of this is that once your knowledge level is at that level all you really need are the MAN pages.
Summary: Excellent reference book.
Title: Linux in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (5th Edition)
Authors: Ellen Siever, Aaron Weber, Stephen Figgins, Robert Love, Arnold Robbins
Publisher: O'Reilly
Pages: 925
ISBN: 0-596-00930-5
Linux in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference is exactly what it says in the subtitle. The book is geared almost exclusively to someone sitting at a machine, looking for how a command is used. If you're just starting with Linux and are looking for something to get you started, this is not the book you want. If you want something that will teach you how to use Linux, the introduction recommends Learning Red Hat Linux or Running Linux, both of which are also from O'Reilly. Pick up Linux in a Nutshell if you already have at least a basic understanding of using Linux and want a good book for looking up how specific commands work.
The book starts off with a brief introduction that is equal parts extolling the virtues of Linux and description of the books content. The introduction is followed by a short section (5 pages) listing commands a beginning user might need, followed by a slightly longer (18 pages) list of common System and Network administration commands. These sections contain just enough description to know why and how you might use these commands. But you don't need to wait long before you get more detail. In the next chapter you hit the meat of the book, which is a 500 page alphabetized list of Linux commands. They provide the syntax for the command, along with a list of any options that are available. For me, the value here is not having to swap back and forth between looking at man pages and what I'm trying to work on.
Chapters 4-6 are divided into task related sections. These sections all follow about the same format: a brief description of the process involved, followed by a list of related commands, their syntax, and options. The first of these (Ch 4) describes how to setup a Dual boot machine. They cover the use of LILO and GRUB, providing the commands and options used by each. Chapter 5 covers Package Management, the process used to install and update applications. They cover the use of RPM (Redhat Package Manager) and Debian style packages. They go into detail about various methods using apt, rpm, up2date, yum, and synaptic. They also cover building packages for those developing their own applications. Chapter 6 goes in depth into the functionality of the Bash and Korn shells. It covers both commands that can be issued at a prompt and the use of shell scripts.
Chapters 7-11 cover some of the text manipulation utilities in Linux. Chapter 7 goes over pattern matching and the use of regular expressions. There's also a handy chart of what metacharacters work in which utility. Chapter 8 talks about the text editing functions of Emacs, including a 13 page list of commands and the associated hotkeys. Chapter 9 covers the same for vi, ex, and vim. Chapter 10 covers the application sed and its use as a script based text editing tool. Chapter 11 describes awk/gawk and how they can be used for text processing and as a scripting program language.
Chapters 12-14 address Source code management in Linux. Chapter 12 gives a brief overview of the concepts of multiple developers, code versions, and source code repositories. It also introduces several code management systems. Chapters 13 and 14 go in depth about two of these, CVS and Subversion, respectively.
Finally, there's a comprehensive index of both topics and commands. One of my pet peeves, especially with reference books, is a weak index. That is definitely not the case here. This book makes it easy to find what you're looking for. As far as I can tell, all the commands are indexed, and a random sampling of topics always netted me the correct page number.
In conclusion, Linux in a Nutshell does an excellent job of providing you the commands and utilities available in your typical Linux installation. If you know what you're trying to do, this book is handy for looking up the command and syntax required to do it. The entries are clear and concise, but still provide a good level of detail on the commands, switches, and options they're describing.
Summary: extra reference.
over half of this book consists of material already available in the "man" pages on a linux system.
the book boasts how it includes many many examples on how to use each command, this is utterly false. there are infact too few examples included.
100% of the material in this book can be found on the internet, on the linux system's info and man pages.
this book will not be friendly for the linux newbie. the title is misleading, "in a nutshell" usually means "the basics of a working system". this book is merely acts as reference for the abundance of reference freely available.
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