Newbie Linux Books

[Allan Crooks]

Hi,

I tried to search the forums to see if anyone else asked the same question, but it seems it doesn't work, so you'll have to forgive me if I ask a frequently asked question.

What book would you recommend to a sort-of newbie (i.e. me)?

I've used Linux at University, but only playing around with the system they have installed, so we couldn't play around with the configuration of the system. So some things I've learnt (shells, different commands (ls, kill, ps etc.), so I could get around doing this and that.

But I'm looking into something which will not only teach me how to use Linux, but what it does and how it works. I'm not a complete newbie in any sense (I've got a degree in Computer Science and can program in a few different languages), just more of a newbie to how Linux works. I've been using Windows all my life (well, it just *seems* like forever), and I just want to adapt to something which I can have more fun with. :)

Perhaps the documents on linuxnewbie would be more useful to me, but I just prefer a text book, it's a lot more useful when you're offline too. :)

I just want to learn Linux properly. That is, how to use it, how to set it up and so on, rather than just hacking and playing around with it and learning things through experimentation.

So I'm just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for text books to help me become more familiar with Linux which would be suitable for me (i.e. not too basic and not something over my head).

Any suggestions? Or is that too much to ask for?

Thanks for any assistance,
Allan.

[-sureshot-]

the only book i've read much of what The Linux Network Administrators Guide, published by O'Reily i think. boring as ****, but informative.

I usually get most of my information from the web, because its A) Free, B) Easily Accessible, and C) Current.

as for other books, did you see LNO's very own bookshelf? (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/bookshelf/bs-1.html)

[MandK_10]

If you are looking to spend money on books, I would suggest going to Amazon.com and typing in Linux. You will get a large number of publications available and the nice thing about Amazon is they have reader reviews, which will give you some idea of how helpful the book could be.

Also, as long as you are spending money, you could buy a distro which comes with documentation. This could be helpfull. I did not buy RH7.1 but I downloaded ISO's and the Books and had them printed. There are four books which come with RH and they have been fairly helpful.

I am still pretty new and have a long time to go before I would consider myself knowledgable in linux, but I have found a good number of sites that have downloadable "books" that describe linux, UNIX, and the various programs available for these platforms (vi, emacs, LaTeX, gcc, Gimp, etc.). I do not have them all handy right now but I could probably do some digging if you are interested.

Mike

[bdg1983]

LNO's very own bookshelf is a good starting point. Actually all 6 of my Linux books are listed there.

[njcajun]

If you bought a distribution off the shelf, the included manuals will probably be ok to get you started.

If you need more, you might get something like Running Linux 3d Edition. My first Linux book was one of those huge, all-encompassing books, which is actually pretty good reference to have when you get to where you wanna set up services and stuff.

If you just wanna surf and stuff, most of the newbie books are pretty much the same as I see it.

[erica057]

If you're using Red Hat, I'd recommend the combination of "Learning Red Hat Linux" by Bill McCarty (O'Reilly) and "Red Hat Linux 7 Bible" by Christopher Negus. The first book is fast-paced and has you doing neat stuff right away. But, it's not like one of those cheezy 'Teach yourself ____ in ____ days' books where you end up mindlessly doing examples and not learning anything. However, the book is concise and doesn't really go into details, so I like having "Red Hat Linux 7 Bible" around as a reference when I want to read about something in-depth. If you decide to learn PHP, "PHP Essentials Prima Tech Linux Series" by Julie C. Meloni is quite possibly the best tech book I've ever read--and it's written by a chick! Woo woo!

[stavefan]

For overall non-distribution specific subject matter, Mark Sobell's "A Practical Guide to Linux" is excellent...even has a lot of man pages in the back broken down, in plain english with examples...I highly recommend it to anyone who is just starting with linux

[Gray_Race]

Anything from O' Rilley is good. I have Linux in a Nutshell, which is a great refernce for commands you can use in various shells. I also own, Running Linux 3rd edition with goes real deep inot the operation and function of Linux