Customer Reviews

Linux in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly Nutshell)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First off, this book is NOT for absolute beginners. It is not a book meant for someone who has zero experience with Linux. But, as a desktop reference for those who know how to use Linux, it is an excellent and handy book. It helps by saving time scanning through man pages for commands and GNU tools. The information on Emacs, vi and shell syntax for bash, csh and tcsh shells is extremely helpful.

Generally O'Reilly nutshell series are easy to be blamed as a printout of existing manuals. But still some are better in incorporating authors' experience. By reading UNIX in a Nutshell, you know examples in there are very carefully selected based on authors' experience. Other Nutshell books such as Java in a Nutshell, VB/VBA in a Nutshell contain a lot of author's own wisdom and tips accumulated over the years. However, Linux in a Nutshell is too close to a nicely-bound printout of manual pages. The author could've shown us useful examples of some important commands and given more detailed descriptions of Linux-specific issues. If that makes the book too big, don't include too much non-Linux stuff. I bought it because a Half Price Bookstore was selling it for 50% off and it saves me trouble printing out manuals. But the chapters on Perl, sed/awk etc. are a waste of paper for anyone who already has UNIX in a Nutshell (which I believe most of us do) and Perl books. In a nutshell, even a layman with a few months' learning can write (or compile) this book. Hey, you can make money fast! -- Seriously, this book is useful though. But they should've sold it for even less because there's not much work involved in producing it.

This could have been an excellent reference manual had the author bothered to give command syntax along with a more complete list of options. The other thing that keeps me from giving this or any other computer book I own a five star rating is a poor, incomplete index. Why is it that people who write books on computers don't use their computers to amass comprehensive indexes? Baffles me. Anyway, I keep this book close by, but it has turned out to be less than I hoped for and less than it is rated as being. If it had a good index, I would give it four stars. If it provided more in the way of command syntax, I would probably give it five stars. This is a book for intermediate to advanced users willing to jot notes in the margins on command options not included and cross references not indexed.

I have found this book to be quite useful since it is a condensed version of the man files. It also cuts to the chase and gives you the most commonly used command options. Out of my shelf full of *NIX books, this is the one I grab for when I need to look up something like a command for Emacs or a shell option.

I also like being able to carry it around and reading up on all the commands due to it's size, a binder with all the man pages printed off would prove to be unwieldy.

It contains the Linux user Commands,the Bash shell,the csh shell,the tcsh shell,Emacs,vi,ex,sed editors,the gawk Language,RCS 'n' CVS,Perl,sysadmin commands and boot methods.A very good reference,but i do not reccomend it for a completely begginer to Linux.

This book is long on the classical Unix-of-yore (awk, sed, five different shells) but short on really useful 'hard' Linux stuff. Many configuration commands, networking, etc are missing. There's a big overlap with my five-year-old Unix V reference, also published by O'Reilly.

Similarly, I think the large Perl section is misplaced in a Linux reference book. If you need this level of detail, you get one of the camel books.

Also, the index leaves something to be desired -- and that's a big minus for a pure reference book like this. Indeed, as some other reviewers have noted, once you know which command to use, man pages will in many cases be just as convenient.

Other reviews make strong cases for rating this book at less than five stars. But after a certain point in using computers, one wants the hard side of a tradeoff between leanness and information. I just looked at my copy and wondered if it could tell me what a 'symbolic link' is. I ended up running "man ln" and "info ln" to understand the difference between a hard and soft link. Not very user-friendly, especially since the concept is as simple as Windows shortcuts.

Any fairly new user who tried running "info ln" would be in a little world of pain, as well. It executes the text-mode emacs editor, and I imagine people would try typing 'C' and 'h' to get help, instead of Ctrl-h.

But all that aside, I think this book deserves the 5 stars because it's perfect for its very useful role. Its chapter on CVS is better than entire books on the subject, since you just have to look at a page of reference, instead of plodding through some nightmare book that makes CVS seem more profound than it is. The chapters on shell programming get you into the thick of the subject pretty quickly. (My one beef with the book is where it says csh programming is 'bad for your health' without explaining why. C shell lacks some capabilities for file handling. But that's probably only very important for sysadmins, and it's even very unmaintainable for them to use deep shell programming anyway.)

This sounds like a review against the book, which is good. I just wish to define what this book is not, since that is what is greatly important for a reference.

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.

This book is an excellent resource for finding Linux commands, but does not teach the operating system or KDE or the X system.

As someone who is still learning Linux, I found this book very helpful. It covers the basics of running wervers as well as some of the more complex issues one might expect to find in an advanced book. Great for first timers!