Customer Reviews

Unix Unleashed (4th Edition)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This specifically covers all the necessary but not easily found tips which are useful to SysAdmins (and personal users) of these two most popular versions of Unix. This book has now become my #1 choice of the ONE unix book to buy! Look at the TOC: it's very complete topic coverage! I'd even say it replaces the classic "Running Linux" Ora book for content breadth.

I wonder how many people will buy this book since most Unix people are pretty certain they already know everything! I am guilty of that myself, I was modifying kernal code on ATT SYS V r 2 back in 1984, so I confess to being pretty skeptical about Unix Unleashed, but I must applaud the authors, this is a wealth of knowledge. And when I finished reading the book, I was glad I invested the time, it was a humbling reminder that just because I can spell "su", that doesn't mean I know everything about Unix.

The writing is very clear, think of the book as the polar opposite of a man page. They use charts, illustrations and other devices to convey difficult ideas. The book has been laid out well and that is critically important when you weigh in with over 1,100 pages. There are only a few pages in the entire work that don't have a subsection heading.

This is a good book and quite servicable as it is, I think it could even be used as a text in a semester long college course on Unix. When this goes to 5th edition I would recommend losing about 100 pages and not try to cover things like Snort, it is better to do one thing well and the Unix coverage is excellent. I would also like to see a bit more effort in meeting the promise of the title in the Towards Better Sysadmin section of the book, this is such an important topic and Andy and Robin clearly have the knowledge, experience and writing ability to help us in our journey to be better system administrators.

All perfect, but there r too many words I can't understand at first sight(not technically) , such as "gotchas" ¡°weired... etc. ...