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I wholeheartedly second that recommendation. I've been reading Linux Format for the last several years and I've enjoyed almost every issue. The writing is fresh, engaging, and above all, useful.

Some of their humor reminds me of Marcel Gagne from older issues of Linux Journal.

Clearly 'bing' is a mistake - it was intended to be 'billg'. The original plan was for a little cartoon Bill Gates (think xbill) to pop up and explain answers to you - 640 kilobytes should be enough, and so on. That would have been cool (and certainly more useful than Wolfram Alpha) but the marketing guys made a mistake somewhere.

Vhere-a is Mercel!? Thees is a reel deesgrece-a! Bork Bork Bork!

(he is the only reason I still subscribe to Linux Journal)

I would recommend Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye! for a good beginner book. It too uses Knoppix and includes a pressed Knoppix CD.

Marcel Gagne writes an amusing and informative monthly Column for Linux Journal called Cooking with Linux.

Marcel Gagne writes an amusing and informative monthly Column for Linux Journal called Cooking with Linux.

I haven't read this book, however, the concept sounds very similar to Marcel Gagne's book Move to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye. I wonder if Mr. Grant read this book before he "decided to write up a set of instructions on his own"?

In my opinion, Marcel provides an intelligent, readable, and most importantly FUN introduction to Linux. A first line of support for many Linux newbie's is their local LUG mailing list where more often than not (but not always) they're berated by the local alphageeks for asking a question that's been answered 100 times previously on the list or in scads of documentation. Unfortunately, newbies just want things to work, they don't want to know how it works. These types of responses usually result in their retreat back to the safety of Windows. Whether we like it or not, the latter situation is only going to increase, as more and more users migrate to Linux. Marcel's book stands as an excellent resource for anyone newbie's who don't mind doing a little reading. And for those who don't, Marcel offers both a mailing list and an IRC channel (#wftl on server: www.marcelgagne.com) for painless, alphageek free help.

I would like to find a book more suited to transitioning from windows to Linux

While looking for Knoppix hints, I ran across a page by the author of something called Moving to Linux , subtitled "Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye." It purports to do what you're asking for, but I haven't bought it and don't know anyone who has, so YMMV.

I find your last statement to be laughable at the least. To say that "Windows just works" is just ridiculous. If Windows would just work, I wouldn't have a job. I have installed Linux numerous times and had a working system after a single reboot, at which time it might well run for days, months, years, forever or longer without problems. Don't try that with your Windows box.

I do however agree that there isn't a single book that will educate someone on Linux. It's just too broad of a subject matter. With that said, I have found a couple of books to be very useful, Linux System Administration by Marcel Gagne is a good book about setting up your machine to do what you want. It's kinda short on shell scripting, but that's not for beginners anyway. There are some good sections about finding and installing new software, which can be somewhat daunting for a new user. Overall, it's a good place for a new user to learn about some of the nuances of *nix, and the book doesn't focus on one distribution. Secondly, I have found the Unleashed series of books to be very helpful for reference material. I wouldn't want to pick one up to read cover to cover, but I like having one around to look up stuff occassionally. These probably aren't for beginners, but maybe for intermediate users