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My first Linux book was Linux Unleashed, 1st edition, published by Sams Publishing. This book included Slackware with it. I'm afraid to think what verion, as this book is (c) 1995. It was good for a start. It's been read, borrowed, and stolen over the years. Hopefully it has a good home now.

I still highly recommend Slackware for a distribution. It's what we use on all our servers, and my workstations (Home, Work, and Laptop)

I bought a co-worker Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne. Published by Addison Wesley. Flipping through it, this seems like a very good book. It seems to be working out. He's coming to me with very intelligent questions after reading chapters, rather than "What do I do at the prompt".

After the Unleashed book, I personally got into the O'Reilly books. If you do this, go to the store with the company credit card, it'll be expensive. Oddly enough, most bosses are ok with paying for books, even when they're being tight with equipment. You can't get a new $5 CPU fan, but you can spend $500 on books. Hmmmm.. Well, buy more books. :) Borders and Barnes & Noble frequently have sales on previous edition books. If you flip through both, sometimes you'll see there were only very subtle changes, or chapters which aren't important to you. For a $40 price difference, it's worth getting the older one. :)

O'Reilly Essential Systems Administration

Learning
the Unix Operating System (got it for my girlfriend, so she'd understand what I was doing all night)

vi Pocket Reference. It seems none of my coworkers could use vi before I got to this office. Now they're all using it. [esc][esc]:wq!

Programming Perl. If you're going to play with Unix, you should learn Perl.

Then you should read up on what you're working with. If you're networking or on the Internet, TCP/IP is good to know.

TCP/IP Network Administration

DNS and BIND very definately, unless you want to be clueless about what happens between typing in "yahoo.com" and it coming up in your browser. Having a good understanding there definately helps you debug problems.

Sendmail This is the perfect book to spin your head, and leave you with a headache for months. But it's the topic, not the book, that's so complicated. If it didn't do absolutely everything, I'm sure it would be simpler to use.

O'Reilly has a lot of great books.

"Learning" books are for beginners.

"Nutshell" books are usually to help you figure out something if you don't really know it.

The rest of the books have various degrees of learning to them. On my desk at work, for O'Reilly books, I have 3 different PERL books, the JavaScript book, and a few others that I reference on a regular basis.

I recommend going to book stores, and flipping through everything they have (restock it to the proper places). See what your comprehension level is. If you have no clue what they're talking about, you need an easier book. If you almost understand, buy it, read it, and then share it with a friend (especially on the company expense account! hehe).

When you're ready to get out of the books, and into the real world, the most valuable reference you'll ever have is dejanews.com. If you don't know an answer, search it there. Probably someone in the last 20 years has already asked it. It's the quickest way to look smart and impress your friends, even if you're stupid. :)

Having the stack of O'Reilly books is always good though. I recently changed offices (same company), and while riding in the elevator, I was offered a job because I looked educated and had a big stack of O'Reilly books in my arms.. Little did she know that was only 1/3 of them. The rest were still in my car..

My first Linux book was Linux Unleashed, 1st edition, published by Sams Publishing. This book included Slackware with it. I'm afraid to think what verion, as this book is (c) 1995. It was good for a start. It's been read, borrowed, and stolen over the years. Hopefully it has a good home now.

I still highly recommend Slackware for a distribution. It's what we use on all our servers, and my workstations (Home, Work, and Laptop)

I bought a co-worker Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne. Published by Addison Wesley. Flipping through it, this seems like a very good book. It seems to be working out. He's coming to me with very intelligent questions after reading chapters, rather than "What do I do at the prompt".

After the Unleashed book, I personally got into the O'Reilly books. If you do this, go to the store with the company credit card, it'll be expensive. Oddly enough, most bosses are ok with paying for books, even when they're being tight with equipment. You can't get a new $5 CPU fan, but you can spend $500 on books. Hmmmm.. Well, buy more books. :) Borders and Barnes & Noble frequently have sales on previous edition books. If you flip through both, sometimes you'll see there were only very subtle changes, or chapters which aren't important to you. For a $40 price difference, it's worth getting the older one. :)

O'Reilly Essential Systems Administration

Learning
the Unix Operating System (got it for my girlfriend, so she'd understand what I was doing all night)

vi Pocket Reference. It seems none of my coworkers could use vi before I got to this office. Now they're all using it. [esc][esc]:wq!

Programming Perl. If you're going to play with Unix, you should learn Perl.

Then you should read up on what you're working with. If you're networking or on the Internet, TCP/IP is good to know.

TCP/IP Network Administration

DNS and BIND very definately, unless you want to be clueless about what happens between typing in "yahoo.com" and it coming up in your browser. Having a good understanding there definately helps you debug problems.

Sendmail This is the perfect book to spin your head, and leave you with a headache for months. But it's the topic, not the book, that's so complicated. If it didn't do absolutely everything, I'm sure it would be simpler to use.

O'Reilly has a lot of great books.

"Learning" books are for beginners.

"Nutshell" books are usually to help you figure out something if you don't really know it.

The rest of the books have various degrees of learning to them. On my desk at work, for O'Reilly books, I have 3 different PERL books, the JavaScript book, and a few others that I reference on a regular basis.

I recommend going to book stores, and flipping through everything they have (restock it to the proper places). See what your comprehension level is. If you have no clue what they're talking about, you need an easier book. If you almost understand, buy it, read it, and then share it with a friend (especially on the company expense account! hehe).

When you're ready to get out of the books, and into the real world, the most valuable reference you'll ever have is dejanews.com. If you don't know an answer, search it there. Probably someone in the last 20 years has already asked it. It's the quickest way to look smart and impress your friends, even if you're stupid. :)

Having the stack of O'Reilly books is always good though. I recently changed offices (same company), and while riding in the elevator, I was offered a job because I looked educated and had a big stack of O'Reilly books in my arms.. Little did she know that was only 1/3 of them. The rest were still in my car..

My first Linux book was Linux Unleashed, 1st edition, published by Sams Publishing. This book included Slackware with it. I'm afraid to think what verion, as this book is (c) 1995. It was good for a start. It's been read, borrowed, and stolen over the years. Hopefully it has a good home now.

I still highly recommend Slackware for a distribution. It's what we use on all our servers, and my workstations (Home, Work, and Laptop)

I bought a co-worker Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne. Published by Addison Wesley. Flipping through it, this seems like a very good book. It seems to be working out. He's coming to me with very intelligent questions after reading chapters, rather than "What do I do at the prompt".

After the Unleashed book, I personally got into the O'Reilly books. If you do this, go to the store with the company credit card, it'll be expensive. Oddly enough, most bosses are ok with paying for books, even when they're being tight with equipment. You can't get a new $5 CPU fan, but you can spend $500 on books. Hmmmm.. Well, buy more books. :) Borders and Barnes & Noble frequently have sales on previous edition books. If you flip through both, sometimes you'll see there were only very subtle changes, or chapters which aren't important to you. For a $40 price difference, it's worth getting the older one. :)

O'Reilly Essential Systems Administration

Learning
the Unix Operating System (got it for my girlfriend, so she'd understand what I was doing all night)

vi Pocket Reference. It seems none of my coworkers could use vi before I got to this office. Now they're all using it. [esc][esc]:wq!

Programming Perl. If you're going to play with Unix, you should learn Perl.

Then you should read up on what you're working with. If you're networking or on the Internet, TCP/IP is good to know.

TCP/IP Network Administration

DNS and BIND very definately, unless you want to be clueless about what happens between typing in "yahoo.com" and it coming up in your browser. Having a good understanding there definately helps you debug problems.

Sendmail This is the perfect book to spin your head, and leave you with a headache for months. But it's the topic, not the book, that's so complicated. If it didn't do absolutely everything, I'm sure it would be simpler to use.

O'Reilly has a lot of great books.

"Learning" books are for beginners.

"Nutshell" books are usually to help you figure out something if you don't really know it.

The rest of the books have various degrees of learning to them. On my desk at work, for O'Reilly books, I have 3 different PERL books, the JavaScript book, and a few others that I reference on a regular basis.

I recommend going to book stores, and flipping through everything they have (restock it to the proper places). See what your comprehension level is. If you have no clue what they're talking about, you need an easier book. If you almost understand, buy it, read it, and then share it with a friend (especially on the company expense account! hehe).

When you're ready to get out of the books, and into the real world, the most valuable reference you'll ever have is dejanews.com. If you don't know an answer, search it there. Probably someone in the last 20 years has already asked it. It's the quickest way to look smart and impress your friends, even if you're stupid. :)

Having the stack of O'Reilly books is always good though. I recently changed offices (same company), and while riding in the elevator, I was offered a job because I looked educated and had a big stack of O'Reilly books in my arms.. Little did she know that was only 1/3 of them. The rest were still in my car..

My first Linux book was Linux Unleashed, 1st edition, published by Sams Publishing. This book included Slackware with it. I'm afraid to think what verion, as this book is (c) 1995. It was good for a start. It's been read, borrowed, and stolen over the years. Hopefully it has a good home now.

I still highly recommend Slackware for a distribution. It's what we use on all our servers, and my workstations (Home, Work, and Laptop)

I bought a co-worker Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne. Published by Addison Wesley. Flipping through it, this seems like a very good book. It seems to be working out. He's coming to me with very intelligent questions after reading chapters, rather than "What do I do at the prompt".

After the Unleashed book, I personally got into the O'Reilly books. If you do this, go to the store with the company credit card, it'll be expensive. Oddly enough, most bosses are ok with paying for books, even when they're being tight with equipment. You can't get a new $5 CPU fan, but you can spend $500 on books. Hmmmm.. Well, buy more books. :) Borders and Barnes & Noble frequently have sales on previous edition books. If you flip through both, sometimes you'll see there were only very subtle changes, or chapters which aren't important to you. For a $40 price difference, it's worth getting the older one. :)

O'Reilly Essential Systems Administration

Learning
the Unix Operating System (got it for my girlfriend, so she'd understand what I was doing all night)

vi Pocket Reference. It seems none of my coworkers could use vi before I got to this office. Now they're all using it. [esc][esc]:wq!

Programming Perl. If you're going to play with Unix, you should learn Perl.

Then you should read up on what you're working with. If you're networking or on the Internet, TCP/IP is good to know.

TCP/IP Network Administration

DNS and BIND very definately, unless you want to be clueless about what happens between typing in "yahoo.com" and it coming up in your browser. Having a good understanding there definately helps you debug problems.

Sendmail This is the perfect book to spin your head, and leave you with a headache for months. But it's the topic, not the book, that's so complicated. If it didn't do absolutely everything, I'm sure it would be simpler to use.

O'Reilly has a lot of great books.

"Learning" books are for beginners.

"Nutshell" books are usually to help you figure out something if you don't really know it.

The rest of the books have various degrees of learning to them. On my desk at work, for O'Reilly books, I have 3 different PERL books, the JavaScript book, and a few others that I reference on a regular basis.

I recommend going to book stores, and flipping through everything they have (restock it to the proper places). See what your comprehension level is. If you have no clue what they're talking about, you need an easier book. If you almost understand, buy it, read it, and then share it with a friend (especially on the company expense account! hehe).

When you're ready to get out of the books, and into the real world, the most valuable reference you'll ever have is dejanews.com. If you don't know an answer, search it there. Probably someone in the last 20 years has already asked it. It's the quickest way to look smart and impress your friends, even if you're stupid. :)

Having the stack of O'Reilly books is always good though. I recently changed offices (same company), and while riding in the elevator, I was offered a job because I looked educated and had a big stack of O'Reilly books in my arms.. Little did she know that was only 1/3 of them. The rest were still in my car..

My first Linux book was Linux Unleashed, 1st edition, published by Sams Publishing. This book included Slackware with it. I'm afraid to think what verion, as this book is (c) 1995. It was good for a start. It's been read, borrowed, and stolen over the years. Hopefully it has a good home now.

I still highly recommend Slackware for a distribution. It's what we use on all our servers, and my workstations (Home, Work, and Laptop)

I bought a co-worker Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne. Published by Addison Wesley. Flipping through it, this seems like a very good book. It seems to be working out. He's coming to me with very intelligent questions after reading chapters, rather than "What do I do at the prompt".

After the Unleashed book, I personally got into the O'Reilly books. If you do this, go to the store with the company credit card, it'll be expensive. Oddly enough, most bosses are ok with paying for books, even when they're being tight with equipment. You can't get a new $5 CPU fan, but you can spend $500 on books. Hmmmm.. Well, buy more books. :) Borders and Barnes & Noble frequently have sales on previous edition books. If you flip through both, sometimes you'll see there were only very subtle changes, or chapters which aren't important to you. For a $40 price difference, it's worth getting the older one. :)

O'Reilly Essential Systems Administration

Learning
the Unix Operating System (got it for my girlfriend, so she'd understand what I was doing all night)

vi Pocket Reference. It seems none of my coworkers could use vi before I got to this office. Now they're all using it. [esc][esc]:wq!

Programming Perl. If you're going to play with Unix, you should learn Perl.

Then you should read up on what you're working with. If you're networking or on the Internet, TCP/IP is good to know.

TCP/IP Network Administration

DNS and BIND very definately, unless you want to be clueless about what happens between typing in "yahoo.com" and it coming up in your browser. Having a good understanding there definately helps you debug problems.

Sendmail This is the perfect book to spin your head, and leave you with a headache for months. But it's the topic, not the book, that's so complicated. If it didn't do absolutely everything, I'm sure it would be simpler to use.

O'Reilly has a lot of great books.

"Learning" books are for beginners.

"Nutshell" books are usually to help you figure out something if you don't really know it.

The rest of the books have various degrees of learning to them. On my desk at work, for O'Reilly books, I have 3 different PERL books, the JavaScript book, and a few others that I reference on a regular basis.

I recommend going to book stores, and flipping through everything they have (restock it to the proper places). See what your comprehension level is. If you have no clue what they're talking about, you need an easier book. If you almost understand, buy it, read it, and then share it with a friend (especially on the company expense account! hehe).

When you're ready to get out of the books, and into the real world, the most valuable reference you'll ever have is dejanews.com. If you don't know an answer, search it there. Probably someone in the last 20 years has already asked it. It's the quickest way to look smart and impress your friends, even if you're stupid. :)

Having the stack of O'Reilly books is always good though. I recently changed offices (same company), and while riding in the elevator, I was offered a job because I looked educated and had a big stack of O'Reilly books in my arms.. Little did she know that was only 1/3 of them. The rest were still in my car..

My first Linux book was Linux Unleashed, 1st edition, published by Sams Publishing. This book included Slackware with it. I'm afraid to think what verion, as this book is (c) 1995. It was good for a start. It's been read, borrowed, and stolen over the years. Hopefully it has a good home now.

I still highly recommend Slackware for a distribution. It's what we use on all our servers, and my workstations (Home, Work, and Laptop)

I bought a co-worker Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne. Published by Addison Wesley. Flipping through it, this seems like a very good book. It seems to be working out. He's coming to me with very intelligent questions after reading chapters, rather than "What do I do at the prompt".

After the Unleashed book, I personally got into the O'Reilly books. If you do this, go to the store with the company credit card, it'll be expensive. Oddly enough, most bosses are ok with paying for books, even when they're being tight with equipment. You can't get a new $5 CPU fan, but you can spend $500 on books. Hmmmm.. Well, buy more books. :) Borders and Barnes & Noble frequently have sales on previous edition books. If you flip through both, sometimes you'll see there were only very subtle changes, or chapters which aren't important to you. For a $40 price difference, it's worth getting the older one. :)

O'Reilly Essential Systems Administration

Learning
the Unix Operating System (got it for my girlfriend, so she'd understand what I was doing all night)

vi Pocket Reference. It seems none of my coworkers could use vi before I got to this office. Now they're all using it. [esc][esc]:wq!

Programming Perl. If you're going to play with Unix, you should learn Perl.

Then you should read up on what you're working with. If you're networking or on the Internet, TCP/IP is good to know.

TCP/IP Network Administration

DNS and BIND very definately, unless you want to be clueless about what happens between typing in "yahoo.com" and it coming up in your browser. Having a good understanding there definately helps you debug problems.

Sendmail This is the perfect book to spin your head, and leave you with a headache for months. But it's the topic, not the book, that's so complicated. If it didn't do absolutely everything, I'm sure it would be simpler to use.

O'Reilly has a lot of great books.

"Learning" books are for beginners.

"Nutshell" books are usually to help you figure out something if you don't really know it.

The rest of the books have various degrees of learning to them. On my desk at work, for O'Reilly books, I have 3 different PERL books, the JavaScript book, and a few others that I reference on a regular basis.

I recommend going to book stores, and flipping through everything they have (restock it to the proper places). See what your comprehension level is. If you have no clue what they're talking about, you need an easier book. If you almost understand, buy it, read it, and then share it with a friend (especially on the company expense account! hehe).

When you're ready to get out of the books, and into the real world, the most valuable reference you'll ever have is dejanews.com. If you don't know an answer, search it there. Probably someone in the last 20 years has already asked it. It's the quickest way to look smart and impress your friends, even if you're stupid. :)

Having the stack of O'Reilly books is always good though. I recently changed offices (same company), and while riding in the elevator, I was offered a job because I looked educated and had a big stack of O'Reilly books in my arms.. Little did she know that was only 1/3 of them. The rest were still in my car..

My first Linux book was Linux Unleashed, 1st edition, published by Sams Publishing. This book included Slackware with it. I'm afraid to think what verion, as this book is (c) 1995. It was good for a start. It's been read, borrowed, and stolen over the years. Hopefully it has a good home now.

I still highly recommend Slackware for a distribution. It's what we use on all our servers, and my workstations (Home, Work, and Laptop)

I bought a co-worker Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne. Published by Addison Wesley. Flipping through it, this seems like a very good book. It seems to be working out. He's coming to me with very intelligent questions after reading chapters, rather than "What do I do at the prompt".

After the Unleashed book, I personally got into the O'Reilly books. If you do this, go to the store with the company credit card, it'll be expensive. Oddly enough, most bosses are ok with paying for books, even when they're being tight with equipment. You can't get a new $5 CPU fan, but you can spend $500 on books. Hmmmm.. Well, buy more books. :) Borders and Barnes & Noble frequently have sales on previous edition books. If you flip through both, sometimes you'll see there were only very subtle changes, or chapters which aren't important to you. For a $40 price difference, it's worth getting the older one. :)

O'Reilly Essential Systems Administration

Learning
the Unix Operating System (got it for my girlfriend, so she'd understand what I was doing all night)

vi Pocket Reference. It seems none of my coworkers could use vi before I got to this office. Now they're all using it. [esc][esc]:wq!

Programming Perl. If you're going to play with Unix, you should learn Perl.

Then you should read up on what you're working with. If you're networking or on the Internet, TCP/IP is good to know.

TCP/IP Network Administration

DNS and BIND very definately, unless you want to be clueless about what happens between typing in "yahoo.com" and it coming up in your browser. Having a good understanding there definately helps you debug problems.

Sendmail This is the perfect book to spin your head, and leave you with a headache for months. But it's the topic, not the book, that's so complicated. If it didn't do absolutely everything, I'm sure it would be simpler to use.

O'Reilly has a lot of great books.

"Learning" books are for beginners.

"Nutshell" books are usually to help you figure out something if you don't really know it.

The rest of the books have various degrees of learning to them. On my desk at work, for O'Reilly books, I have 3 different PERL books, the JavaScript book, and a few others that I reference on a regular basis.

I recommend going to book stores, and flipping through everything they have (restock it to the proper places). See what your comprehension level is. If you have no clue what they're talking about, you need an easier book. If you almost understand, buy it, read it, and then share it with a friend (especially on the company expense account! hehe).

When you're ready to get out of the books, and into the real world, the most valuable reference you'll ever have is dejanews.com. If you don't know an answer, search it there. Probably someone in the last 20 years has already asked it. It's the quickest way to look smart and impress your friends, even if you're stupid. :)

Having the stack of O'Reilly books is always good though. I recently changed offices (same company), and while riding in the elevator, I was offered a job because I looked educated and had a big stack of O'Reilly books in my arms.. Little did she know that was only 1/3 of them. The rest were still in my car..

My first Linux book was Linux Unleashed, 1st edition, published by Sams Publishing. This book included Slackware with it. I'm afraid to think what verion, as this book is (c) 1995. It was good for a start. It's been read, borrowed, and stolen over the years. Hopefully it has a good home now.

I still highly recommend Slackware for a distribution. It's what we use on all our servers, and my workstations (Home, Work, and Laptop)

I bought a co-worker Linux System Administration: A User's Guide by Marcel Gagne. Published by Addison Wesley. Flipping through it, this seems like a very good book. It seems to be working out. He's coming to me with very intelligent questions after reading chapters, rather than "What do I do at the prompt".

After the Unleashed book, I personally got into the O'Reilly books. If you do this, go to the store with the company credit card, it'll be expensive. Oddly enough, most bosses are ok with paying for books, even when they're being tight with equipment. You can't get a new $5 CPU fan, but you can spend $500 on books. Hmmmm.. Well, buy more books. :) Borders and Barnes & Noble frequently have sales on previous edition books. If you flip through both, sometimes you'll see there were only very subtle changes, or chapters which aren't important to you. For a $40 price difference, it's worth getting the older one. :)

O'Reilly Essential Systems Administration

Learning
the Unix Operating System (got it for my girlfriend, so she'd understand what I was doing all night)

vi Pocket Reference. It seems none of my coworkers could use vi before I got to this office. Now they're all using it. [esc][esc]:wq!

Programming Perl. If you're going to play with Unix, you should learn Perl.

Then you should read up on what you're working with. If you're networking or on the Internet, TCP/IP is good to know.

TCP/IP Network Administration

DNS and BIND very definately, unless you want to be clueless about what happens between typing in "yahoo.com" and it coming up in your browser. Having a good understanding there definately helps you debug problems.

Sendmail This is the perfect book to spin your head, and leave you with a headache for months. But it's the topic, not the book, that's so complicated. If it didn't do absolutely everything, I'm sure it would be simpler to use.

O'Reilly has a lot of great books.

"Learning" books are for beginners.

"Nutshell" books are usually to help you figure out something if you don't really know it.

The rest of the books have various degrees of learning to them. On my desk at work, for O'Reilly books, I have 3 different PERL books, the JavaScript book, and a few others that I reference on a regular basis.

I recommend going to book stores, and flipping through everything they have (restock it to the proper places). See what your comprehension level is. If you have no clue what they're talking about, you need an easier book. If you almost understand, buy it, read it, and then share it with a friend (especially on the company expense account! hehe).

When you're ready to get out of the books, and into the real world, the most valuable reference you'll ever have is dejanews.com. If you don't know an answer, search it there. Probably someone in the last 20 years has already asked it. It's the quickest way to look smart and impress your friends, even if you're stupid. :)

Having the stack of O'Reilly books is always good though. I recently changed offices (same company), and while riding in the elevator, I was offered a job because I looked educated and had a big stack of O'Reilly books in my arms.. Little did she know that was only 1/3 of them. The rest were still in my car..

I also have been reading Running Linux (which others have linked to in earlier comments). This has very in-depth chapters describing things in detail. The detail might scare the average newbie away though :).

Also worth considering, though it's probably not for beginners, is UNIX Power Tools .

I also have been reading Running Linux (which others have linked to in earlier comments). This has very in-depth chapters describing things in detail. The detail might scare the average newbie away though :).

Also worth considering, though it's probably not for beginners, is UNIX Power Tools .

Aside from whatever Linux-specific books get recommended here, one of the best investments you can make in the transition out of rank UNIX-beginner status is "UNIX Power Tools" published by O'Reilly. Its title is really a misnomer as it's actually an excellent book that teaches you all the finer points (which are not really all that "fine" if you really want to make UNIX work for you) about using UNIX. You don't at all have to be an "advanced"/"power" user and in fact, I'd argue that the greatest benefit from reading can be derived by those less experienced with UNIX. If you want to *understand* what you're doing in a UNIX system, with information that most certainly applies to Linux, get/read a copy of this book.

This was the book I read before even touching a Linux terminal. It was an invaluable lesson in the ways of Linux and provides a nice gentle intro for new users (and by new, I mean new to Linux, not computing. A good deal of technical understanding is required to appreciate this book. Not for Grandma is what I'm trying to say...). The 4th Edition just came out so it's all up to date again, and I would reccomened it to anyone interested in, well, Running Linux. This book is much more useful to a new user than Linux in a Nutshell since it is a narrative guide to learning Linux, and not a reference book like Nutshell.

The fourth edition of Running Linux came out this month. Great for beginners.

Linux in a Nutshell, concise, to the point, reference manual for just getting stuff done.

From the What is TheOpenCD website:

"It also includes a selection of essays about Open Source philosophy, and links to other programs that might be of interest."

I'm sorry, but what is exactly open source philosophy? Open source is about technical and economical advantages. Free software is about philosophy. Please do not flame me for saying the obvious. When Eric Raymond took Debian Free Software Guidelines and published them as Open Source Definition in 1998 he did it exactly because he wanted free software without the strong philosophy associated with the "free software" term since at least the announcement of the GNU Project in 1983.

I think that TheOpenCD project should not talk about philosophy if they want to promote the open source movement. But if they think that the philosophy is important, then they should promote the free software movement and change their name to TheFreeCD. Because the philosophy is exactly the difference between free software and open source movements. If they talk about "open source philosophy" they are being against the main priciples of both movements.

TheOpenCD project people should read these books:

• The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond (online version)
• Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams (online version)
• Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman by Richard M. Stallman (GNU philosophy website, book CVS source)

Those books are not very long, but they provide enough background to let avoid using such unfortunate oxymorons like "open source philosophy." I strongly respect both free software and open source movements and I can not stay ignorant when people insult any of them, while the term "open source philosophy" insults both.

From the What is TheOpenCD website:

"It also includes a selection of essays about Open Source philosophy, and links to other programs that might be of interest."

I'm sorry, but what is exactly open source philosophy? Open source is about technical and economical advantages. Free software is about philosophy. Please do not flame me for saying the obvious. When Eric Raymond took Debian Free Software Guidelines and published them as Open Source Definition in 1998 he did it exactly because he wanted free software without the strong philosophy associated with the "free software" term since at least the announcement of the GNU Project in 1983.

I think that TheOpenCD project should not talk about philosophy if they want to promote the open source movement. But if they think that the philosophy is important, then they should promote the free software movement and change their name to TheFreeCD. Because the philosophy is exactly the difference between free software and open source movements. If they talk about "open source philosophy" they are being against the main priciples of both movements.

TheOpenCD project people should read these books:

• The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond (online version)
• Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams (online version)
• Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman by Richard M. Stallman (GNU philosophy website, book CVS source)

Those books are not very long, but they provide enough background to let avoid using such unfortunate oxymorons like "open source philosophy." I strongly respect both free software and open source movements and I can not stay ignorant when people insult any of them, while the term "open source philosophy" insults both.

From the What is TheOpenCD website:

"It also includes a selection of essays about Open Source philosophy, and links to other programs that might be of interest."

I'm sorry, but what is exactly open source philosophy? Open source is about technical and economical advantages. Free software is about philosophy. Please do not flame me for saying the obvious. When Eric Raymond took Debian Free Software Guidelines and published them as Open Source Definition in 1998 he did it exactly because he wanted free software without the strong philosophy associated with the "free software" term since at least the announcement of the GNU Project in 1983.

I think that TheOpenCD project should not talk about philosophy if they want to promote the open source movement. But if they think that the philosophy is important, then they should promote the free software movement and change their name to TheFreeCD. Because the philosophy is exactly the difference between free software and open source movements. If they talk about "open source philosophy" they are being against the main priciples of both movements.

TheOpenCD project people should read these books:

• The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond (online version)
• Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams (online version)
• Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman by Richard M. Stallman (GNU philosophy website, book CVS source)

Those books are not very long, but they provide enough background to let avoid using such unfortunate oxymorons like "open source philosophy." I strongly respect both free software and open source movements and I can not stay ignorant when people insult any of them, while the term "open source philosophy" insults both.

I was disappointed with the depth of this article. I expected lots of little hints and tricks that I didn't know about but instead found most of the material was common sense stuff for anyone who had been around computers for any amount of time.

If you *really* want to get deep inside the guts of optimizing a Windows box I can think of no better guide than O'reilly's.

Optimizing Windows for Games, Graphics and Multimedia by David L. Farquhar

This book is currently out of print and is getting a little long in the tooth (published in 1999) but the internals for Windows doesn't really change that radically from a tuner's perspective. This book isn't a mere collection of little tricks but gives you a more fundamental understanding of Windows and how to trim the fat. The Amazon user rating system gives it 5 stars and rightfully so. To top it off you can pick up a used copy for about $8 or so at half.com among other places.

This is really a great book for anyone looking to get the most out of their Windows machine or just trying to understand the black box that is Windows. I used some of the tricks mentioned in this book on my wife's old p233 laptop w/96MBs RAM. Her Win98SE box has been going for almost two years now w/o any serious stability or performance problems. Granted, she's not a niddler and only does a certain set number of tasks on this laptop but I think that's pretty darn good for a Windows 98 box.

Well, I'd expect nothing else from Tim O'Reilly

For example, I recently wanted to use a Camel on a Perl website (not completed yet) and I had to consult O'Reilly, since they have a trademark on associating a camel with Perl. Other people can use camels for whaterver they want, it's just that they have a trademark when using it in conjunction with Perl. See the FAQ for more info.

It's interesting that the Open Source Definition says specifically you can't refuse to sell software to a country or government because you don't like their policies. Quoting from a chapter in a book by Bruce Perens:

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

A license provided by the Regents of the University of California, Berkeley, prohibited an electronic design program from being used by the police of South Africa. While this was a laudable sentiment in the time of apartheid, it makes little sense today. Some people are still stuck with software that they acquired under that license, and their derived versions must carry the same restriction. Open Source licenses may not contain such provisions, no matter how laudable their intent.

No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Your software must be equally usable in an abortion clinic, or by an anti-abortion organization. These political arguments belong on the floor of Congress, not in software licenses. Some people find this lack of discrimination extremely offensive!

I wonder how people's reactions might be different if Amnesty were trying to put pressure on RedHat, the Free Software Foundation, authors of kernel IP filtering tools, or authoring of Web filtering tools. All of these can be used for censorship; in fact, Web filtering tools are designed for this specifically!

The benefits of Open Source or Free software to its users are undeniable. If the software has a bug, or the software does not do something you want it to do, you can change it. There are many advantages, and they have been explained at length by various people. If you are going to be using software, you are definitely better off if you have access to the source code.

Trust

The fundamental difference between open source software and closed source software is the level of trust required. For a business to use closed source software, the level of trust required is enormous. It is not simply a question of whether the money spent purchasing the software is a good investment. The time invested using the software is far more significant. Almost inevitably your own business information becomes tied up in a format that is specific to the software you are using. In order to buy software from a closed source company, you have to take the following on trust:

• They have not left gaping security holes in the code.
• They will fix bugs in a timely manner.
• They will eventually add the features you want.
• They are not using your computing resources to do things which are not in your interest.
• They will not increase the price unreasonably once you depend on them.
• They will not go bust.

Business Models Having access to the source code makes good sense to the users. However the business case for the software vendor is far less convincing. In fact, the dangers of closed source from the user's perspective can be considered opportunities from the vendor's perspective.

The open source foundation proposes "4 ways to win" which is reproduced here: Four Ways To Win

Now for a higher-level, investor's point of view. There are at least four known business models for making money with open source:

1. Support Sellers (otherwise known as "Give Away the Recipe, Open A Restaurant"): In this model, you (effectively) give away the software product, but sell distribution, branding, and after-sale service. This is what (for example) Red Hat does.
2. Loss Leader: In this model, you give away open-source as a loss-leader and market positioner for closed software. This is what Netscape is doing.
3. Widget Frosting : In this model, a hardware company (for which software is a necessary adjunct but strictly a cost rather than profit center) goes open-source in order to get better drivers and interface tools cheaper. Silicon Graphics, for example, supports and ships Samba.
4. Accessorizing: Selling accessories books, compatible hardware, complete systems with open-source software pre-installed. It's easy to trivialize this (open-source T-shirts, coffee mugs, Linux penguin dolls) but at least the books and hardware underly some clear successes: O'Reilly Associates, SSC, and VA Research are among them.

In fact, the number of companies that have had success with any of these models is miniscule. This is hardly surprising, they are simply not very good business models for software companies.

Taking each in turn... Selling Support The better documented and more reliable the product is, the less support it needs. A business model where the more perfect your product, the less money you can make has got something fundamentally wrong with it. Loss Leader The very fact that this can be advanced as a viable business model for OpenSource shows desperation. What it comes down to is an admission that the best way to make money from software is by selling it. Widget Frosting This makes perfect sense if you are a hardware company, or when the software is a side issue. However, its no use at all for a business whose main product is software. Accessorizing Selling accessories is fine, but there is no pressing need to actually develop the software when one is in the accessories business.

There are of course other business models for Open Source. For instance, the one adopted by the Perl foundation and several others is begging. This is not a business model that many companies would find appealing though.

The basic problem is that for a business whose primary function is to make software, then the primary reward has to come from selling the software. We need a business model that actually works and we have one, it's called capitalism. It works like this: make something that people want and sell it to them. This model works for software too, and there is no reason why this model cannot work even when source code is available. Closed source vendors are relying on something a little closer to the business model of a heroin pusher. It starts off like capitalism, but there is the added feature that the user gets addicted and has to carry on buying the same thing even if he does not really want to. The more he uses the same vendor, the more reliant he is upon it.

The Solution Community software is software where the vendor can be paid a fair price for the software he creates, but where the buyer does not end up in a similar position to a junkie.

Community Source is software that guarantees the following:

1. The right to see what the software is doing, ie access to unobfuscated source code.
2. The right to add enhancements.
3. The right to fix bugs.
4. The right to sell his enhancements to other companies. This does not mean the right to the sell software without the original vendor receiving any money. The buyer still needs a license from the original vendor, but he does not have to rely on a single vendor for upgrades and enhancements.
5. The right to buy enhanced versions from 3rd parties.

I honestly will not buy a technical book in the 1,000+ page range, especially if the title:

• Includes the words "bible", "unleashed", or "secrets"
• Is entitled Learn x in y days/hours

Why? Because I know I'm unlikely digest the contents of 1000+ pages of text on one subject, if I manage to finish it. I also generally suspect large books of rehashing FAQs or other widely-available docs just to fill pages.

I don't consider myself an O'Reilly bigot, though I do lean towards their books since they tend to publish smaller, focused books. If a book is pure reference, I may consider buying it if it's 1000+ pages. Following are examples of some great books I've bought that I found very useful and readable due to their small size:

• Mastering Regular Expressions, 484 pages
• Linux Routing, 350 pages
• A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0, 453 pages

The Internet already offers me an overwhelming, disorganized pile of information on any subject--and at least it's searchable via Google. Dead tree books have use when they're usable and organized, and I've found that generally translates into a smaller book.

chances are that Tanenbaum wont let minix claim the parenthood of linux, nor would linus want it,,,

Very robust and well thought out language. Yes, Yes, I know blah blah blah M$ this and M$ that. But ya know what? I could give a flying crap about everyone's predisposition against Microsoft.

I'm not sure Microsoft should be thanked for the greatness of the C# language on it's own, which I'm sure most of us agree is the best thing of .NET -- not it's Windows-specific libraries.

Thank Anders Hejlsberg, chief architect of the C# language, instead.

While I'm on the topic...

Anders Hejlsberg interviewed about C# #1
Anders Hejlsberg interviewed about C# #2

Pretty interesting, where he discuss the design goals of C#, how satisfied he is with what C# became, etc.

http://www.geekculture.com/geekculturestore/websto re/prints.html is what I meant to type.

I was thinking of picking up one of the linux anatomy charts that my google search picked up, but apparently they're only available at trade shows.

I keep a bunch of "classic" bookmarks around. Some are undisputed gems, others are, well, to my taste. Bytes being cheap here's a batch.

• Ars Technica: The PC enthusiast's resource
• AmbySoft Inc. White Papers: Scott Ambler's Online Writings
• windows.oreilly.com -- Deep Inside C#: An Interview with Microsoft Chief Architect Anders Hejlsberg
• TQ
• The Rise of ``Worse is Better''
  
• A Whirlwind Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux
  
• Theist Hall of Shame
• Internetworking Technology Overview
  
• Software Technology Review
  Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics
• P.S.: More Than Just Words
• Welcome to the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
• John McCarthy
  
• Slashdot | Net Translations of Dead-Tree IT Classics
  
• advICE
  
• 0xdeadbeef archives
  

All in all, good work Wrox!

paratrace

Paratrace traces the path between a client and a server, much like "traceroute", but with a major twist: Rather than iterate the TTLs of UDP, ICMP, or even TCP SYN packets, paratrace attaches itself to an existing, stateful-firewall-approved TCP flow, statelessly releasing as many TCP Keepalive messages as the software estimates the remote host is hop-distant. The resultant ICMP Time Exceeded replies are analyzed, with their original hop count "tattooed" in the IPID field copied into the returned packets by so many helpful routers. Through this process, paratrace can trace a route without modulating a single byte of TCP/Layer 4, and thus delivers fully valid (if occasionally redundant) segments at Layer 4 -- segments generated by another processe ntirely.

paratrace

Paratrace traces the path between a client and a server, much like "traceroute", but with a major twist: Rather than iterate the TTLs of UDP, ICMP, or even TCP SYN packets, paratrace attaches itself to an existing, stateful-firewall-approved TCP flow, statelessly releasing as many TCP Keepalive messages as the software estimates the remote host is hop-distant. The resultant ICMP Time Exceeded replies are analyzed, with their original hop count "tattooed" in the IPID field copied into the returned packets by so many helpful routers. Through this process, paratrace can trace a route without modulating a single byte of TCP/Layer 4, and thus delivers fully valid (if occasionally redundant) segments at Layer 4 -- segments generated by another processe ntirely.

Stetting long Expires: times can help as well.

...first read "The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary" by Eric S. Raymond. There's also an online version, but I urge you to buy a paper one, becuase it's really a great book, and you seem to be exactly the kind of person who needs to read it. (Of course, I'm talking to smelroy, the original poster of "How Do You Sell Linux Software?" question.)

...first read "The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary" by Eric S. Raymond. There's also an online version, but I urge you to buy a paper one, becuase it's really a great book, and you seem to be exactly the kind of person who needs to read it. (Of course, I'm talking to smelroy, the original poster of "How Do You Sell Linux Software?" question.)

Well, P3P has been on my radar since 1998, when I first read about it, I think this was the article. There are many things that you can blame M$ for, and I'm personally M$-free, but developers should be paying minimal attention.

So at the time I started work on Linux in 1991, people assumed portability would come from a microkernel approach. You see, this was sort of the research darling at the time for computer scientists. However, I am a pragmatic person, and at the time I felt that microkernels (a) were experimental, (b) were obviously more complex than monolithic Kernels, and (c) executed notably slower than monolithic kernels. Speed matters a lot in a real-world operating system, and so a lot of the research dollars at the time were spent on examining optimization for microkernels to make it so they could run as fast as a normal kernel. The funny thing is if you actually read those papers, you find that, while the researchers were applying their optimizational tricks on a microkernel, in fact those same tricks could just as easily be applied to traditional kernels to accelerate their execution.

Consider Amazon's one-click patent. Clearly their innovation was not obvious before they created it, but it's pretty obvious now.

"One click", is in my opinion, and I believe the vast majority of the software development community, representative of the exact type of software patent that should not be granted. I'll defer to Tim O'Reilly as to exactly why, as he composed a well-written piece offering a tidy explanation:

http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/amazon_patent.html

pages 800 Fundamentals?

Mabye it should be called a Bible! SQL in a Nutshell is a book about fundamentals.

Building Wireless Community Networks: Implementing the Wireless Web by O'Reilly...

To meta-quote Apple's guide to interact with Active Directory Services:

"Mac OS X uses the LDAP protocol, not Microsoft's proprietary Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), to connect to Microsoft's Active Directory. This .. assumes that you have in-depth knowledge of Active Directory, especially the ways in which it need s to be configured to support standard LDAP schema definitions. Because the primary means of accessing Active Directory is ADSI, using LDAP as an alternative implies a thorough working understanding of the use and limitations of the LDAP support provided by Active Directory."

It sounds like someone didn't know Active Directory sufficiently, hence the pain. Otherwise, setting up things on the Mac side is very simple and strait-forward. O'Reilly has a great book " Mac OS X for UNIX Geeks " that goes into great detail on explaining not only what to do, but what is going on behind the scenes.

In this case, I would be Active Directory Services is making things the most difficult for you (and the fact that OS X uses LDAP instead of ADSI).

Have you tried this?

speaking of which... has anyone subscribed to safari books online (or the o'reilly flavor of it)? what do you think of it? is it worth the cash? i like to have a book in hand, so i'm on the fence w/ this, however i like the fact that i have access to lots of books...

What other books would people recommend for someone interested in network security (specifically using Open Source tools)? I'm currently reading Building Internet Firewalls which has been extremely helpful to my understanding of architecture issues. Any other jems I should be looking at?

Thanks.

I saw people sending out their whole mp3 collections in 30 meg-sized mails, I saw others suffer from 5 megs holiday pics in their mailboxes accessed by humble 56k modems and having to give them a POP3 primer on the phone to have them delete that stuff ... Yes, mail isn't ment for big files, and besides this orthodox opinion, it still isn't very practical to send huge files per mail.

I would go for the send-links-in-mails-to-files-on-{web,file}servers idea, maybe protected through SSL, temporary passwords and having the files auto-deleted after three days or when having been fullydownloaded one or two times or whatever... (Proposing some minor access security for the files being made available, I wonder how many of these suits 'needing' unlimited mail sizes protect their files when sent by mail? I have never seen a single member of this demandish breed (being subject to this publication) being able to handle PGP/GnuPG/whatever, they often consider that as another evil trick by notorious sysadmins, since security measures hinder them in doing their work properly, just as mail size limits do... So much for ranting :)

...when computers are so smart, cheap, and ubiquitous that they do many ordinary chores to help ordinary people. When things talk to things, human beings are set free to do work they find more appealing.

This is the same old nonsense that's been touted ever since the age of the washing machine. Considering the thousands of labor-saving devices we've acquired throughout the 20th century, by this logic we ought to be living lives of perfect leisure now. But this isn't what happens. In industrial societies, "labor-saving" devices don't. Work expands to fill the time available. When things think, I'm sure you and I will be freed from the tedious chores of cooking, driving, cleaning, and living. We can become machines ourselves, consumed with work until we burn out or die.

(More at Talbot's Netfuture, if you're interested.)

(never mind that anyone who knows what + actually does there will tell you not to use it anyhow because it's slow...)

I have often wondered why Java programmers can't seem to indent their code properly. I've even had trouble finding a good program to (re-)indent Java code. The main reason why I'd like to see programmers stick to 80 columns (or 120 even? please??) is because sometimes I might want to PRINT SOMETHING OUT.

However I realize that when you have code that looks like

fooObject.barSomething( blahSomethingElse.stuffInstantiator(aVariable, bObject).toString()).bazMemberFunction()

it might be difficult to indent without introducing awkward spaces or unnecessary temporary variables, and you wouldn't want to disrupt the straightforward purity of the Java code itself!

Though it really depends on what kind of system you're trying to make, generally speaking, embedding any serious amount of code into code in a different language often becomes very difficult to maintain. For quick things, it's usually the easiest. For moderately complex things, it's usually a push either way. But for any sizeable website, especially one that is going to be maintained over an extended period of time by multiple people, keeping as much -separate- as possible is a better approach.

Whether you use ASP, JSP, TT, Mason, .NET, or anything else, you likely will have a lot more going on than simply displaying some simple words, maybe wrapped in some kind of if statement or while loop. You'll need to do some kind of data lookup, perform some kind of transformation of that data, apply a few business rules, then, finally, spit it out in HTML. By far, it is easier to maintain code that isn't mixed with html; like wise, it's easier to maintain html that isn't mixed with code. Plus you then have the option of using that same code to manipulate the data differently, perhaps a GUI application, set of command line utilities, or under a different embedding technology. Decoupling presentation from logic is always a win as complexity increases.

Mason is terrific technology, though, and I'm very glad to see a book dedicated to it finally on the market. It is especially good to finally see some quality documentation on application frameworks that run under mod_perl; before now, there wasn't much besides the excellent wrapmod book and the equally excellent mod_perl cookbook.

I've got a Nokia 3410, which is MIDP1.0 compliant, and this book from O'Reilly which i found helpful. I'm using the J2ME toolkit to help package and test the apps I write (it has an emulator).

To get them onto my phone is a moderate pain. I have apache running on my machine, and added the following into mime.types:

text/vnd.sun.j2me.app-descriptor jad

application/java-archive jar

However, they also seem to be contributing to this disturbing trend of ``un-freeing'' free books. This book used to be free at the author's web page. If you click on the link, you'll find that it no longer exists. The book is no longer free, and you can only get the electronic version through Safari.

I really love the safari service at oreilly. You can basically check out 5 books for 10$ per month. Pretty nice, because I really love oreilly books, but couldn't afford to buy hard copies of them all. Unfortunately, the bastard company that runs this has a pretty crappy pricing model (automatic billing, and when you cancel your account, it is inactive immediately rather than at the end of the billing period).

Still, I think this is a good compromise, in the same way that if artists sold their cd's online for a reasonabele amount of money, people would be less tempted to pirate their respective work.

The book is good and interesting, but it reminds me another book, Programming Jabber: a lot of examples in the book, and no available examples in real life (besides Jabberd itself).