Linux Textbooks?

whymw asks: "I am a computer science instructor at our local community college where I teach an introductory level Linux course. Due to worries about Microsoft licensing, my director is interested in moving other courses such as office packages to the Linux environment. However this question keeps poping up - 'What would we use for textbooks?' There is little to pick from and I see this as a major barrier to widespread adoption of Linux in the classroom. Do we need to create a linuxtexts.org? Should openoffice.org fork off a textbook project? By the way, I said TEXTbook, complete with labs, assignments, and hopefully a testbank." Linux has to make it into the education market at some point. If there are no Linux textbooks out right now, what recommendations would you have from the current crop of off-the-shelf books?

Comments

what's wrong with non-textbooks?

[jnana]

...this question keeps poping up - 'What would we use for textbooks?'

What is wrong with using non-textbooks and writing a lab manual with exercises. I have taken computer classes before that didn't use textbooks -- and I've taken classes that did use awful textbooks, where we would have been better off using a non-textbook.

As far as OpenOffice goes, I've just started using it after using Word for a long time, and I find it intuitive enough (and enough like Word) that a textbook on using it would be a waste of paper.

There are plenty of good FAQs out there, which are good learning resources. And isn't it the job of the instructor to design assignments, labs, and testbanks? In subjects other than the sciences, this is certainly the case, so I don't really see your concerns being a problem.