Getting Started In Linux

In previous posts, I've asked for the Slashdot community to help me identify good books and websites for developers and I thought the response was really useful. This time, I'd like to ask you all for your recommendations for great Linux beginner books and also what you think is the best way of showing off Linux on TV. Read on for more info ... I do this thing twice on month on TechTV's "The Screen Savers" where I try to show off something neat about Linux and Open Source software. At the end of each segment, I give out my email address for people to send questions. The question I get most is "What book should I get to help me learn Linux?" I have a couple of books that I do recommend, but I want to hear what you guys think so I can link to this conversation and have it be available for everyone to refer to.

Additionally, any tips on what you guys would think would make good open-source oriented TV and make people really want to try out Linux would be appreciated.

Comments

Favorite book

[wray]

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

Re:Favorite book

[Saint Aardvark]

Well, yes -- but for a beginner, go with one of the Learning books.

Something I meant to put in my first comment re: Learning up above -- the most important thing, I would say, is to make sure you give 'em a book with the distro on CD. Those poor saps on d/u will appreciate it.

Re:Favorite book

[Rudeboy777]

I am an O'Reilly fan but I found Linux in a Nutshell to be startlingly lame. Most of it is taken up by a rehash of the man page entries for all of the common Linux shell commands (grep, cat, tar, ln, ...) There are plenty of free resources (including said man pages) that you can use to find out which arguments do what for a given command.

Re:Favorite book

[tricknology]

This is a great book, however it is not for beginners. It is more of a reference for the intermediate to advanced user. A book for beginners should not assume that the user knows anything about Linux (or computers in general, for that matter).

Uh huh.

[glenkim]

Let's just all get our RTFM's out of system now.

Re:Uh huh.

[krmt]

That's interesting. I've rarely found the texinfo pages to be of any real use to me when a manpage fails.

I don't know how it is for other distros, but every debian package puts its documentation in /usr/share/doc/packagename. If the manpage fails me at all, this is where I go first. The documentation that came with a program is often the most useful documentation you're going to find, especially because the Readme's and the like often have a lot of quick notes in them. The changelogs have tons of good info too. Of course, to be able to use these docs requires knowing what program you're looking for in the first place, which requires some experience, but it's by far the most useful documentation that's physically on my system.

Re:Uh huh.

[Spy Hunter]

I groan every time I see a manpage that points me to info for more information. GNU info is an abomination. The interface to it is just totally unusable and unwieldy. The interface should be more like links. It should have fast, easy-to-use search functionality. The documentation should have color and make use of bold and underlined text to accent important regions and section headings the way manpages do. There should be standard sections for info documentation like their are for manpages (Name, Synopsis, Description, Options, Examples, Files, etc).

GNU tried to innovate in unix documentation with info, but the results were dismal. This is the year 2002, documentation doesn't have to be like this. We have learned a lot about presenting formatted documents from the web. A replacement for manpages should have hyperlinks, semantic markup, good search functionality, a good command-line reader, a GUI reader, and most importantly, quality documentation. Documentation with good formatting, good use of hyperlinks, and standard sections for quick access to relevant information. A format with these things could blow both manpages and info out of the water. It could even become a standard format for more than just unix commands. It could become a self-contained manual for using a unix system in a way that manpages aren't, and info wants to be but isn't. Wouldn't that be nice?

Good example for TV:

[Saint Aardvark]

Go to a site that makes you play whack-a-mole with pop-up windows in Explorer. Then go there in Mozilla.

Very visual, easily understood, and it'll appeal to everyone who's ever had that happen to them before.

Re:Good example for TV:

[Oliver Defacszio]

your bank's webpage is broken, you should tell them to fix it. Mozilla is more standars compliant than internet explorer. If they won't use correct HTML, then that's their fault.

Are you linux guys that naive? Seriously. What company of any size just suddenly jumps to attention to appease the nasal whines of someone using -- and let's be honest here -- an oddball product? Standards compliance means, say it with me, nothing in this world that is essentially run by popularity contest.

'Tell[ing] them to fix it' means bringing in some HTML or JS or PHP or Perl or ASP or whatever jerk, who doesn't work for free mind you, to make it go. And, why again? Oh yeah, for 0.03 percent of all potential clients. Ideally, sure, that's just what happens, but in the real world that e-mail never even gets read.

Your idealism is heartwarming, but in order to "tell" anyone anything, you'd better bring some actual business reasons that aren't comprised of a whiteboard presentation of HTML standards and a pocket-full of hope. You (and I) as Mozilla users are ostensibly alone and no one hears our screams.

Re:Good example for TV:

[brsmith4]

I'd hardly call Mozilla an odd-ball product considering many, many sites have already made changes to accomodate it and the very similar Netscape 6.x 7.x series. My bank, Bank of America, somehow found it useful to make its online banking site Mozilla compatible. Maybe said parent post should consider a different bank if Online Banking is so important to him.

Re:Good example for TV:

[los furtive]

I spent 3 years doing tech support with IBM for almost two dozen different companies, including no less than 4 banks. You would not believe how much the banks will compete to keep you as thier customer, and if it means making their browser Netscape/Mozilla compliant, most of them will do it. After all, for the pidly sum of $38,000, they can expect to keep at least 5,000 customers happy (and you know i'm guessing on the very very low end of the scale). 11.5% of the browser population is still a large part of a business' clientel. Another way to look at it, a user is just as likely to be gay as to use a non-MS browser. I'm just sayin'....

Running Linux

[wormbin]

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

Re:Linux books

[Saint Aardvark]

I agree...the Unleashed series are pretty good, if a little thin in their coverage sometimes. (That said, that last complaint is from a book in the series I bought in '97, so it may well have changed by now.)

I'd also recommend the O'Reilly Learning Linux/Redhat/Debian set. Well worth the money, and they deserve the endorsement.

First the basics...

[stratjakt]

Great Expectations ... then follow it up with ...

The Great Failure

And dont forget The Communist Manifesto

Whee

[zapfie]

Killer Linux app to show off:

VMWare

Try THAT under Windows!

Sobell's A Practical Guide to Linux

[fetta]

Mark Sobell's A Practical Guide to Linux is the best beginner's book on Linux I've ever found. After reading this book, all the man pages and HowTos finally started making sense.

Re:Sobell's A Practical Guide to Linux

[evil_roy]

The content of this book is spot on. Just as important is the layout of the book and Sobell has nailed the best way to present this sort of text. It is quick and easy to find exactly what you need.

Whilst the content of other texts may be more extensive it is no good if you can't find what you need. Running Linux falls into this category - a great book until you come across the Practical Guide, after which the other manuals start gathering dust.

some useful sites

[SystematicPsycho]

Here are some sites you will find useful which are going beyond newbie level.

www.linuxdoc.org (Linux documentation project)
www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book (linux device drivers 2nd edition)
www.advancedlinuxprogramming.com
ftp:// rtfm.mit.edu/pub/faqs/unix-faq
sources.redhat.com /autobook/ (automake autoconf book)
www.scyld.com/network (network device drivers)
linuxassembly.org
linuxsocket.org
kern elnewbies.org (kernel info)
freebooks.boom.ru
www.maththinking.com/boa t/booksIndex.html

Re:Learn the command line

[zapfie]

Plus it makes you look cool to your friends when ur flying though the command line:)

......

*weeps for humanity*

A Book just doesn't cut it

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Face it, a book just doesn't cut it. Nobody should be required to pick up a manual and read through hundreds of pages before they're able to use something. That's the main difference between products that fail and products that succeed. It all hinges on the usability and intuitiveness of what you're dealing with. What is needed is a really good "teaching Linux" distro. It installs automatically and flawlessly, and it first boots up into a tutorial that the user can go through while exploring the system and learning the ins and outs. Obviously you'd want to keep root access away from the newbie user until they get more adjusted. You can't expect someone to read a whole book and just "get it". You need to acclimatize people in gradually. This is one of the reasons Windows is successful and Linux isn't, for the most part: ease of use. Windows just works. To get a Linux install to my satisfaction took over 100 hours. Most people simply don't have that kind of patience.

Re:A Book just doesn't cut it

[SystematicPsycho]

Nobody should be required to pick up a manual and read through hundreds of pages before they're able to use something.

Err yes they should and that goes for anything technical. Reading and training are essential but practice is most important. We're not learning to ride a bike here. I think what your trying to say is that reading a book on programming isn't going to make you a good programmer because it won't. Often I see ppl ask dumb questions that could be solved by typing in a man command. I think the absolute first thing any newbie should read are these 2 documents ->

Asking smart questions
How to report bugs effectively

Re:A Book just doesn't cut it

[Radical Rad]

I have known many office workers who only became moderately productive using MS Office and Windows after studying books and going to classes. Contrary to your FUD, MS Windows doesn't 'just work' and it never has. There is an entire industry devoted to training users on Microsoft products and the fact that it exists is evidence that those products are not intuitive and only usable after many long hard hours of study and practice.

Furthermore, 'ease of use' is no longer a valid argument in the battle for the desktop. An office worker using X Windows has no more reason to open a command prompt than one using MS Windows. Star Office and Mozilla are accessible through icons, and the filesystem is easily accessible through Konquerer or Nautilus.

People who are resistant to switching to Linux are mostly that way because of their preconscious memories of the painful, slow learning process that they struggled through when they learned MS Windows. They fear 'learning a new operating system' when they don't even feel confident in the one they have been working on for a decade.

It is such a wonderful feeling when I show people that X Windows is just like MS Windows. Everything is done by clicking on buttons and files can be cut, copied, and pasted just like they are used to. Star Office 6 looks so similar to MS Office and Corel Office and Lotus SmartSuite that there just is no learning curve. They are immediately productive on their new, free system.

Well I have to go now and spread the joy of Linux elsewhere...

PS. What in the heck did you do for 100 hours? It took me about 10 minutes to tweak Redhat the way I like it.

My first Linux Book:

[Longinus]

Oreilly's Running Linux

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.

Hrm.....

[mdechene]

Getting started in Linux is easy. First, read this . Then, follow all the steps in it Backwards. Backwards is key. After that, you should be all setup.

OT: Anyone summarize previous query responses?

[sisukapalli1]

Just a thought...

Since the submitter (chrisd) asked for opinions and got feedback, wouldn't it be nice if someone filtered the responses and provided a digest? The original queries were for books for developers and books for web development. Furthermore, if someone already has done some filtering, it would be great to see the results.

S

What to show on TV

[ruszka]

While what I have in mind is nothing special or cool, it is something that I think many people really need to see. My parents, for example, use the computer to play games, mostly card games, browse the web, send email, and other every day things. The thing that bothers them is that they have no control whatsoever. Something crashes and they have no clue what they can do as a user.

It would be beneficial to many average users to see that Linux can do all of the every day tasks they perform. Show them the simple things. They can use email, web browsers, play games that come with kde or gnome, and still play web-based games like Yahoo! Pool. Getting them started on something they feel comfortable with will be an easy step they can make. Then they can move onto controlling and customizing the OS one piece at a time.

My first two books

[superfoo]

Here's my first two books I bought, and why I like them. First of all, for any distro: Running Linux, latest edition you can get. Why? It is a book you can read cover to cover. It has some scary stories of the old days of installation in the beginning. You realize how easy it has gotten. Then you will learn the many different ways to do the same thing. You don't have to be on a computer to learn from this book. If you are using Red Hat, then grab Red Hat Linux Unleashed. Why? This has MUCH more specific information. It's not something you can read cover to cover, you read the different sections as you need to learn them. In general though, I've never found a bad O'Reilly book...

Re:Learn the command line

[Waffle Iron]

Learn to use the command line and not a pretty gui, it will teach you alot about how Unix and Linux works, Plus it makes you look cool to your friends when ur flying though the command line:)

Yeah, I saw chrisd on the Screen Savers showing how to set up a UT game server on a Linux box. He got to the part where you start the server, which required typing in a command with some arcane options.

On TV, it looked just as impressive as Richard Nixon did debating JFK. The camera zoomed in and tried to focus on the tiny text, but to no avail. The Screen Savers host rolled his eyes and made a snide comment; viewers were referred to the show's website to find a copy of this magical command sequence.

The command line does not make for good TV.

Day to Day

[MBCook]

When I first started using Linux a few years ago, I did it just to see what it was about. At that time, I thought it was interesting, but didn't know that you could really DO anything on it other that use it as a server. Sure you could surf the internet, but...

It was only later that I found out you could wordprocess, play games, and do many other things. I would suggest showing how to do everyday stuff, as a comparison to Windows and/or OS X. I don't mean a "see Linux is better 'cause it doesn't crash and it does this and doesn't crash and..." kind of stuff. I mean showing that you can play MP3s and they work just as well as under windows. And that they sound just as good as under windows. Show a wordprocessor or two. Show some web browsers. Show it can play shockwave flash, java, and other things. Show Quake III and UT2k3. And make sure to point out that the performance is always like in windows, if not better. I don't mean braging, but more of "see we're just as good." Show how Linux can be used for many things. Play a DVD, burn a CD, etc.

Other than the above "practical" things, show some neat stuff. Show a few windowmanagers. Sure there is GNOME and KDE, but what about showing Enlighenment, WindowMaker (my fav), and other cool ones. Show Quake III in one window, UT2K3 in another (or maybe just two Quake III connected to eachother) and have something else up doing something; to show that Linux is good at juggleing things.

I know you've shown at least one of these things in the past (MP3s) but I don't get to watch much TV lately. And of course, these are just my ideas. I'm sure the other posters have come up with some cool ideas by now.

books

[sstory]

Probably the most important thing for a Linux beginner is a book on how to withstand infantile criticism by hordes of 17-yr-old nerds with a superiority complex. You'll see a lot of that if you try to learn linux. For not already possessing all the esoteric knowledge, you will be berated and demeaned in the foulest terms. Hopefully you'll encounter enough of the good free-software people to keep you involved. Furthermore I'd suggest reading In the Beginning Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. Good layman overview of the history/philosophy.

Why buy anything? The best is free!

[bushda]

Go to http://sunsite.dk/linux-newbie/ and get the Linux Newbie Administrator's Guide.

I've bought different linux books in the past to try and get me started, and none were as good as the LNAG. Best of all - it's free! Read it online, or download it and print it off at work to piss off your co-workers. :)

- Dave

Re:jump right in

[EvanED]

While there are a breed of hackers who would consider "many hours" getting to a point where a system is set up, most people just want to use a computer and would consider that time fustrating rather than "gratifying." I know I got extremely fustrated trying to get XFree working under Mandrake, and the gratification of getting the nVidia drivers downloaded through Lynx and installed only slightly made up for it. Oh, the reason I had Mandrake? Mainly because I was having problems getting Red Hat to talk to my sound card. Despite many hours of work on that, I made no progress at all.

Re:jump right in

[IceCat]

Keep in mind there are two types of people (well, at LEAST two types of people) who want to use Linux, those that want to hack and tweek and those that just want to use it to get their work done.

I definitely agree though that for the hackers and tweekers your way works best in the long run. Often times when I am helping a friend with a Linux question the first thing I say is "Well open up a terminal window and then..."

Great generic *nix book

[AntiFreeze]

UNIX for Programmers and Users (Second Edition) is an excellent book. Well, to be fair, it was the first edition which eased me into *nix years ago. With such an excellent first edition, I'm sure the second is even stronger.

Graham Glass is a skilled writer who is capable of introducing complex topics and commands easily to the reader, regardless of their skill level. His book benefited me greatly, and even allowed my father to gain a good footing in unix commands and philosophy.

I have recommended this book to numerous people over the years, to people who just wanted some familiarity with unix commands, to people who were interested in learning Linux, to students looking for interesting things to delve into, and to many others. The book has benefited them all. Although it is not directly a Linux book, it is exceptional at providing the tools necessary to use any unix-like system. This makes this book a wonderful reference or a great starting out point if you're just beginning.

In other words, I highly recommend it.

Re:Learn the command line

[madfgurtbn]

Learn to use the command line and not a pretty gui, it will teach you alot about how Unix and Linux works

Please, no CLI! This is for newbies, and newbies don't want to know command line stuff. I have never seen Linux on TV where Chris or anyone else on tv who bothers to show even the simplest tasks accomplished without CLI.

Best thing to show on tv is that you can actually can get by without a command line. Show the config gui's. Show that you can accomplish real work without having to understand command line. CLI scares away newbies.

Newbies do not want to use CLI.
Newbies should not want to use the CLI
Newbies should not be expected by BOFH's to understand command line.

Newbies should experience free as in freedom. In the long run, that is the only real advantage we have.

Newbies need to understand where OSS comes from as a community, and how they can contribute to that community without writing code more than they need to "how Unix/Linux works".

Sorry, I will get off my soapbox now.

Carry on.

Start with Rute!

[digitect]

Start with Rute.

Linux on TV

[chunkwhite86]

The best way to illustrate the power of Linux on TV, is to demonstrate a Linux box doing something that is considered unusual and desireable. Something that will make people say "Wow... I can't do that with this other OS I'm using. I should try Linux." It shouldn't be too hard to come up with a bunch of gee-whiz cool tasks that Linux can do, and that other OS cannot.

Either that, or have Linux performing some intensive server oriented task, alongside a computer running one of those other, more common OS's. Show how Linux does more and does it faster.

The only thing you need to know...

[Fapestniegd]

# man man

Demonstrage *the power* of the command line!

[aquarian]

While newbies shouldn't be forced to use the command line, it might be nice for them to see why it's a great thing. Show them something really neat that they can do with the command line, which is awkward to do with a GUI. Make it something useful, which even if they're not doing now, they might want to later.

Re:Uhh.. Mozilla is for WINDOWS, too

[Saint Aardvark]

Agreed -- but he was also asking for good examples of Open Source goodness for TV. That's what I had in mind.

Re:Learn the command line

[Rudeboy777]

I have a feeling we all (command line jockeys, that is) do this to some extent. For me, I type pwd after practically every cd even though I know exactly what directory I'm in. I think it has something to do with busy fingers helping the mind concentrate on the task at hand.

3 Req's

[Shelled]

1. To Start: Mandrake, Redhat or Suse. On the assumption that anyone interested in trying Linux has some computer experience (otherwise they wouldn't have heard of Linux), start with a 'does-everything' distro. Gnome and KDE are windowish enough to be manageable by anyone who knows that retractable tray thing isn't a cup holder and supermount will prevent the pain I went through trying to mount make my CDROM work in Redhat 5.2.
2. Neatest Thing: NFS. Show them how remote servers appear as as completely transparent subdirectories of Home and not as drive letters or mappings outside of the C: drive. Simple, but amazingly natural compared to the default Win method. (Yes, XP and 2K do mounts but not as default.)
3. Best Book: None. Google Groups all the way. Anything a newbie could ask has been answered ad nauseum and there's no chance of alienation from RTFM if you don't ask in the first place. Distro forums are also a valuable source of information.

Mod parent up

[Cutriss]

He's too right about the elitism attitude on the part of many in-deep Linux users. It's probably one of the biggest barriers-to-entry for well-seasoned Windows veterans.

Likewise, Linux users need to drop the whole "All Windows users are morons" attitude, because the odds are pretty damned good that at least 3/4's of those preaching the message are probably doing so from a Windows box. I'm on one right now. It's not long left in this world, however - I just need some disk space on the network to back up everything before I format the disks.

Hey. We all have to start somewhere. At least respect the fact that some of us are *interested* in Linux.

*Jump* at the chance to add another one to the fold.

Do what you can to help others out. This doesn't mean "go to LUGs and help out people". This means to actively keep an ear out for people who are interested in Linux. You might view it as signing a support contract for life, but the fact of the matter is that if someone's interested in Linux, you probably wouldn't have to support him for that long, and they're probably wanting a minimal amount of handholding anyway (Since they're being adventurous enough to switch OSes).

You want Linux to succeed? Show people why it's better. If Windows works for them, that's fine. Leave 'em the hell alone. If they come to you with a problem one day, though, then think of a way that Linux can solve it. It might be just the ticket.

Re:Learn the command line

[AntiFreeze]

I have to partially disagree with you. In general, you're right. But people who express an interest in learning Linux should realize that part of Linux *is* the command line. At this point in Linux's development, a user will need to access the command line in one form or another from time to time.

Don't shrink away from it and say users don't want to know about it, or that it scares users away. Conversely, don't make out Linux to be only the command line. Don't spend too much time talking about the command line and shell scripting and how anything the gui does you can do from the command line. Completely ignoring a large part of the system that a user will need to use is dishonest. There is a healthy balance to be found.

Your other points are extremely poignant and I agree with them fully. Newbies should experience the freedom gained by using Linux, the sense of community in the Linux world, and one's ability to contribute to that community.

I wish this had been my first Linux book

[kfg]

Unfortunately I wasted a week with maddog's Dummies book. Jon's a great guy, but a computer manual for novices author he ain't.

Then I got Running Linux. I was up and going in no time and years later I still refer to it. At this point I don't recommend *any* other book for the newbie. There's no fluff in this book. It's the straight dope, dense but completely readable, technical but not over the newbie's head (at least if they're the sort who's eyes don't glaze the second you say "compiler," but I don't think of The Screen Savers viewers in that catagory), more in depth where it needs to be than any other newbie manual I've ever seen while at the same time running a broad overview of everything you need to at least hear about ( and refering you to other great O'Reilly books that cover the subject in greater depth).

Throw in Linux in a Nutshell and the Armadillo book ( Essential System Administration) and you've pretty much covered everything you'll ever need to keep a basic Linux system ( or network) up and running in any enviroment from your home desktop to the small corporation data center.

These three books are the grand triumvirate. The first to buy, the first to read and the first you'll turn to when all others have failed you in some way. All others are but shadows on the wall of the cave.

Beyond these three the first book a newbie is going to want is a dedicated manual for his choice of text editor, that would be vi of course. Running Linux gives an overview and In a Nutshell gives a reference but nothing beats a dedicated book for learning. Once you know it pretty well you'll keep it on the shelf but really only need In a Nutshell for a quick reference. O'Reilly wins again here with their Learning the vi Editor.

Ok, ok, some wrong thinking people are going to want to go with emacs instead. For them O'Reilly has Learning GNU emacs.

Congratulations, your viewers have just gone from newbies to system admin gurus in just four short books.

Here's where I step away from the crowd a bit. I'm a firm believer that any serious Linux newbie should do a little programing right off the bat, and do it in C, on the command line. O'Reilly loses here. The two volume C For Dummies books are the ones to grab. They're the best Dummies books I've seen. They're the best newbie intro to programing books I've seen for that matter. Not for the hardcore geek, but complete, understandable and fun. They'll have grandma writting her own prank commands in a couple of hours and LIKE it!

Now we've gone up to a full library of Linux books, all the books most people will ever need, including C programing manuals, and we haven't even used up a foot of bookshelf space yet so I guess throw in the Camel book for good measure.

Done, your viewers are now Linux grandmasters and *still* have a couple inches short of a foot of bookshelf space left they can fill with whatever special interest book catches their fancy from what they learned in Running Linux.

What can you do on the show to impress people with Linux? Damned if I know. The most impressive things about Linux aren't visual. In fact the *most* impressive thing about Linux is *philosophy.* Not in the philosphical sense itself, but what that philosophy *means* to the average user. No one really explains that well.

vim doesn't break. vim doesn't change to an incompatible file format to force you to download the latest version. All files written in vim are readable by all versions of vim and *all other text/word processors.* No lock in, no lock out. Ever. If the current maintainers lose interest, because it is open source, *any* programer with the interest can just pick it up and start maintaining it-without even having to ask permission (although this is good form), let alone spend years with a room full of lawyers to make the arrangements. If you don't like something about vim and are willing to put in the work you can bloody well change it yourself, at will, again without even asking permission. YOUR vim is yours to do with as you please.

And because all of this is possible with a Linux system running GPLed software tens of thousands of programers are working at it around the clock, so even if *you* never touch a line of code you directly benifit from its openness.

This is the true power of Linux, this is the part that's truely impressive. You can't show it. You have to explain it. Explain what being ope *means,* and means to *them.*

And what it means is freedom.

What feature is more important than that? Can MS or Apple match Linux, *feature for feature?*

KFG

Define Beginners ...

[spannah]

There are 2 very distinct classes of beginners, the technical power user that is beginning in Linux, and the absolute beginner that still has trouble with windows.

For the power beginner the O'Reilly books will do, as a number of people have mentioned before.

The absolute beginner won't be able to make it through all the geek speak in O'Reilly books. Although I hate to say this probably a "dummies" or "idiots" book would be better. I remember seing also a "visually" series with lots of pretty pictures. Which one of those I don't know, I'm a power user.

Confirms all Linux problems

[m00nun1t]

This thread is exactly what I was expecting... the vast majority are people saying "read the man pages", "just work it out yourself and install it", or "read 'Linux for 1337s'".

These people are newbies. They don't know what man is. They don't know what bash is. Many of them don't know what a CLI is, and if they do, have no idea of the power of the Linux CLI. They probably don't even know what a distro is. They've probably never even installed Windows, much less any sort of *nix. They need their hand held, people . This is the exact attitude preventing main stream adoption of Linux.

HOWTOs

[Hasie]

I learnt Linux about two years ago by reading HOWTOs. I even went out and bought one of those enormous "Learn Linux" books and I have almost never opened it. The HOWTOs are nice because they tell you how to do a common task, or give an introduction to a topic. Start with the "DOS/Win to Linux HOWTO" and then just read the ones for the stuff you need to do (like "Printing HOWTO").

Oh yes, and find a Linux user you can ask for help when you get stuck!

Linux books

[JWSmythe]

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..

Try the Redhat 8.0 boxed distro

[MrLinuxHead]

Redhat 8.0 retail box set comes with Excellent Documentation, and is quite specific without being overly technical. As an added bonus, it also comes with a CD full of documentation.

Chris, I watch the ScreenSavers on TechTV quite often, and saw the Quake server demo. Qudos to TechTV to give it a try. For a good topic for a show, most folks want to see what Linux can DO! Show them Ximian Evolution and Mozilla, OpenOffice, and TuxRacer. If you have time, do a demo of the Redhat setup agent, and show off Redhat Network (sorta like Windows Update). The new GUI RPM Package Manager and other GUI config tools are nice looking and will display well.

A dual boot setup would be nice to show off also.{I set up a dual boot Win98/RH8 for a newbie laptop user and they have been very happy to boot into Linux, and don't really bother with Windows anymore.}

Anyhow, love the TechTV, please say Happy Holidays to Patrick and Leo and Megan and Morgan and Yoshi and Martin and Sumi and Adam and Jennifer and Michaela and Chris and Erica and Alex and Becky and . .did I forget anyone?