Linux Book Recommendations, for 2004?

An anonymous reader asks: "LinuxDevices.com editor Henry Kingman has reviewed O'Reilly's new Pocket Linux Guide, a 191-page guide to Linux, asking whether a book that short can tell you what you need to know to get started working on a Linux system. Apparently this book cannot, to believe Kingman, who also dismisses O'Reilly's Linux in a Nutshell as 'dry.' Can anyone recommend a good book for smart but inexperienced Linux users, something that conveys a little of the magic of Linux without being too chatty, or too esoteric, or just too overwhelming?"

Comments

Linux for Non-Geeks

[metallicagoaltender]

I'll admit I haven't read it, and therefore can't vouch for its quality, but Linux for Non-Geeks sounds like it may fit the bill.

Linux books? BAH!

[weeboo0104]

Just read the man pages!
</guru>

The best newbie book (and a good reference)

[kallisti777]

I think the best introduction to Linux (or any *nix for that matter) is Think Unix by Jon Lasser. It is written for competent Windows (or pre-OS X) Mac users who don't need words like "disk" explained to them, but aren't exactly comfortable at a command line and have trouble conceptualizing linking together several different programs to produce a result. Chapter one is about nothing but man pages, and X doesn't appear until the end.

My favorite reference book is O'Reilly's LPI Certification in a Nutshell; it covers the same material as Running Linux, and is just as dry, but I prefer the layout and organization.

So how does our newbie get from point A to point B? The same way most of us did: with the distro manual, man pages, HOW-TOs, online support, and so on. I love computer books, but there's definitely something to be said for figuring stuff out for yourself.

A Practical Guide to Linux" by Mark G. Sobell

[brianc]

I recommend "A Practical Guide to Linux" by Mark G. Sobell for a very good distro neutral book. Although it might be a little light on admin specific stuff.

http://www.sobell.com/LINUX/linux/html

Here's an online Linux admin guide I stumbled across awhile back-

http://rute.sourceforge.net/

For Linux specific security, I recommend "Real World Linux Security - Intrusion Prevention, Detection, and Recovery" by Bob Toxen (Prentice
Hall ISBN 0-13-028187-5).

http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com/

All "smart but inexperienced Linux users" should follow the guidelines Toxen presents before ever connecting an ethernet cable (or modem) to the machine.

Another question...

[dargaud]

...I have been using Linux professionally for a few years, so I know how to configure ethernet, Apache, firewall, an internal RAID and more stuff from the config files, but I have no idea how the "Linux on the Desktop" works. I just installed Knoppix and Mandrake on my own machine for the 1st time a few days ago and was a bit lost. Is there some book or comprehensive website that will tell me how to:

• use Gnome or KDE (how to add icons, how to add menus, how to add context sensitive menus, where are they defined internally...)
• how to burn CDs
• how to configure sound cards if they aren't recognized at once (I'm lucky, mine was)
• how to deal with advanced X-windows. For instance on installation Mandrake guessed my 2 monitor setup. On second boot, X wouldn't work anymore and I had to manually delete all references to the 2nd monitor in the X config file...

In other words, a "How to use a Linux Desktop for command line admins" type of book.

Re:Another question...

[NullProg]

If you don't mind having extra CD's laying around, buy the latest SuSE Pro for the books. It comes with two well written manuals, one for admins and the other for desktop users. The users manual covers Audio, CD Burners, Office Apps, CUPS, Web Browsers, and KDE/Gnome configuration.

Enjoy,