Review:A Practical Guide to Linux

Dan Zahn(Stumpy) has sent a review of Mark G. Sobell's A Practical Guide to Linux. This is not a book for the power-users amongst us, but is perfect for introducing people to Linux, or taking your casual relationship with Linux to the next level. So, if you want to advance, or you want to get someone on the bus, click below to read more.

A Practical Guide to Linux
author	Mark G. Sobell
pages
publisher	Addison Wesley
rating	9/10
reviewer	Dan Zahn(Stumpy)
ISBN	0-201-89549-8
summary	Excellent beginner and casual user guide

REVIEW: A Practical Guide to Linux Mark G. Sobell (Addison Wesley ISBN 0-201-89549-8) Nutshell Review: Excellent beginner and casual user guide Rating: 9/10 Dan Zahn(Stumpy)

The Scenario

New Linux user? Casual user who wants to learn more? Want to learn more about vi? Emacs? Shell programming in Bash, Tcsh AND Zsh? A quick introduciton to programmers tools on Linux?

What's Bad?

This book is actually quite good for most of what it talks about. The only area I can really critisize is in their chapter on GUIs.

They discuss some very basic concepts. What is a mouse? (includes a picture) Bitmaped display devices. This chapter alone is like something for someone who hasn't seen a computer for about 10 years and who's only previous experience was a text terminal on a unix server. Also, they spent an inordinate amount of time on the Andrew User Interface system. Their example includes a short introduction to the ez editor. Odd how their pictures even show a XV window showing a screenshot of what must be an ez window. I've not been able to find this editor anywhere and all ever heard about it is it might be commercial. Can someone enlighten me on this?

What's Good?

Everything else. The first 5 chapters walk you through Linux and how to use it. One of the features I really liked about this book is how they get into the history of alot of things and they don't skimp on the Linux history. They have a brief overview of Linux's capabilities. Getting into standard introductory programs and utilities. Ending up on the File system and the shell.

This is followed by two chapters on GUIs and Networking. These could probably have been placed a little later. The networking chapter covers an introduction to many networking utilities and some information about the internet.

Then some of the best chapters follow. These 6 chapters alone are reason enough to buy the book. The first two cover the two most used editors on Linux. There is the chapter giving a quite thorough introduction to the VI editor. It covers quite alot of it's commands and capabilites, teaching me alot of things I didn't know before. Then there is the chapter on Emacs. Those these are entirly different text editors, one of the nice parts of this chapter is how it discusses the same types of commands in roughly the same order as the Vi chapter. Then it gets a little deeper into Emacs, even going as far as to show a quick Emacs LISP language mode module. It gets pretty deep into Emacs for the 56 pages devoted to it. Enough for anyone to get started, only needing to dig into the help manual for obscure or unique commands or configuration.

The last 4 chapters of the reasons to buy this book give a very good explination of shells and shell programming. The first two are dedicated to Bash shell and Bash shell programming. The first chapter is more of an introduction of the concepts you will need in the next 3 chapters with just a little of Bash specifics, mostly to have to do with Bash configuration and simple shell programs. The next chapter those gets into the Control structures of Bash shell programming and explains some of the more advanced concepts of it. The next chapter covers the TC shell getting into how to use and and how to program for it covering the areas where it does not match the Bash shell. Finally ending up on the Zsh shell and the advanced programming capable with it. They cover it's relation to the Korn shell and how it differs and what it borrowed from other shells.

The last two chapters of Section 1 covering programming tools under linux, including Gcc, Make, gdb, RCS, and CVS and System administration. This information here on most of these programmers tools is very quick and just something to get you started. There are many better books to get you really programming in Linux. The RCS and CVS information is useful though and somewhat thorough. The System administration chapter covers backups and general practives that the home Linux user would want to do on their system periodically to clean it up.

Section 2 is a list of about 60-100 linux utility programs. Some or most of which already mentioned and possibly discussed in this book are giving alot better description and are dicsussed a little deeper.

The 4 appendices are quite useful as well. The first is a 10 page introduction to Regular Expressions, something everyone eventually should or is going to have to learn. The next is about 15 pages of quick troubleshooting questions and answers. This is followed by a very brief introduction to some emulator programs for linux.(A fullfillment of an earlier statement about how Linux can run other OS's software) Finally there is a section on the POSIX standards. This section seems out of place with most of the rest of the book. This is something even most diehards wouldn't bother reading. The history given is one of the few reasons to like this part.

Pick this book up at Amazon and help Slashdot out.

So What's In It For Me?

If you want to know more about Linux, what you can do with it, how to do what you want to do, and how to make your life easier using it, this is the book for you. The forward written by Linus is definitly a nice touch. The information on text editors allows you to quickly take advantage of both editor's features. The Shell and Shell Programming information make it so you can write off your complex shell commands into a script. Also enough to let you write large utility shell programs that could do just about anything.

Table of Contents

1. Part 1: The Linux Operating System
2. Linux: A Prodcut of the Internet
3. Getting Started
4. An introduciton to the Utilities
5. The Linux Filesystem
6. The Shell
7. Graphicl User Interfaces(GUIs)
8. Networking and the Internet
9. The vi Editor
10. The emacs editor
11. The Bourne Again Shell
12. Shell Programming
13. The TC Shell
14. The Z shell and Advanced Shell Programming
15. Programming Tools
16. System Adminsitration

• Part 2: The Linux Utility Programs
• Regular Expressions
• Help
• Emulators
• The POSIX Standards
• glossary
• Index