I quite enjoyed reading "The Joy of Linux" by Profitt and Hall--I'd not have believed that there was a book about Linux (of all things) that I could read for entertainment and genuinely laugh.

It's the first thing about Linux that I've read (as opposed to studied).

Can anybody else reccommend something like that? I don't care if it goes into technical detail, as long as it stays easy to read. (Another good example of this is Scott Meyers' "Effective C++"--the only book on C++ I've ever read that is actually funny)

not exactly linux related, but i recently read a book called P2P, all about erm... P2P programs unsuprisingly, came out last year. chapters on Napster, Red Rover, Gnutella, Freenet etc..

All in a kinda 'popular science' fashion, talking abuot small world networks and things, very good besides two points...

1) continually referring to napster as a program that will take over the internet...

2) continually referring to britney spears in the same way.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/peertopeer/

This makes the third post in a row just after Acid_kewpie. I'm not stalking you man I swear.

For light reading, and I mean more of a histroy of this and that than a well-written instructional book:

Open sources edited by Chris DiBona, Sam
Ockman & Mark Stone.

The bit about the accidental creation of Samba was pretty good.

The cathedral & the bazaar : musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary / Eric S. Raymond, with a foreword by Bob Young

The Larry Wall bit shows you exactly why Perl is so kazoo.

Just for fun : the story of an accidental revolutionary / Linus Torvalds

A rather well psuedo-ghost written bio.

Also, in the actual instructional realm, I always got a big kick out of Welsch's comments in "Running Linux" the O'Reilly guide.

Cheers,

Finegan

well, i have now read the cathedral and the bazaar. very good. I'd just like to draw the attention of anybody who has also read it to this document here, The Circus Midget and the Fossilized Dinosaur Turd. Very good...

Just for Fun is Worth a read. I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned yet.