It's my 18th coming up (yay!), and I want to know which is the best book for a newbie, which will cover ALL of the basics that a slack user will need to know, but I also want to have some of the more advanced stuff available to me!

What would people recommend?

Slackware Linux Essential book is quite nice
Linux - I didn't know you could do that (with a picture of a chimp and a banana on the front cover).
Linux - The complete reference

and many online books
slackware.com 's
http://jetblackz.cjb.net
etc...

And stick to this forum, and linuxpackages.net

Good luck

And if you want a copy of slack linux essentials, i'm selling mine on amazon cheap =)

As mentioned this forum is a good place for info, also the JustLinux Forums.

There is also a new online source called The Slackware Handbook. It's just getting started and there is already some very good information on it and it will only get better as time goes by and more submissions are made, approved, and added.

Later,
MMYoung

I had the same problem last week, and I found best book for Slackware.
Linux Unleashed - second edition. Very old book from 1996 and thats the trick, you will find there everything from the beggining. Lots of information that is not covered in new books is in this book.
Shell commands, vi, networking, programing for newbies.
Read this and noone will call you newbie.

"Linux Unlished" second edition + 2 CD Slackware
Author: Kamran Husain and Timothy Parker

If you like a 'real' book, one printed on paper, ie, I recommend a classic O'Reilly title:

Essential Unix system administration written by AEleen Frisch (sorry, I really don't know how to get the correct spelling of the lady's first name out of my keyboard...).

The title is misleading in suggesting that it would be a book for administrators and experienced users. In fact it is the single one book that explains the fundamentals of Unix/Linux correctly and comprehensible for beginners and experts alike. It's worth every penny. I have the second edition, and most of the information in it is still useful on the most modern variants of Unix and Linux. So if you are unsure, you might try to get a chep 2nd hand copy of the 2nd edition instead of the up-to-date 3rd edition. Although the latter has the advantage, that there is much more Linux specific information in it.

gargamel

The Slackware Linux Essentials book on Disk 3, or on the website. It is a nice short book that really helps you understand how to best use Slackware.

Another good reference is Paul Sheer's Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition. I think this was written as a linux textbok, but it has a ton of good information both about linux and computer use in general.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/index.php?cat=15 will give you a good number of ideas to add to those in the above posts

LEGEND! This is really cool, it has all the basics that don't appear on places like LinuxQuestions.org, and its right up my street!
I'm still looking to buy a book though, something which has this sort of content in it (if all else fails I'll just print it all off!)

You can purchase this book off of amazon.com. I just did not to long ago. It went for about $28, which is very competitive as far as books like that go.

here here! the RUTE book is incredible. i flip through it all the time, and it's got relevant material on almost everything.

I second (third?) that - Rute is great. you can purchase the printed version here:

http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/rute-purchase.html


anyone know if a 2nd ed. is in the works?

I'll be getting the Linux Pocket Handbook. For just $10, how can you go wrong? Although it's actually aimed towards Fedora Core, it's supposed to be a handy book for all distros.

You might want to check amazon's Computers & Internet>Operating Systems>Linux>Distros>Slackware section. The selection is actually kind of small and I think the newest book is from 2000 (I think), but they look like they could be worthwhile.
If you're interested, you might want to check out some "specifics" books like learning Bourne/Bash Scripting. This area seems rather interesting to me though. Probably wouldn't be for every-day use like the Linux Pocket Handbook.

Hmm... I really like the look of the Rute one, and I can also get free delivery on it xD
I think I'll probably go for that then!
Thanks for all your help!

Another great resource that is Slackware specific is Slackware Linux Basics by Daniel de Kok.
at: http://www.taickim.net/daniel/slackware-basics/

I'm partial to "Linux System Commands", which was written by Patrick Volkerding (creator of Slackware)