Ok, well, I'm going to be purchasing a distro of Linux soon, but I really want to purchase a few books before hand. I've cleared out 1/4 of one of the shelves in my bookcase next to my computer - I've decided to spend a bit of money on this, about £100; not a lot but I want to start small and learn more in the future and use money later on when I really need to.

I've talked to lots of people, researched Amazon, spent hours and hours in different shops and reading these forums. I've come up with a list of books - but I now need help choosing which books to buy from the list. I'm a novice, know nothing about Linux administration, however I really want to learn, but need the right books. The list I've come up with is as follows:

• Linux System Administration Handbook and Toolkit
• Automating Unix and Linux Administration
• Guide to Linux Installation and Administration
• Linux Newbie Administrator Guide
• The Linux System Administrator's Guide
• Essential System Administration Pocket Reference
• Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guide)
• Essential System Administration
• Linux Administration Handbook
• Linux System Administration: A User's Guide
• Linux: Install and Configuration Little Black Book
• Linux System Administration Black Bk
• Linux for Dummies (For Dummies S.)
• Linux in a Nutshell
• Running Linux
• Linux Administrator's Bible
• Linux Desktop Reference
• Unix Unleashed
• Using Samba
• DNS and BIND
• Exim: The Mail Transport Agent
• Perl Cookbook
• Apache the Definitive Guide
• Unix in a Nutshell
• Programming Perl
• The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage
• TCP/IP Illustrated: The Protocols (APC)
• Vi Editor Pocket Reference
• Building Internet Firewalls
• Hacking Linux Exposed

I'm not really sure which to get. I was really looking for a good Linux system admin book in the Black Book series, however I only found dated ones. I think their PHP Black Book by Peter Moulding was brilliant. I really liked it, I found it an excellent reference book - I never really used it for learning, found it a very good reference book though and always found myself flicking through the pages, reading a few pages and then continuing my work.
I have listed a lot of books there, lots new however a few dated ones - what I'm really looking for is quite a few books which are good for learning, which I can read and then have learnt, as well as one or two large good books which would be used mainly as reference. If you think any other books are also good which are not in the list, please let me know.

Thanks for all the help.

Hey, if you wanna support the author, by all means go ahead, but check out these links first and see what you can find..

http://rahmat.zikri.com/books.html <-- 1 word. WOW.
http://freebooks.by.ru/
http://www.mindview.net/Books/DownloadSites
http://www.maththinking.com/boat/computerbooks.html
http://docs.rinet.ru:8080/
http://www.ebone.at/files.php?show=Books
http://www.empowermentzone.com/#unix <--amongst other BS

Here's what a lil friend of mine called "Google" can do...
http://www.google.com/search?q=ebook...&start=10&sa=N

http://skaiste.elekta.lt/Books/
http://content.443.ch/pub/
http://www.ods.com.ua/index.phtml <--not bad..
http://kavosh.irost.net/books/library.htm
http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/programming.html
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/

hope iv'e been some help

Wow - Thank you leeach, that list is super. I've not looked into all the books just yet, checked lots though and they're all great - lots of info, and very good for a super price, the internet bill.

Looks like I'll need stop buy the supermarket tomorrow to pick up a few bundles of printing paper to print 'em off. Long work...

I can't believe that RUTE hasn't been mentioned. Buy it or just download it.

http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/rute.html.gz

Not sure if it's just me, but it doesn't work for me. Maybe my Internet security settings? I'm using Norton at the moment.

Works for me - if you are in Windows, do a search for rute in google. Should be the first result.

Yes, I'm in Windows. Weird though, still doesn't work. I'll try again later though but disable Norton, sometimes it decides to annoy me and block all sites. :-/

Anywho, I'll try it again later.

Oh, I seem to recall that there was a message about IE. Goto rute.sourceforge.net and see what the redirect message says.

hayyy, check this out, I followed one of the links that leeach
gave and found this........
Does anyone remember the Tandy Computer "Whiz Kids"??
this was a comic book from 1984,.......heh someone put 7 of the 8 printed online( with permissions of course!!)...........enjoy!!

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu...l?id=tandywhiz

Thanks for that XavierP, but still seems I cannot get there. I may go round a friends and see if I can get it that way, or simply buy it. I'm not too keen on reading books on-line staring at my monitor all the time; I do it enough when I'm programming, heh, so I like to read the books about things in book paper form that than eBook form.


Also, to anyone else willing to comment, which books would be the best for me to purchase to learn how to admin Linux?

Thanks all.