what would be the best book on linux for a Newbie?
 

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a really good book that I can use to help me in my quest to become a linux guru:D

can anyone give me a direction as to which would be the best. There are so many out there.

Thanks

Toby

http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...cat.php/cat/17 are our book reviews, this would be a good start point. You could also try searching as, off the top of my head, I can think of around 6 threads started in the last week or two.

i have like 20 or so linux books that i read from time to time im reading one now on emacs :) anyway im gonna tell you the truth yes books are good to read and work from at same time but god knows dont try to remember everything right away. the BEST way to learn linux inside and out is from using it and not being afraid of it. books normaly cover a sertain distro like fedora core bible or a book will be linux in general and normally only covers the "widely used" distros. widely used being fedora core, debian, ubuntu, suse. as you look at the books you will understand what i mean.

There is a lot of good documentation included with linux. Even the info manuals look good if you install from source, and use "make pdf" or "make ps" or "make dvi".

For example, the manual for bash is called bashref. It is about 150 pages long. If your system is rpm based, you could install the source rpm. Then in the /usr/src/packages/SPECS directory execute as root "rpmbuild -bp" to apply the patches. Next cd to the the bash source in the build directory:
cd ../BUILD
cd bash-3.03/
./configure && make pdf

The PDFs will be in the doc/ subdirectory.

Packages to consider doing this for are:
coreutils, bash, find and tar.

Also search through the descriptions of packages that contain "doc" in them.

SuSE linux and other distro's have included a package containing all of the howto's from the Linux Documentation Project web site. www.tldp.org

Going to the www.tldp.org website anyway would be a good idea. There is a link to a Linux-Gazette site where you can download all of their archived magazines. They are in html form.

If you install "swat", web based Samba configuration, the initial page at www.localhost:901 contains links to web-based man pages and howto's, including some web-books:
Books
Using Samba, 2ed. - by Jay Ts, Robert Eckstein, and David Collier-Brown
The Official Samba HOWTO and Reference Guide
Samba 3 by Example
The Samba Developer Guide

The same is true of the cups web interface at localhost:631
Good Luck hunting for the best documentation on the way to becoming a Linux Guru.

I'm fairly new to linux myself and I've tried reading some books about it. However I've found that the best way to learn is to just experiment and use forums like this one to ask for help when you run into trouble. Also try losts of distros, desktop environments, and Window Managers until you've found the ones that you like. I started with Mandriva/KDE before switching to Fedora Core 3/GNOME and now I'm using Debian/Fluxbox and loving it. If you've got a 2nd computer use that for linux while you're getting used to it becasue chances are you'll break it at some point and have to reformat your hard drive.

Anyway that's my $.02