Installing software
 

I like Linux a lot..but, I'm too used to how software is installed in Windows...I'm looking for a book that would give me insight into the workings of Linux. I saw this book on Amazon:
"A Practical Guide to Linux(R) Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming"
By Mark G. Sobell
Is this a good choice?

Robert in NJ

That's a command line book, which is fine if that's what you want to know. But you could start with RUTE, it's a little bit dated, but still relavent. You can also poke around for things at the Linux Documentation Project. "An Introduction to Linux - A Hands On Guide" is a good place to start there.

I would start with some of the online stuff before I bought a book. And then I would probably check something out from the library because Linux changes fast enough that the books become dated pretty quickly.

What distro are you using (it looks like Ubuntu from your profile)? Going to that distro's documentation site will explain a bit more about the workings of that particular distro.

My desktop runs Mandriva and Netbook has Ubuntu.

Start by reading the documentation for the distros your running. My suggestion would be to run the same distro on desktop and netbook until you are more familiar with linux.

Software Management - Community Ubuntu Documentation
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoftwareManagement

Applications - Community Ubuntu Documentation
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Applications

Advanced package management
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/add-app.../advanced.html

AptitudeSurvivalGuide - Community Ubuntu Documentation
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptitudeSurvivalGuide

This one too.

Several people have recommended this guide to understand and learn linux.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/toc.html

There are several guides and lots of documentation, but whether any would suit or not will depend upon how you learn, and learn something new.