Salix Forums

I'm a relative beginner with Linux (maybe a year) and I'm wondering if there is a useful book or two out there that could help me develop my knowledge beyond blind tinkering. For solving particular problems Google, man and forums are a great support, but they don't tell you things you don't know you need to know. Some of those who have helped me on this forum may have a pretty good idea of my gaps!

Looking on Amazon, it seems there are a lot of bad books out there - for instance, fat volumes mostly made up of the man pages, or tedious descriptions of how the DE and apps in a particular distro work, as if it were Windows. This one looks as though it might be good and has some positive reviews:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linux-Command-S ... 2CWJXL68DC

It's about more than scripting - for instance, there's a chapter on setting up mutt, which I fancy trying instead of alpine. The author has published a book or two on email in Linux.

This is a slim reference (based on Fedora, but never mind) that also has some very good reviews:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linux-Pocket-Gu ... 2CWJXL68DC

The online Slackware guide looks as though it would repay close study, but I think it's a bit advanced for me just yet. It's also very comprehensive and more a reference to Slackware than a beginning-to-intermediate introduction to Linux in general.

I'd be grateful for any suggestions, including if you think books are not really going to help.

I discourage you to buy books on linux. I bought some and they got outdated in a year or two (XFree was replaced with xorg; KDE3 is gone; HAL appeared and declined, configuring devices is much easier, etc). Linux changes so fast and books are getting old very fast. It is much better to learn from internet, there are much up-to-date information. What is most important:

- how to edit text files from command line: nano or vim or mcedit
- basic commands for file management: ls, ln, rm, mkdir, less, most, chmod, chown, du, df, cat, grep
- /etc content (most config files are there: mounting - fstab, network - rc.d/rc.inet, users - passwd, group, shadow, services - rc.d)

Did you check this: http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=852

For beginners, I think the following two are particularly good:
http://tille.garrels.be/training/bash/index.html
http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=852

I was just on my way here to post a link to it. I actually came across this a few months ago - mind like a sieve! Thanks for reminding me.

EDIT

Thanks also Witek for your specific suggestions about where to focus first. Some I have picked up at random fixing problems, but far from all. It's definitely time for that slightly larger context. And you certainly seem to be right that the internet is the way forward.

Many years ago (in my early Linux days) I had a book mainly focused on SuSE 6.x which was quite OK for me as beginner. And since we are here at Salix you probably can have a look at http://www.slackware.com/book/ (no idea about quality of this one). I don't know any "all over Linux flavours" cook book. So as long as you don't want a special book about bash programming, embedded linux, kernel hacking, ... just try the Slackware book

It's old, but still useful and free: Linux: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

If printed material is important, try one of the many good magazines, I like linux journal (US) and Linux Format (UK) they both offer great info and tutorials across many distros and many experience levels. Linux Format also includes cover DVDs with ALL KINDS OF goodies for low bandwidth areas.

No, I am not a paid endorser...lol

Thanks Drew, and welcome to Salix! There is something about actual printed paper, and magazines like that wouldn't suffer from the problem of already being out of date when you bought them.

Meanwhile I have a long list of online material to work through ... when I have time!