In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
William Chow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I see no reason why there ought to be another one of these quick ref
> manuals for Linux. The dozen or so commands that are different from
> Sys V and the lpr system are not worth whatever amount of money it
> is to get another book if you already own a the UNIX book, and
> although Linux newbies might benefit from the quick reference, often
> I think the man pages are much better.
>
It is IMHO great to have a reference book dedicated primarily to the
GNU tools because it is the relevant thing for Linux. The man pages
have the disadvantage that you have to read them on the screen and
that they usually contain too much data to be useful information. And
i do think it is nice to actually have a real book made out real paper
in your hands when doing your work. Nothing beats a well structured
book when you need information instead of data.
> For the same money I'd get the Matt Welsh Running Linux book, which
> is in a 2nd edition and a lot of fun to read.
>
You'd pay more money for less information actually! I've bought
"Running Linux" one year ago and was largely disappointed because it
seems to be primarily aimed at the beginner and leaves lots to be
desired when you are more advanced. The chapters on programming and
LaTeX are IMHO a waste of the paper they are printed on because they
hardly scratch the surface and are not really useful. Here in Germany
exist some books which are clearly better in this regard.
It is probably a good book for doing positive Linux advocacy among
those who still need to be convinced. I personally don't like that it
contains so much words in comparison to such few useful information
making it useable for your day to day reference.
"Linux in a Nutshell" has the advantage of being very condensed and
referencing almost everything you need to lookup once upon a while in
a single source of information. Great book! :-)
Regards, P. *8^)
--
Paul Seelig [EMAIL PROTECTED]
African Music Archive - Institute for Ethnology and Africa Studies
Johannes Gutenberg-University - Forum 6 - 55099 Mainz/Germany
Our AMA Homepage in the WWW at http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bender/
--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
