UNIX Made Easy

Some software publishers endeavor to make their operating systems as easy to learn as possible. Not so for the (various) developers of Unix and Linux. They've optimized the Unix-style environments to ensure maximum productivity for users who know what they're doing, and top performance for the processes those users work with. The flip side of this design decision is a steep learning curve. Unix and its variants can seem highly obtuse to the uninitiated, which is where the third edition of Unix Made Easy comes in. It's a remarkable book, not because it teaches novices how to get around in Unix--plenty of books teach you that ls in Unix is like dir in MS-DOS, and that the vi editor has a million weird commands--but because it teaches its readers how Unix works and why it's more powerful than easier-to-learn environments.

For example, this book devotes a full chapter (one of significant size) to the subject of file permissions. Rather than just spew forth a series of "do this for this, do that for that" steps, the author takes time to explain what happens when you issue a chmod command with a series of parameters. Nicely rendered conceptual diagrams help a lot with this potentially confusing subject. Scores of examples, with instructions explicitly stated, also help the cause. Chapters conclude with exercises you can try in order to prove you know what you're doing. Author John Muster focuses on the Bourne, Korn, and C shells. More coverage of bash, the most popular Linux shell, would make this book better. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to get around in Linux and Unix, mainly at the command line interface. Sections deal with file management, the vi editor, shell scripting, working with users and processes, and doing editing work with sed, and to a lesser extent, awk.