This is a book that I have been looking for for a long time. I have been looking for a book that takes me into the command line world of Linux but in a methodical way describing all the little options, tips, tricks but also the principles that make Linux shell so powerful.

Book begins with a brief history of Linux and very informative, relevant overview of the system architecture.
It proceeds with the in depth, hands on walkthrogugh the environment, shells, and command line utilities.
There is a very useful and every-day practical exercise at the end of the each chapter.

Book continues with in depth chapters on Linux filesystem, the shell, editors (emacs and vi) and the programming environment including (g)awk and sed.

Book concludes with excellend command reference section (300 pages) and Appendix on regular expressions (superb),
getting help with Linux and keeping the system up to date (using yum and bit torrent).

I could go on at length to describe what this book is but trust me, a promotion for the book that you see on Amazon is accurate. This book is as good as it sounds. It is reviewed by 42 reviewers on Amazon and average score is 4.5 stars out of 5. I give it 5.

The claim that this is a "practical guide to Linux commands . . ." is an overstatement. The coverage of commands is relatively minimal. This volume doesn't really get into any depth or go beyond basic commands. The Command Reference (Part V of the book) is incomplete. It definitely is not a guide to using Linux.

Several editors and a bit of programming are covered , though again the coverage is cursory.

Overall, this is probably an okay reference for experienced Linux users. For people like me who don't use Linux often or in-depth, it is frankly not of very much use.

Jerry

I found this book to be just ok - it covers the basics of Linux and many important/frequently used commands but I am remotely satisfied with this book because the author focuses on stuff that many users probably will find less useful.

The learning curve is quite steep if you're relatively new to Linux - the author is describing very basic stuff like GNU, Linux file systems, simple shell commands and such, and then suddenly rushes into complicated shell programming and scripts.

Few examples from this book that I know I will never use but who knows, other users may find that:

-This book is great if you're into emacs and vi(m) since it dedicates over 100 pages on these two text editors but I prefer using nano so for me these chapters were more or less wasted.
-This book is great if you're into shell programming.

Why spend 100+ pages on vim and emacs when at least some pages could've been dedicated to a Security Section that this book doesn't have?
Perhaps emacs and vim are important because programming requires a good set of text editors..?

The Appendix is great though - there's an extensive collection of commands that can be useful for all newbies and intermediate users.

Someone will probably flame me for this review, saying I should've read the book's title before purchasing it. Yes, you are right - I should've.
But then again, if this book clearly was written for intermediate users, why mention GNU, basics of Linux and its file systems and so forth to begin with?

Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming

The book give a solution to one of the most biggest problem of a Linux junior Sys Admin:
How to automate tasks and decrease the amount of time that "waste" for
Regular operations.
Although from first look, the book content look like a "Boring Staff", after reading
It, the reader would improve his theoretical and practical capabilities -
And may help to itself to focus it the real job.
The book give a lots of useful examples that provide a good background
To the theoretical fields.
The only disadvantage from my point of view is that this book don't
Cover Perl and Python (and Optional PHP).
Although one book may not cover all, I hope that the author will write
A second volume that will cover this nice script languages.

This book is exactly what the title states - a practical guide to Linux commands, editors and shell programming. It doesn't teach you how to make all the server software run on your machine. But it does give an excellent and detailed explanation of the commands in the Bash and TC shells, and explains how to write shell scripts. The details the author goes into with the two most common editors (VI and EMACS) was just about right for me. He also has a 250 page reference section on each command in Linux. It's been several years since I used Unix, so this was a great refresher session for me, and it makes a good reference manual when I'm writing new scripts.