[PLUG] Good linux book

[Dan Young]

Jeme A Brelin said:
>
> On Mon, 22 Jul 2002 crisponions at attbi.com wrote:
>> I was wondering if any of you knew of a good book(s) to help aid me in
>> my understanding of Linux.  I have several books that show you how,
>> but none explain WHY.  I am looking for something that describes the
>> operating system and how it works a little more, so next time I am
>> configuring I might have a bit more of an understanding instead of
>> just following directions.
--snip--
> Personally, I think that if you're new to Unix and unix-like operating
> systems, the first thing you should read is Essential System
> Administration by Aeleen Frisch.  The website
> (<URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/esa3/ >) says that the third
> edition is 2002 (est.).  I don't know if it's available yet.  But this
> is probably the best guide to understanding why we do things "the Unix
> way" that I've ever seen.

I'll second that endorsement. I have the second edition, circa 1995. The
advantage I see to some of the older seminal *nix books is that they _do_
often address the "why" question, if only by showing that something is
done a certain way because it's been done that way since the dawn of time.
Its useful even if you never plan to deal with a SCO/AIX/etc box, if just
from a historical perspective.

Not that there hasn't been a tremendous amount of progress, but the basic
concepts have been around for many moons. That is something that has taken
some acclimation for me, in picking up the *nix culture. Our original
poster seems to be talking about learning the culture and "way of doing
things" as much as anything. How about the History of UNIX? Many google
hits on this one; everthing from

http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/

to

http://www.crackmonkey.org/unix.html

-Dan Young
-Parkrose School District