ACCU Home page ACCU Conference Page
Search Contact us ACCU at Flickr ACCU at GitHib ACCU at Facebook ACCU at Linked-in ACCU at Twitter Skip Navigation

Search in Book Reviews

The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
Search is a simple string search in either book title or book author. The full text search is a search of the text of the review.
    View all alphabetically
Title:
Linux in a Nutshell
Author:
Jessica Perry Hekman
ISBN:
1 56592 167 4
Publisher:
O'Reilly
Pages:
612pp
Price:
£15-95
Reviewer:
Chris Hills
Subject:
unix
Appeared in:
11-6
The title of the book is misleading. It does not tell you much about Linux. This book is largely a UNIX command reference that looks at the standard Unix utilities. In fact the book is based on the O'Reilly Unix in a Nutshell. Whilst it contains much useful information on the many useful utilities in the Linux/Unix armoury it has a lot of space devoted to the old Unix favourite vi. Given that several other editors and a graphical interface (or two) is available I find this surprising.

The sections on the shells are still relevant in much the same way a dos shell is still required in Windows (but more so). Though people tend to stick with one shell, this will be a useful primer until you have decided which shell to stay with and buy the appropriate O'Reilly shell book. There is some Linux set up information but this is less than comes with Linux. Those with Unix experience will find this book superfluous.

The commands are explained in the familiar terse Unix style. The commands are sensibly grouped and sections have introductions, which compensates to some extent for the terseness of the command information. Linux users will have to realise that they are now part of the Unix community with all that that entails.

This is a handy and inexpensive reference and apart from the reservations about vi (I never liked her) this is a recommended book for Linux users who have no Unix books or experience.