Void's Forums

hi all,

I'm interested in buying books on networking, security and TCP/IP....Are the Oreilly books OK?

thanks.

i have only ever heard good words about them, but have not bought one myself.
others will no doubt confirm or deny this. (that they are good, not that i have never bought one)

I have probably had 50 different O'Reilly books and have never had a bad one. They are pretty much the standard when it comes to UNIX/Linux/Networking/etc. Some of the titles I have had over the years off of this page include "TCP/IP Network Administration", "Sendmail", "DNS & Bind", "Essential System Administration", all good. That's just in the networking section. Then I had the entire Xlib/X11/Motif related selection which I believe was around 10 books back when I was primarily a programmer (over 8 years ago). Then I have several Nutshell books, Perl/Shell programming books, "vi" manuals, etc, etc... Never had what I would consider a bad one. The last one I bought was probably a few years ago though as now I just find myself using Google instead of looking through books. Books don't have that handy little "search" button.

Okiedokie.....I'm off to buy the books.....thanks for the info!

I have been interested in these (and other *nix) books for some while now as well but have been stuck on what to buy. I started to buy the RedHat book but decided it not to. I have heard Learn Unix in 24 Hours (correct title?) is good, although I am not exactly sure this is an O'Reilly book. What would some of the gurus here recommend as a step up from basic commands to help me become more involved with the OS?

Dj

that's not an o'reilly book, but again i have heard a lot of good things about the ...in 24 hours books (mainly from X11).
I haven't bought any unix books myself (although i have about ten full lever arch binders full of printouts of essays/tutorials/entire books) but i used to work in an academic bookshop a couple of years ago and got to have a good look inside a lot of these computer books. I would say that at a glance the ones that look most solid are the in 24 hours ones and the o'reilly ones. There was also another line that looked really good, but can't remember what it was right now (it wasn't the '...for dummies' or 'idiot's guide...' by the way, although they are excellent books for getting totally started from nothing in a subject).

a book i think is very good (in a general capacity) is "Unix unleashed" which is fully available online in at least two editions: "the System Administrator's Edition and the Internet Edition. Some of the chapters are the same, but some are unique to one version of the book or the other. If at some point these links stop working, just search google for "unix unleashed" because it is mirrored in plenty of places.

Engineer wrote:What would some of the gurus here recommend as a step up from basic commands to help me become more involved with the OS?

Dj

I find this one: Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition to be one of the best Unix/Linux books in general, spec. if like you say, you want to sort of get under the hood.
I have the second edition, which doesn't cover networking & X Window, the new one, the third, does... It is a very expensive book, but it is worth every penny IMO.