Absolute Beginners Book required

stoofa

stoofa

stoofa

Soldato
Joined
4 Mar 2003
Posts
12,522
Location
Chatteris
I am in need of an "absolute beginners" book for Linux.
I need to take somebody who knows what Linux is but has never used it.
Installing the OS is pretty straight forward these days - so no instructions required here.
However I'd like it to begin with the absolute basics more or less from the first time the person boots the machine after OS installation.

Although ultimately this person may well be involved with Debian, initially I'd like the book to follow the Fedora line.
Now I've always beena big fan of the "For Dummies" books and think they are great.
However I believe the latest Linux for Dummies book is from August 2007 and covers Fedora Core 6 - a little out of date now.
Although I still feel this book might be the one of choice.

Could anyone make any suggestions for a good book/s.
Price no object, looking for people who have actually used such books to recommend.

Ta
 
I remember starting out with linux I tried to get hold of a "beginners" book of sorts. but found out most of them were out of date. In the end I just took the plunge and installed a linux distro and went from there. Googling for anything I couldnt figure out myself. One thing I will say is whatever distro you pick, Stick with it. even though linux is linux whatever distro you pick. I've found Debian for example has its little quirks.

hope that helps.
 
Make your own book.

Seriously... Just the main commands etc you end up googling anyway.
write them down in a journal.. Coz i can tell you this.. You wont use that command again for..Oooooo.. Ages... Then you forget it.

Guess what ?
Then you need it... 2 more days of googling !!

Honestly.. all the info you find in a book ... you can google or ask on various forums.
 
Through FC6 is now getting a bit long in the tooth, the basics of the OS haven't changed much. The terminal commands are still what they've always been, as is the filesystem and filesystem hierarchy. If you like the For Dummies format check it out. I bet that 95%+ is still just as relevant.

You will probably want to use a Red Hat-based distro though. That means a flavor of Fedora or even CentOS. :)
 
I can recommend the following book - Linux Complete by Sybex. It's not specific to one distro, and to be honest the book is fairly old now... I think the first version is from '99 with a 2nd edition released a few years later. However, I found it to be the best written introduction to Linux that I've come across.

I don't get on with the Dummies books. They try too hard to be funny. The Linux Complete book explains things clearly without trying to be pretentious.

If you're then looking for a distro-speciific book then I'd suggest getting one of the Linux Bible books published by John Wiley. They're too heavy going as an intro to Linux but they work very well when used to complement the beginner's books which intentionally don't go into too much detail.

I believe there's a Fedora Bible... but I'm not sure what version it covers, as I'm not a Fedora kinda guy.
 
There's The Ubuntu Book by Jono Bacon and others that I hear is quite good, but I haven't read it. It's written for Edgy, but again, most of what it says is still relevant. Even so, Edgy is still available so you could install that and use it with the book. The book might even come with a pressed Edgy CD. Ooh, shiny!
 
Some of the Linux o'reily ones concentrate on FC, and like you say so do the for dummies ones.

The problems with printed documents of almost any type is that they become obsolete as soon as they are published.

The scope of what you are suggesting is extremly vast though, maybe narrowing it down would help, i.e whether you want a book concentrating on the desktop aspects, or from a shell point of view (Unix/Linux in a nutshell are quite good for this).

I remember starting out with the cookbook and a few others on my desk. Although these did help me, i found the net invaluable (various forum tips, snipets from blogs etc. etc.) and man pages as well.
 
Urm the end of the Gentoo handbook should be a useful read (ignoring the bit about portage if gentoo isnt your thing) just along with the some of the distros wiki pages (gentoo/arch have pretty good ones)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom