Rating: 
Summary: THE Unix/Linux Book to Have
Review: This book should be called Indispensable and Complete System Administration. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but not by much. No book will ever be the complete book on Unix or Linux admin, but this one has so much material in it, it will be quite some time before I start looking for material not in the book. Every aspect of System Administration is covered in this book. The material goes into details as necessary, but the author does a good job of not getting bogged down in the details or overwhelming the reader with irrelevant or arcane knowledge that only a handful of people will use. What you will find is broad and thorough coverage of the material in an accessible, easy to read style.
One of the things I appreciate most about this book is the organization. Rather than listing out a bunch of technical information, each chapter deals with a specific task that a sysadmin needs to be able to do, and the information to carry out that task is contained within the chapter, rather than making references to other chapters or appendices, as is common practice.
This is another book that delivers the excellence I've come to expect from O'Reilly.
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Summary: The swiss army knife of UNIX books...
Review: From the MOTD to kernel configuration, it's covered. No this book will not replace a bookshelf full of other references (and on my shelf they're mainly other O'Reillys), but if you have to carry only one book with you and operate in a heterogenous *nix environment, then this should be it. I've also owned copies of the first and second edition, and in my opinion the third edition warranted purchase.
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Summary: The New Edition is Great
Review: Well, it was a long wait, but the new third edition is great. Covers a couple of Linux distro's, FreeBSD, and your standard Unix platforms. More complete coverage of networking and security. More readable than the previous edition. Good for anyone with minimal Unix experience or those who have worked with it for years.
Rating: 
Summary: Great, but needs FreeBSD support and more admin commands
Review: I've had this book for years and it's great. I like that it serves most Unixes rather than just one flavor. However, to do that properly, it needs to be updated to accomodate FreeBSD. Another thing it needs is a lot more discussion of admin tools so of which have shown up more recently, such as systat, truss, tput, gdb, ktrace, lsof, ssh, killall, zcat, iostat, fstat, pstat, sysctl, etc, etc. And in spite of O'Reilly's TCP/IP book, there's no excuse for not mentioning traceroute, dig, nslookup, etc in this book. Another thing it badly needs is an appendix with a command summary, since the "Unix in a Nutshell" book carefully avoids all admin commands. I'm hoping the next edition addresses all of these issues. Obviously, though, I still like this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Essential System Administration
Review: Had to buy this book for a Sys. Admin class. My opinion about the book is it is a good reference book for someone with Admin experience or currently working as an Admin; but as a green student I found the book overwhelmingly obtuse. While reading for class assignments the book made me feel how much I didn't know instead of teaching me something. Hence my original thought it read more like a reference book.
Rating:
Summary: Good buy, though incomplete
Review: The main reason I picked up this book was because of the small price tag. Everything is explained fairly well, and it is perfect for beginners in the genre. My only gripe is that some sections seem to be unfairly balanced in content (and yes I do know it is a "nutshell"). Anyway, if you are a beginner at UNIX and have (the money) to spare, this is the book for you!
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Summary: Good book for the curious.
Review: I purchased this book as to satisfy my fascination with unix-based systems - I mean, after a while cd, mv, and mkdir just won't do anymore. It is an excellent book explaining the intricacies of unix-based systems and the differences between them. It covers topics such as the management of processes and devices, the filesystem, essentials in administrative tools, startup and shutdown, managing users, securing your system from others, automating your work, backups, system resources, even configuring kernels and TCP/IP Network Management. It explains everything in great detail in a way that's clear to understand while making the reader feel good about him/herself. Even though I didn't end up a system administrator after reading the book, I enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent but Too polite
Review: This is an excellent book for learning the basics of UNIX and UNIX administration. However this book is just too polite about many things. Take for example their politeness in describing the use of floppy disks as a backup medium. It is because of this type of neutrality that I feel the Nemeth book is far better. In addition to having the technical content, the Nemeth authors have real opinions that can help guide a budding administrator. Nevertheless, this book is still a good entry into the area.
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Summary: Excellent overall view of unix System Administration
Review: As a general view of Systems Administration and as a guide to Unix systems in general, this book is simply the best. Unless you are fortunate to be the administrator of a single Unix system, this book is a tremendous help as a starting point for trouble shooting and performing those mundane tasks that have to be done on a routine basis. The book is excellently written. She has covered a rather large topic in 700+ pages (excluding index.)
Rating:
Summary: If you need an introduction to Unix administration...
Review: ...then you can't do too much better than this book. Yes, it's a bit dated, and it is very introductory and therefore can't go into too much depth, but if you're just starting out as a Unix administrator, this is still an excellent book to have. You may also want to check out the "Unix System Administration Handbook" by Nemeth, et al, since the later editions are more up-to-date, but Nemeth starts out at a somewhat deeper level than Frisch assumes, and may be more difficult for brand-new Unix administrators to get started with.
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