Rating: 
Summary: Good place to start
Review: For users who need to get a good fundamental base of UNIX on limted resources, this is an excellent book. Because LINUX is free and can run on any intel-based machine, it is an excellent platform for students to discover the basics and learn to appreciate UNIX. This book follows a logical sequence to that end and hits on all fundamental skills, explaining things without assuming nor over-explaining.This guide will not lead to certification on it's own, but it will provide a solid foundation to build upon. After completing this guide, I consider myself a competent and confident UNIX user.
Rating: 
Summary: Author more worried about Credit then proofreading
Review: Hi i am an I.T student from Texas and an MCSAx2 (W2K/Windows 2003) and I have the misfortune of having to use this book. If the author is more concerned about receiving credit for this book, then for having it proof read, that might be a problem. I don't expect perfectly proof read college books, but it appears very little effort has been made to proofread this one. Why this book bundles Redhat with it is beyond me. The book never examines that OS in any of its pages, much to my chagrin. Perhaps it should be retitled "Unix using Linux (and not including the attached OS CD Rom"). It is extremely hard to follow along with screen print outs printed in the books, since they are extremely fuzzy and unclear and i am not sure if they were placed in the book to enlighten the students or to frustrate them. The instructor's slides cannot be seen farther then a foot away from the board, for the same reason. You think this is a five star book? You must be an instructor with prior knowledge of unix, because as you may have noticed all students on here complain about not being able to read large portions of the book. A book that is mostly unreadable I cannot learn from. Look at this book BEFORE you purchase it. And if you do- as a previous reviewer suggested-make sure you have some back up Linux/Redhat books available, as a reference to explain the things the author doesn't.
Rating:
Summary: Too many errors, who proof read it ????
Review: I am a College Student using this book, my prof. likes it because he does not have to work at making exercise for us to do, but the whole class seems to hate the book, we only meet once a week, but during those couple hours we find about 10 mistakes. to many typo's, and the review questions at the end of the chapter don't help either, there are more than one spot where the answer could be multiple but there is only one answer ????? i would not use this book. unless you have an O'Reillys "Unix in a nutshell" handy.
Rating: 
Summary: Everyone should have this book
Review: I am an old student of Jack Dent and I am fortunate to have been able to perfect my skills of UNIX under him. I was with him when he was writing the book and was able to see and contribute to the book as it was being developed. Now that I have read the book as a finished product I think that it should be in the home of everyone that is in the UNIX field. The book is one of only two that I would read over and over, not only as a reference, but as a teaching tool as well. Five stars all the way.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Learning Tool
Review: I am using this book as a resource for teaching Linux to students. This book is good and well organized. Unlike most books out there, it does not start by explaining you how to install Linux, which is an excellent concept. You can learn the basics about Unix and once you are familiar with it you can go on and learn more. The "advanced" exercises really give you a good grasp of how to use the concepts explained in every chapter. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Very Bad Book!
Review: I can't belive people can actually rate this book 5 stars. I'm not so sure they tried the exercises. There is so much mistake in the book, that it's rediculous. None of the exercises work, because of the fact that UNIX is case-sensitive and the author sometimes considered that and sometimes didn't. Bottom line is: THIS IS AN EXTREMELY BAD BOOK.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, step-by-step reading
Review: I like the way each chapter smoothly hands off the ball to the next. You really learn a lot about the Unix operating environment, especially Linux. The accompanying CDROM is also a plus. It's a bit hefty, but serves well as both a tutorial and a reference. In addition, it is VERY well suited for students, as an unincluded extra CDROM supposedly offers many extra review questions per chapter (there are already quite a few). Overall, a really nice book. I recommend it to anyone with adequate computer literacy and a desire to learn this extensive OS.
Rating:
Summary: Inadequate and inaccurate
Review: I teach UNIX at a college in the Phoenix area. I was given this book as the school's choice for the class literature. I have since told my students to stop bringing this book and, instead, bring a different one I have chosen. This book fails to address far too much of the UNIX operating system to be of much use as a learning tool. Missing from this book are discussions on important topics such as links/symlinks, su, detailed discussions of mode/permission settings, suig/sgid program execution, terminal settings, and much more. Large type-face and excessive (unnecessary) illustrations are more the cause for its 568 pages, than is an abundance of content. Additionally, the author spends far too much time teaching the X-Windows GUI than the actual command line which is the fundamental heart of the UNIX system. My students and I have also noticed various inaccuracies with the text content. I have removed this book from the book list for my course, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting to learn UNIX. What I found most disturbing was the author's own comments that he was more concerned about Amazon initially getting the credits right than he seems to be with accurately and completely presenting information regarding the UNIX operating system.
Rating:
Summary: Inadequate and inaccurate
Review: I teach UNIX at a college in the Phoenix area. I was given this book as the school's choice for the class literature. I have since told my students to stop bringing this book and, instead, bring a different one I have chosen. This book fails to address far too much of the UNIX operating system to be of much use as a learning tool. Missing from this book are discussions on important topics such as links/symlinks, su, detailed discussions of mode/permission settings, suig/sgid program execution, terminal settings, and much more. Large type-face and excessive (unnecessary) illustrations are more the cause for its 568 pages, than is an abundance of content. Additionally, the author spends far too much time teaching the X-Windows GUI than the actual command line which is the fundamental heart of the UNIX system. My students and I have also noticed various inaccuracies with the text content. I have removed this book from the book list for my course, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting to learn UNIX. What I found most disturbing was the author's own comments that he was more concerned about Amazon initially getting the credits right than he seems to be with accurately and completely presenting information regarding the UNIX operating system.
Rating:
Summary: Revised Edition .... Much Better
Review: I too was leery of using this textbook in a Unix workshop that I sometimes teach for a graduate program at IUPUI. After reading the negative comments I contacted Course Technology and tracked down the editor for this title. She admitted that there were some serious typos which made the exercises difficult to complete successfully. She told me that they had hired a Linux expert to re-edit the book and it would hopefully be available in time for my class the summer of 2001. It was ready in time and it worked very well for my class. BE AWARE that the ISBN number wasn't changed and the only indication that you have the revised version is the word UPDATED in a gold star in the upper right side of the text cover. Instructors can get a CD with solution files, Powerpoint slides, Test Manager, and an Electronic Instructors Manual. I would agree that perhaps less GUI content and more of the omitted topics noted in other reviews would make this a 5-star textbook.
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