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Rating: 
Summary: Still typos and bad screen prints in 2nd edition!
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: 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: 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.
Rating:
Summary: BEST book I've read so far !
Review: I'm not sure where you guys get your books but obviously you didn't read to far into this one. It is by far the most step-by-step unix book I've read. The book is clear and I had no problem understanding it. This man KNOWS what he's talking about because everything I learn from this book I try and sure enough it works perfectly. I was taught by Jack Dent's student. He's very knowledgable. I highly recommend this book to newbies and advanced unix/linux users.
Rating:
Summary: Still typos and bad screen prints in 2nd edition!
Review: The screen prints in this book are so poorly reproduced as to be completely unreadable and there are many, many typos. I am taking a class using this book as a text, and I spend more time trying to figure out what the typos are in the commands than I do learning how to use the software. I sent an email to the publisher regarding the fact that the screen prints, which are white characters of low resolution on a dark background, are nearly invisible; I received a reply that said they were sorry I was having trouble reading the graphics - nothing else - no apology - no statement that this is a recognized problem they would correct in a subsequent edition. My advice - find a book you can read that you won't have to waste your time proofreading and leave this one on the shelf!
Rating:
Summary: Important Topics Omitted; Too Many Errors
Review: This book is simply written and easy to read but it has serious
problems. I felt it deserved 1.5 stars. It has many figures of
monitor screens which are about 90% blank space. The text on the
screens is hard to read since it's fine white letters on black.
There is a lot of wasted space elsewhere.
Why doesn't it show long options using -- or the --help option?
Why were the important symbolic links omitted? Why didn't it show
how to ask for help with the vi editor? The list of important
information omitted goes on and on.
Fig. 2-1 fails to show the important /sbin and /var
directories. The use of the + option for the sort command is
obsolete according to the on-line manual page. The obsolete +
option uses and index origin of 0 which the book fails to
mention. The definition in the Glossary of Telnet as being
a "terminal emulation program" is incorrect. And so on ...
So I'm disappointed with the book and can't recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Bad bad book!!!
Review: Very bad book, very unclear, and specially it's very unprecise. Errors are very common in this book. I wouldn't recommend this book to anybody, not even my worst enemy!
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