If you are new to UNIX, this concise introduction will tell you just what you need to get started and no more. Why wade through a 600-page book when you can begin working productively in a matter of minutes?
Topics covered include:
Logging in and logging outContents include:
Window systems (especially X/Motif)
Managing UNIX files and directories
Sending and receiving mail
Redirecting input/output
Pipes and filters
Background processing
This book is the most effective introduction to UNIX in print. The third edition provides increased coverage of window systems and networking. It's a handy book for someone just starting with UNIX, as well as someone who encounters a UNIX system as a "visitor" via remote login over the Internet.
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal featured on the cover of Learning the UNIX Operating System is the horned owl. The horned owl is the most powerful of the North American owls, measuring from 18 to 25 inches long. This nocturnal bird of prey feeds exclusively on animals--primarily rabbits, rodents, and birds, including other owls--which it locates by sound rather than sight, its night vision being little better than ours. To aid in its hunting, an owl has very soft feathers which muffle the sound of its motion, making it virtually silent in flight. A tree-dwelling bird, it generally chooses to inhabit the old nests of other large birds such as hawks and crows rather than build its own nest. UNIX and its attendant programs can be unruly beasts. Nutshell Handbooks(R) help you tame them.
...
Edie Freedman designed this cover and the entire UNIX bestiary that appears on other Nutshell Handbooks. The beasts themselves are adapted from 19th-century engravings from the Dover Pictorial Archive.
The text of this book is set in Garamond. The text pages are formatted in troff. Figures were created by Chris Reilley in Aldus Freehand. The cover was produced in QuarkXPress.
Comments about oreilly Learning the UNIX Operating System:
This is an excellent short guide that will definitely get any new user up and running in a unix environment without any prior knowledge. This book also works fairly well for the Linux newbie as well. Distributing a copy of this book might be well worth the money and time it might save network administrators time and effort in educating the new user.
One should not expect it to cover more advance topic such as administration or networking. But basically on basic concepts on how to navigate the system, run programs, multi-task, and file management. It concludes with a nice pointer to additional references and directions if the reader chooses to become a power user.
