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? It's an ideal primer for Mac and PC users of the Internet who need to know a little bit about UNIX on the systems they visit.
This book is the most effective introduction to UNIX in print. The fourth edition covers the highlights of the Linux operating system. It's a handy book for someone just starting with UNIX or Linux, as well as someone who encounters a UNIX system on the Internet. And it now includes a quick-reference card.
John Strang now finds himself "a consumer--rather than a producer of Nutshells." He is currently a diagnostic radiologist (MD) at Stanford University. He is married to a pediatrician, Susie, and they have two children, Katie and Alex. John enjoys hiking, bicycling, and dabbling in other sciences. He plans to use his experience as an author at ORA to write his own book on radiology.
is a long time user of the Unix operating system. He has acted as a Unix consultant, courseware developer, and instructor. He is one of the originating authors of Unix Power Tools and the author of Learning the Unix Operating System by O'Reilly.
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.
