Anyone got a suggestion for a book about bash, scripting, general ‘under the hood’ linux basics?
I realise that a lot of this stuff is on line these days, but I still think a nice well written book helps - and there’s only so many hours you can stare at a screen. Besides, my C and C++ books do me wonders, and I think make a more digestible learning aid than random googling.
And they’re hardly going out of date. C hasn’t really changed for 30 years… and neither has bash, as best I can tell. 
Bash hasn’t been around for 30 years yet. 
O’Reilly usually has something for every computer topic. Here’s their bash book:
Check The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP)
There are many free bash guide books here.
On Wed January 14 2009 09:36 am, freedguy wrote:
>
> Check ‘The Linux Documentation Project’ (http://tldp.org/) (TLDP)
>
> There are many free bash guide books ‘here’
> (http://tldp.org/guides.html).
>
>
confuseling;
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green
Yep, I did a cursory scan of amazon, but I have to admit I was hoping for some insight before I trudged through too many reviews - to be frank, after an experience discovering that many people had cast unfavourable votes for a “Tunerless DVD recorder” because it didn’t have a tuner, I learned to take the collective technical wisdom of Amazon reviewers with an entire cellar of salt.
They seem to like
and especially
although the latter is kind of expensive, and the former seems rather widely focused.
Good idea on the uni library though - didn’t think of that.
On Wed January 14 2009 01:06 pm, Confuseling wrote:
<snip>
>
> Yep, I did a cursory scan of amazon, but I have to admit I was hoping
> for some insight before I trudged through too many reviews - to be
> frank, after an experience discovering that many people had cast
> unfavourable votes for a “Tunerless DVD recorder” because it didn’t have
> a tuner, I learned to take the collective technical wisdom of Amazon
> reviewers with an entire cellar of salt.
>
> They seem to like
>
> http://tinyurl.com/95hacj
>
> and especially
>
> http://tinyurl.com/6tc5kx
>
> although the latter is kind of expensive, and the former seems rather
> widely focused.
>
> Good idea on the uni library though - didn’t think of that.
>
Everyone seems to have different tastes when it comes to documentation and
explanations. If you find a book in the library that suits your tastes, you
might want to purchase it (or not). I’ve found some books with great reviews
that I’ve hated. To a save a bit money consider buying used.
–
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green
i can read and know you want a printed book, but anyway suggest you
look at:
“LINUX: Rute User’s Tutorial and Exposition” (Version 1.0.0), by
Paul Sheer
on line at http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
there you can read/jump around, cross reference for free until your
eyes drop out…
OR, for fireside reading with a mellow pipe: download and PRINT the PDF…
but, you are gonna go through a LOT of expensive ink, so i’ll tell
you it is PUBLISHED and available (SOFTBACK) at amazon.co.uk and
amazon.com, both new and used (from 18£/$13 respectively)…
you might be able to find better basic, under-the-hood info–good
luck trying…take a scroll through the table of contents and
compare it to the slick covered $50 books on your local racks…
For me a really great book is:
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
An in-depth exploration of the art of shell scripting
Mendel Cooper
It is a small pdf (about 2 MB), a big book (about 700-800 pages half of them about scripting examples).
Difficult to be fully understood (for me at last), but enough to make you productive if you are just a little bit experienced.
Google around for it (or go to http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/abs-guide.pdf) and print it by yourself.
Let me know what you think about it!
Bye, bye.
I’m away for a week, so just sticking my head in to say “Thanks for the suggestions all!” and not appear like a total ingrate.
Will get back to these though. Cheers.
I kinda liked O’Reilly’s “Bash Cookbook”.
yu210148 wrote:
> I kinda liked O’Reilly’s “Bash Cookbook”.
yes, yours (and acez) suggestions are great for bash
scripting…however, the OP asked for more “general ‘under
the hood’ linux basics” in addition to just bash and bash scripting…