Product Description: Praise for Mark Sobell's Books "If you want to become a real Linux guru, this is one of the better books available. Readable, straightforward, educational, it is a superb reference that blends the educational aspect of a typical book on learning Linux with a typical book of command line references. I highly recommend A Practical Guide to Linux(R) Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming." --Harold D. McFarland, Editor, Readers Preference Reviews "I keep searching for books that collect everything you want to know about a subject in one place, and keep getting disappointed. Usually the books leave out some important topic, while others go too deep in some areas and must skim lightly over the others. A Practical Guide to Red Hat(R) Linux(R) is one of those rare books that actually pulls it off. Mark G. Sobell has created a single reference for Red Hat Linux that cannot be beat! This marvelous text (with a 4-CD set of Linux Fedora Core 2 included) is well worth the price. This is as close to an 'everything you ever needed to know' book that I've seen. It's just that good and rates 5 out of 5."--Ray Lodato, Slashdot contributor "Mark Sobell has written a book as approachable as it is authoritative. " --Jeffrey Bianchine, Advocate, Author, Journalist"Excellent reference book, well suited for the sysadmin of a Linux cluster, or the owner of a PC contemplating installing a recent stable Linux. Don't be put off by the daunting heft of the book. Sobell has striven to be as inclusive as possible, in trying to anticipate your system administration needs." --Wes Boudville, Inventor "A Practical Guide to Red Hat(R) Linux(R) is a brilliant book. Thank you Mark Sobell." --C. Pozrikidis, University of California at San Diego "This book presents the best overview of the Linux operating system that I have found...[It] should be very helpful and understandable no matter what the reader's background is: traditional UNIX user, new Linux devotee, or even Windows user. Each topic is presented in a clear, complete fashion and very few assumptions are made about what the reader knows...The book is extremely useful as a reference, as it contains a 70-page glossary of terms and is very well indexed.It is organized in such a way that the reader can focus on simple tasks without having to wade through more advanced topics until they are ready." --Cam Marshall, Marshall Information Service LLC, Member of Front Range UNIX Users Group [FRUUG], Boulder, Colorado "Conclusively, this is THE book to get if you are a new Linux user and you just got into the RH/Fedora world. There's no other book that discusses so many different topics and in such depth." --Eugenia Loli-Queru, Editor in Chief, OSNews.comThe Most Useful UNIX Guide for Mac OS X Users Ever, with Hundreds of High-Quality Examples! Beneath Mac OS(R) X's stunning graphical user interface (GUI) is the most powerful operating system ever created: UNIX(R). With unmatched clarity and insight, this book explains UNIX for the Mac OS X user--giving you total control over your system, so you can get more done, faster. Building on Mark Sobell's highly praised A Practical Guide to the UNIX System, it delivers comprehensive guidance on the UNIX command line tools every user, administrator, and developer needs to master--together with the world's best day-to-day UNIX reference. This book is packed with hundreds of high-quality examples.From networking and system utilities to shells and programming, this is UNIX from the ground up--both the "whys" and the "hows"--for every Mac user. You'll understand the relationships between GUI tools and their command line counterparts. Need instant answers? Don't bother with confusing online "manual pages": rely on this book's example-rich, quick-access, 236-page command reference! Don't settle for just any UNIX guidebook. Get one focused on your specific needs as a Mac user!A Practical Guide to UNIX(R) for Mac OS(R) X Users is the most useful, comprehensive UNIX tutorial and reference for Mac OS X and is the only book that delivers *Better, more realistic examples covering tasks you'll actually need to perform *Deeper insight, based on the authors' immense knowledge of every UNIX and OS X nook and cranny *Practical guidance for experienced UNIX users moving to Mac OS X *Exclusive discussions of Mac-only utilities, including plutil, ditto, nidump, otool, launchctl, diskutil, GetFileInfo, and SetFile *Techniques for implementing secure communications with ssh and scp--plus dozens of tips for making your OS X system more secure *Expert guidance on basic and advanced shell programming with bash and tcsh *Tips and tricks for using the shell interactively from the command line *Thorough guides to vi and emacs designed to help you get productive fast, and maximize your editing efficiency *In-depth coverage of the Mac OS X filesystem and access permissions, including extended attributes and Access Control Lists (ACLs) *A comprehensive UNIX glossary *Dozens of exercises to help you practice and gain confidence *And much more, including a superior introduction to UNIX programming tools such as awk, sed, otool, make, gcc, gdb, and CVS
Very useful Very useful for someone who wants to learn to use Unix on the Mac and has prior knowledge of command line languages.
A great reference I got this book as someone who had used UNIX before, but this was many years ago, and I had forgotten a lot. This book is great for picking up the functionalities of various UNIX tools - the explanations are clear and concise. It also works very well as a quick reference. The bulk of the book is devoted to bringing you up from a potentially zero-experience user to someone who can work with ease with editors, shells, and more. Simple examples are included throughout. The back of the book has a 250-page command reference section for quickly looking up how to use a particular command. You could read the whole book and progressively work with UNIX as a self-taught course, or just reference the sections you need.
Excellent I have several of Mark Sobell's Unix based books and this one is as good as the others which are all excellent. You don't nessecarily need all of them but they are truly tailored to the platform and are a quick way to get to what's important when a new platform presents itself.
If you want to know the underlying MAC, this is for you.
1,000 pages cover basic to advanced shell programming and beyond Mark G. Sobell and Peter Seebach's A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO UNIX FOR MAC OX S USERS is a reference the UNIX/Mac user simply must have at hand: nearly a thousand pages of reference material on everything from basic and advanced shell programming to Mac's OS X filesystem and utilities modules make this the best reference on the market for users who seek either a step-by-step tutorial or a basic browser's reference for problem-solving. Exercises to test knowledge boxed highlights of information make it easy to either refer to for at-a-glance troubleshooting or sit down and study for step-by-step methodology.
From the ground up This is the book I've been looking for. Not just 'OS X for Unix Geeks' or 'OS X in a Nutshell', I wanted more. As much as possible, in one resource. 1000+ pages signaled a big yes.
I have yet to read it all the way through, but so far this is a very good guide for those who want not only to learn the general 'Unix way' of computing, but dive under the surface of OS X and examine its specificities in the command line interface, aka the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
No, this isn't a 'hacks' book, and there's no mention of rsync, for example, but you'll find ample documentation of the underside of OS X--there's a lot more to it than just a GUI, folks.
Educational, yes. Hence 'Practical Guide'; you'll learn a good deal, in almost textbook fashion. Recommended to enhance the power and fun of your OS X experience!
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