Linux Pocket Guide

The Linux Pocket Guide book, which I have chosen is a brief introduction to usage of GNU/Linux operating systems command line. The book is directed at a quite narrow target group of IT specialists who need to understand more Bash (Bourne Again Shell) and generally text mode of the mentioned system. But on the other hand it is written in not complicated style, hence, it is very useful for the beginners. A great advantage of the book seems to be saving time, that a user or administrator would need to study resources, which the book encapsulates.

              The book covers a variety of commands with options that can be applied when the commands are launched. For each command we get sufficient explanation of function, mentioned options and even location on disk, which can be very useful information for advanced administrators. The book is very useful for people who need to quickly get to know systems commands, not only because of range, which is only about 200 pages. If we consider similar books concerning this topic they are usually with several times more pages.

               In the book we see commands for a variety of purposes. I would mention Installing Software, Text Manipulation, Viewing Processes, Network Connections, Users and Groups manipulations etc. Book is straight guide with not only commands. It also introduces the basic principles of the system and also describes the main differences between Unix-like systems and Windows. Also scripting is involved with several examples, which can be really helpful for a system administrator. Then we are also introduced to the structure of file systems used. Book’s structure is obviously not like a novel and can be used in everyday work with the system.

              I especially appreciate the focus on scripting in one of the parts. Script is a list of commands that can be launched. This is especially useful if we need to do same thing several times or at some concrete time. We may need for instance to do back up at the server. So we may create script with necessary commands and then with program cron we may set that it will run every day at some concrete time.

             Another very useful part about Network Connections introduces tools for setting of network connection with description where and how we can change the settings. And also tools for analysis of problems with connection, tracing and others.

             If we look at the part devoted to files and file systems, we will see the description of different order in file system that users are familiar with from Windows. There are different file systems that are used at hard drives and we can find out how much disk space we should dedicate to partitions as Swap, system’s partition, partition dedicated for user’s files and optionally others. The aim of Swap partition is to help system with lack of RAM memory etc.