What are good Linux/Unix books for an advancing us

Question

Are there any good books for a relatively new but not totally new *nix user to get a bit more in depth knowledge (so no "Linux for dummies")? For the most part, I'm not looking for something to read through from start to finish. Rather, I'd rather have something that I can pick up and read in chunks when I need to know how to do something or whenever I have one of those "how do I do that again?" moments. Some areas that I'd like to see are:

• command line administration
• bash scripting
• programming (although I'd like something that isn't just relevant for C programmers)

I'd like this to be as platform-independent as possible (meaning it has info that's relevant for any linux distro as well as BSD, Solaris, OS X, etc), but the unix systems that I use the most are OS X and Debian/Ubuntu. So if I would benefit the most from having a more platform-dependent book, those are the platforms to target.

If I can get all this in one book, great, but I'd rather have a bit more in-depth material than coverage of everything. So if there are any books that cover just one of these areas, post it. Hell, post it even if it's not relevant to any of those areas and you think it's something that a person in my position should know about.

Answer 1

Jason,

Unix Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike will give you solid foundations on all things Unix and should cover most of your questions regarding shell command line scripting etc.

The Armadillo book by O'Reilly will add the administration angle. It has served me well!

Good luck!

Answer 2

The Art of Unix programming is a book that I've found helpful in the past, in spite of being a bit slanted against other non-unix platforms.

Answer 3

With regards to Ubuntu and Linux in general, a good book:

• Hacking Ubuntu by Neal Krawetz
• Linux Annoyances for Geeks by Michael Jang