Hi O'Reilly,

I want to start learning Unix. I looked at your Unix center and there are so many books listed. What book should I read first? And what should I read next and so on? Also, if I want to learn Linux, is it best to learn Unix first?

Robert

Hi Robert,

First, you should buy Learning the Unix Operating System by Jerry Peek, Grace Todino, and John Strang. A new, fifth edition was released last month. Buy this book and read it through a couple of times, trying out things as you go along. By the end of the book, and after reading through it a couple times, you should be ready to go.

Next (and you could even buy this book along with Learning the Unix OS), is Unix in a Nutshell. While the intent of a "Nutshell" book is to be a reference for experienced users, you'll need this book to help you learn how to string certain commands together and to learn more about Unix.

From there, you'll need to pick up on one of the more commonly used text editors available to Unix users: vi and Emacs. We won't tell you which one to learn since that's a religious battle among geeks, but there are advantages to using each. You'll need to use a text editor fairly often on Unix/Linux, so learning one (or both) of these is to your advantage. For that, we'd recommend Learning the vi Editor and/or Learning GNU Emacs.

Linux is basically one flavor, so to speak, of Unix. Most, if not all, of the concepts you learn for Unix are relevant in your quest to learn about Linux. A good place to start is our Learning Red Hat Linux title. A new version is due out in January on version 7.2. And once you have your system up and running, you should pick up a copy of Running Linux to explore more advanced topics.

There's also LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell. Even if you're not going to take the certification exams, this book contains a lot of information that a Linux newbie would find very helpful.

Better get started, Robert! That's a lot of material to cover!

O'Reilly's Editors

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