Linux Command Line — good book, easy online or hard copy reading

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Linux Command Line

Begimners Guide to Learn Linux Commands and Shell Scripting
by David A. Willians

Tnis book can be read (for free) right now using the Kindle Cloud Reader

Here is a short excerpt:
The Shell: You can give directions to your computer by typing commands in the form of texts. This command line is dubbed as the shell which is the daunting part of Linux. People just don’t want to venture into it. My friend Sylvia never liked Linux until her boss pushed her into this uncanny tech world. Once she got into it, she loved it more than Windows or Mac. The control the command line gave her made her quite comfortable at the office.

There is a lot in the book that is simple and the writing style is similar to the excerpt above. I recommend it to those who are intimidated by the command line and are not familiar with it; the book will give you enough information to not only get by, maybe some people will end up like “Sylvia” and will “love it”.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-while-loop/
is one of several links provided at the end of another Kindle eBook:
Linux: The Ultimate Beginners Bible to Learn Command Line, Administration and Shell Scripting Step by Step (Linux Administration)

Anyway, the Kindle Cloud Reader looks like one effective way to read some of the literature, especially “beginner” stuff.
Some things are free to read one time or available in reader form very cheaply. Even large books are a fraction of the price of the printed edition.
While this is NOT a direct advertisement, if you do not have much (or any) money to spend but you want to learn, ebooks are one way.

There is also an incredible amount of information that you can read completely free of charge with an Internet connection.
Skidoo can probably tell you about hundreds of things that I have either never seen or have not read in 20-30 years.

Xecure finds stuff all the time; I hope this encourages a few people to “poke around” and learn.

Happy reading and learning!

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator BobC]

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I do have a couple books I found cheap on Amazon, but have noticed that No Starch Press has free internet editions of theirs, and given that, if I do buy a physical book, I try to support publishers with student and learner friendly policies like that if I can. Myself, I really like an actual book (Ok, I’m old), but this one seems like a good one to me and is the #1 best seller in the category.

The free online PDF version (including a number of translated versions) is available from this site
http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

The Linux Command Line, 2nd Edition: A Complete Introduction Illustrated Edition
by William Shotts (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 525 ratings
#1 Best Seller in Linux & UNIX Administration

https://www.amazon.com/Linux-Command-Line-2nd-Introduction/dp/1593279523/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=linux+command+line+book+bash&qid=1609798210&refinements=p_72%3A1250221011&rnid=1250219011&s=books&sr=1-3

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by BobC.

[Anonymous]

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if you do not have much (or any)

torrents, p2p filesharing
apt install amule

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Thanks!
@BobC: I remember the No Starch Press; thank you for mentioning it.

@skidoo: I also expected your valuable suggestions. Thanks for your help.

Friends, read and learn.

I merely attempted to bring forward some more information.

Please choose information that advances possible learning opportunities.

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Brian Masinick

[Member CyberGhost]

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Here’s 25 free ebooks for learning Linux for anyone that’s interested. Lots of good info! Also, I do believe the Linux command line by William Shotts has a 5th edition now.

https://itsfoss.com/learn-linux-for-free/

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Thank you cyberghost!

Again we see that there are a LOT of good resources available; many are completely FREE and online, and yet if you prefer reading “traditional books” or ebooks, these are available too.

Search engines are your friends! Take advantage of them and search to find the resources you need.
Many of the topics are common to all Linux distributions. One of the references that I shared shows how to update software on both Debian-based (.deb packages) and Red Hat-based (.rpm – by the way, Fedora, SUSE, and quite a few others use the rpm package format, just as many distributions (including antiX) use the deb package format.

Others are welcome to share here too; just remember that the Internet has an astounding amount of information available. The more you use searching tools, the better you will get at figuring out which sources are helpful in the ways that you learn and understand the best; as people, we learn in different ways; we are NOT all the same in the ways we learn, just as we are not all the same in the distributions we prefer or even the way we use the very same distribution, our antiX. Again, thanks to all who have been sharing their experiences and things they have found.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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This one comes from the Red Hat library, but again, there is quite a bit of useful information that the astute reader can take advantage of using antiX:
https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/top-20-sysadmin-guides?utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=weekly&sc_cid=7013a0000026KpxAAE

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator BobC]

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Myself, I don’t want to spend a lot on books nobody but me would ever want, but don’t mind an older book to have a book physically in front of me. I admit the ones I like best are ones where I have both the paper copy and electronic version of some sort, so I can copy code or search when the indexes just don’t help.

I didn’t really have a good bash scripting book, so I bought this for $6.99 including shipping.

bash Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for bash Users (Cookbooks (O’Reilly)) 1st Edition
by Carl Albing Ph. D. (Author), JP Vossen (Author), Cameron Newham (Author)

BTW, there is a newer version for about $48 to $51 but its too rich for my Scottish blood:

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by BobC.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by BobC.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by BobC.

[Anonymous]

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websearch
2nd edition O’Reilly Carl Albing Bash Cookbook
^—v
http://www.rgonzo.us/shiny/books/bashcookbook.pdf

[Anonymous]

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1st Edition was 2007
which version of bash does it cover?
(careful, may need to un-learn some behavior quirks changed/fixed in later bash versions)
—} http://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/bash/CHANGES {—

related?
https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/release-notes/
(questionmark because I haven’t found a bookmarkable refrence stating/describing what “debianized” bash configuration details differ, compared to other distros)

[Moderator BobC]

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and THAT is the short version, LOL.

Thanks, skidoo. At my skill level, just having a book to refer to is better than nothing. I’ve been suffering with nothing but pre 2000 texts, mostly for Unix, for 4 or 5 years now.

I can’t tell you how many times I give up hunting stack overflow and find a solution for something in a old reference book like this, and maybe I will read some and absorb some as I work with things.

Yes, you are right though, working from an out of date text is not ideal.

PS: the 2007 version was done with 2.03 and the 2017 version with 4.35. A lot of the text is identical, but hopefully different where things have changed.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by BobC.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Good points. Some basic features of bash, particularly the core features that are common with sh and ksh don’t change, but bash has greatly improved and changed since the early versions.

Personally I probably do not use very many, if any, of the changes since 2007 but the beginner and people who actively write code will definitely want the most recent version and current information.

Thanks to skidoo our out of date references should be noted and replaced.

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Brian Masinick

[Member stevesr0]

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Hi CyberGhost,

The 5th INTERNET edition (Jan 2019) is available for free download by the author via a link to SourceForge. The author’s page is https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php.

stevesr0

[Member AA BB]

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great post ! .. just like to include some updated alternatives to often-used Linux CLI tools e.g.

exa a super alternative to linux CLI ls command
https://github.com/ogham/exa … installable from Debian repos

fd-find an improved Linux CLI find command..
https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/fd-find/fdfind.1.en.html … installable from Debian repos

fend much more more advanced version of Linux CLI bc
(download only the binary file from https://crates.io/crates/fend under the section labeled INSTALL,,then use chmod to make the binary executable)

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