What Are the Best New-To-UNIX Resources?

cam_macleod asks: "I will soon be teaching an Introduction to UNIX course, and I usually provide recommendations on resources that students can use to further their learning. In this case, the course must be OS-, vendor- and distro-independent, and yet accessible to different levels of experience. My question is: what sites and other resources do you find most helpful, both for you and newbies you help?"

Re:O'Reilly Knows UNIX

[Anonymous Coward]

I second everything bziman's listed, (esp. Stevens' book), and would also point out Linux in a Nutshell from O'Reilly. I know that man pages are useful, but they are also cryptic at times and not useful unless you already know the name of the command. Not only does the Linuxnut book have a command ref, but also touches upon Perl, emacs, vi, etc.

Re:Unix for Dummies Sux

[extra88]

I've got a copy of it right here. It is so info-light it might be okay for one reading if you've never done anything with UNIX but you won't refer back to it much. The chapter which explains the UNIX equivalents of common DOS commands is handy tho'.

The Visual Quickstart Guide to UNIX does the same job better. It has good appendices too. Appendix A is called UNIX Reference and has condensed info in tables like listing the standard directories with descriptions or commands for controlling file permissions and ownership.

A another book which really answers the original question is O'Reilly's UNIX in a Nutshell. It's commands section is very readable.

Unix for Dummies

[djweis]

Many moons ago I got started with that book on an Ultrix network. It was a pretty good start. I haven't looked at it for almost 8 or so years, but it did the job. Your students will be pleased that they don't have to buy a $60 textbook they won't need again.

ahh finally I have a good comment

[johnnycal]

I really don't think that books are to great for many new to unix types, because most are used to having information very easy to read and given to them. ( ala windows users that think unix is kw3l), but for the more serious users, I would teach them history and why unix is used in so many different kinds of operating environments. I would not get into explaining any gui based environment and would definetly explain the differences in the bsd and system v styles. but as far as linking goes I still find these pretty usefull:
unix rosetta stone ( more for admins)
http://home.earthlink.net/~bhami/rosetta.html
web based `man`
http://linux.wiw.org/doc/man/

finally I would explain how to search for stuff, web, faq, readme's, how-to, rfcs. if you can follow this part then unix will be a breeze.

john

books books books.

[Zurk]

UNIX books are a *great* place to start...dont go for any new ones..the old ones really had it right. I learnt from the mentoring system myself and A Practical guide to UNIX (very old book..dont know the author)..thats really the only way to learn. that and practical experience.

Sir Hackalot's Unix tutorial

[crovax]

A copy can be found here [demonstreet.com]. This Doc will give you the basics in less than an hour. After you have the basics the book "The Unix Porgramming Environment" by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike( Prentice Hall Software Series 1978, 240 pages, ISBN 0-13-937681-X) is still in print and a great book to learn Unix from.
-----
If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.

What are you teaching?

[crossconnects]

What kind of student are you teaching? Are you teaching programming students, networking students, general purpose users, or maybe graphics art students? The material you use for the course should reflect what the students need to do. I teach a course in Linux Networking, So I use material appropriate for that. I am not teaching programming (at least not in this course).

a good book for intro

[thexdane]

well this depends on the level you want to teach unix at and i may be flamed for saying this *BUT* i used it and found it was a good set of books to use. it is the UNIX for dummies books. they are vendor and distro neutral and they give you some background on UNIX and also put it in a language that well anyone can understand. i am not sure if this is the exact thing you are looking for but it was useful for me and pretty basic for those that aren't UNIX savy and it has some linux stuff in it now. also the book will say for bsd or system V systems.
hope this helps a bit and i hope i am not flamed for it.

Re:books books books.

[max cohen]

Actually, "A Practical Guide to Unix [3rd Ed]" isn't really that out of date. The author's name is Mark Sobell and I've got a copy within arm's length right now that I refer to quite often. It's the book I gave our summer intern to use as she "unlearned" NT. ;)

http://www.linuxnewbie.com/

[sniggly]

You could use http://www.linuxnewbie.com/ [linuxnewbie.com]. http://www.linux.com/ [linux.com] seems to be very newbie oriented too.

Re:O'Reilly Knows UNIX

[bziman]

Yo, Mr. AC,

I know all sorts of Linux resources, but the question was about teaching Unix in general, so I tried to stick to that.

Now for on-topic:

If you don't know what command you're looking for, use the command apropos (which is frequently just an alias to man -k) to search for a term. It will list the manual pages related to the topic and tell you what sections they are in.

For example:

bziman@ziege:~$ man -k printf
format (n) - Format a string in the style of sprintf
gl_printf (3) - write formatted output in graphic mode
printf (1) - format and print data
printf, fprintf, sprintf, snprintf, vprintf, vfprintf, vsprintf, vsnprintf (3) - formatted output conversion
printftest (6) - tests the vgagl gl_printf function
snprintf, vsnprintf (3) - formatted output conversion

The number in (parenthesis) represents the section in the manual that describes that function. printf(1) is a shell utility for formatting text. printf(3) describes the C library functions in stdio.h.

I hope this helps you and any beginners out there to make better use of the manual pages.

Brian

The Internet

[LionMan]

I know that when I first started playing around with linux, I knew nothing about UNIX systems at all. However, I found the HOWTOs useful at both a) setting up my linux system and b) educating me. There are lots of great resources out there to help you out, telling you how these systems work and how to work with them. Sure, books are great, but the Internet is a lot bigger ;)

Oldie but goodie

[Clover_Kicker]

My recommendation would be The UNIX programming Environment, Kernighan & Pike, ISBN 0-13-937681-X

It's what was used to teach the intro UNIX/C course that I took, it's an excellent book that I keep close at hand.

It's a bit dated though, you'll probably want to teach an editor other then ed(1).

what I've been looking at...

[akaChe]

...as a newbie myself--the O'reilly Linux site, the LDP of course, &, since I'm using Slackware, their forums at slackware.com. Still, hardcopy is great to have, & the best of what I've looked at (which is alot, I work in a bookstore & go through the unix/linux stuff alot, but these 2 I mention are the ones I've gone to the trouble of buying):

--Running Linux, Matt Welch, et al., isbn 156592469x
--Think Unix, Jon Lasser, isbn 078972376x

Lasser's is especially fun, he has a unique approach. A simple approach really, but quite different from much of what's out there.

Sorry if I rambled a bit....

I'd recommend Linux CDs and Unix Power Tools

[meldroc]

Granted, this isn't platform independent, but I've found that I've learned more about Linux and Unix by playing with the system, rather than reading books. You might want to consider handing out Linux CDs so people who want to can install them and play with them.

Aside from that, a really good book that is largely platform neutral is Unix Power Tools [oreilly.com]. It is a huge collection of tips and tricks that demonstrate the true power of Unix.

Usenet

[mini me]

Once you learn the absolute basics (ls, cat, etc.) and you know what you want to do with your system, but don't know where to go from there I always find usenet to be the place to look. More than likely someone else has had the same problem as you and a quick search on Deja [deja.com] will usually turn up something. If your search fails to turn up anything relavent you can post your own question. The people on usenet seem quite knowledgable about the questions and they'll probably do thier best to help you out.

In my experience usenet is the best place to look for tech help. It's too bad that so many people who are on the internet don't even know what usenet is! (Some would argue that's a good thing though)

Man Pages

[lw54]

Teach them the basics: ls, cd, and the filesystem layout.

After that, there really is no substitute for man pages. Teach how to search man pages for keywords and how to RTFM. If they don't learn how to find the answer themselves, you won't be doing them a favor.

O'Reilly Knows UNIX

[bziman]

Check out O'Reilly & Associates UNIX Homepage [oreilly.com] for a list of UNIX books. In particular Learning the UNIX Operating System is in its 4th edition and is one of the best intro books there is. O'Reilly publishes books that cover general topics such as the one I mentioned. Also they have books that go into details on the utilities like sed and awk and shells like bash.

For programming, try Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens, and for extreme beginners, try The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.

For system administration, try the whatever Unleashed books. On Linux, much can be learned by browsing /usr/doc/HOWTO and the man pages.

Good luck!

Brian