What is the best book to get, to learn linux/unix. It doesn't neccessarily have to be a certification book, but one that'll be a good straightforward book, that'll show me everything I really need to know and that I could follow along with whatever linux system I have.

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There won't be any one book that tells you everything you need to know. Randy seems to recommend "Running Linux" a lot so you may want to give that a try. I don't really use Linux/Unix books that often. Linux and Unix are very well documented on various websites so I usually use those and the man pages. The main exception is "The Complete FreeBSD" which I recommend to anyone using a BSD variant.

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I think I might give the freebsd book a try.
What would you say are the main differences between linux and freebsd..? I mean would you say that it's just mostly the gui?

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I saw something like this posted on another forum a month or so ago and I thought it summed up the differences nicely.


Everything that's good about Linux is twice as good in FreeBSD.

Everything that's bad about Linux is twice as bad in FreeBSD.

Everything that's good about Linux users is twice as good about FreeBSD users.

Everything that's bad about Linux users is twice as bad about FreeBSD users.


If you're familiar with Linux or Unix then FreeBSD would be a good choice. Otherwise it's best to start off with Linux. FreeBSD is more fast/stable/secure, but is also more intimidating for beginers and has less documentation.

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I usually recommend "Running Linux" by Walsh, and few people are ever disappointed with it. It's weak for full-flegded sysadmins, but outstanding for beginners. To me, BSD is like Linux on Steroids . . . you get "more" of everything, both good and bad . . . stabler, longer uptimes, more flexible, harder to learn, etc. I would recommend that you keep clear of BSD until you know your Linux well (although Slack is very similar to it).

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heh... well BSD and Linux.. are VERY different.. one is a monolithic kernel and the other is modular.. those are very different philosophies, but as far as way of doing things, scripts,etc, they are very similar, but the OS is very different.. Slackware is a good linux distro thats basically well, at first glance u may have a hard time figurin out if ur usin slack or freebsd.. jus my 2cents..
-neural

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Well, like I said, from a user's point of view they are pretty darn similar. If you are a developer, it is different, but the ps, ls and dmesg (etc.) commands usually work equally well in both.

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