Rating: 
Summary: Cool book for beginners
Review: It's my first UNIX book but it really very helpful. Yo'll find lots of examples there. And the guy whi wrote it has a keen sense of humor. Strongly reccomend it if you deal with UNIX for the first time.
Rating: 
Summary: Might be useful only as an add-on to the existing library
Review: The problem with this book that an intended audience is pretty unclear. In no way this is an introductory book. A beginner will be confused and bewilded trying to learn Unix from this book. IMHO the only role in which this book can be useful is as an add-on to the existing library for those people who already know Unix a lttle bit and can buy books for the company money. After reading the book the simple question arises: "Why this book was so rushed to the market?" In a current form the book is a way too short to be a decent introduction and many important things are just mentioned, not explained. Unix is such a complex system that an introductory book below 500 pages is immediately suspect. And in this case suspicions are correct: this is not a competitor to Sobel's books or "Unix Complete". Again, it probably might be a useful add-on to a better introductory book, but this book cannot stand on its own. The author is also suspect by being a coordinator of Bastille: a set of low quality Red Hat hardening scripts ;-). There are some problematic statements and errors in examples, for example on p. 74 the author stated: "... simply type the following command to find out which shell you have: cat /etc/passwd|grep ^ username:|cut -d : -f 7 ..." A blank after ^ is a typo and generally the whole regex should probably be in quotes. Also to get a shell for user is not that simple. For example this is incorrect if NIS or NIS+ or if any shell wrapper (for example SecureID) are installed. All in all my impression is that this is a rather weak and rushed to the market book. Also please note that for the number of useful pages provided it's a very expensive book.
Rating:
Summary: not a life-saver, but surely a life-improver
Review: The reason I cannot call Mr. Lasser's book a "life-saver" is because I would not have perished from the Earth without it. Indeed, I probably would have figured almost all of the stuff in this book out, given six or seven years. But you gotta ask yourself, "at what cost?" In hair torn out (it's leaving fast enough, isn't it?), in hyperventilation (save that for the gym), in premature aging. This book is not for Dummies. This book works best with people, as I may have indicated above, who Would Have Figured It Out by themselves. But while you may pretend to enjoy a rugged hike through the steeper parts of the learning curve, Mr. Lasser's book is like strapping on a jet-pack. The book is conversational, sometimes funny (though it helps if you spend a lot of your time in front of computers), and extremely direct. If you are just curious about what this Unix thing might be good for, read the book slowly, learn a lot, and gain a solid foundation for becoming the captain of your computing destiny. If you have something you need to get done, read it quickly, learn-- well, a lot, and get where you're going in a hurry. One caution: this book does expect that you will read it. It is not a ready reference, it is not designed for index-backward utilization. It is a short course in the skeletal framework of Unix, and not a hypertext instruction manual. If you are unaccustomed to reading as it was practiced before computer self-help books arrived to chaff the bookstores of our nation, you will not derive the maximum benefit from this book. I recommend this book to (prospective) users of unix systems who take pleasure in reading, and need to learn a great deal very quickly.
Rating:
Summary: not a life-saver, but surely a life-improver
Review: The reason I cannot call Mr. Lasser's book a "life-saver" is because I would not have perished from the Earth without it. Indeed, I probably would have figured almost all of the stuff in this book out, given six or seven years. But you gotta ask yourself, "at what cost?" In hair torn out (it's leaving fast enough, isn't it?), in hyperventilation (save that for the gym), in premature aging. This book is not for Dummies. This book works best with people, as I may have indicated above, who Would Have Figured It Out by themselves. But while you may pretend to enjoy a rugged hike through the steeper parts of the learning curve, Mr. Lasser's book is like strapping on a jet-pack. The book is conversational, sometimes funny (though it helps if you spend a lot of your time in front of computers), and extremely direct. If you are just curious about what this Unix thing might be good for, read the book slowly, learn a lot, and gain a solid foundation for becoming the captain of your computing destiny. If you have something you need to get done, read it quickly, learn-- well, a lot, and get where you're going in a hurry. One caution: this book does expect that you will read it. It is not a ready reference, it is not designed for index-backward utilization. It is a short course in the skeletal framework of Unix, and not a hypertext instruction manual. If you are unaccustomed to reading as it was practiced before computer self-help books arrived to chaff the bookstores of our nation, you will not derive the maximum benefit from this book. I recommend this book to (prospective) users of unix systems who take pleasure in reading, and need to learn a great deal very quickly.
Rating:
Summary: The way to teach a windows user how to "Think Unix"
Review: This book is a "One Horse" book, that horse being to teach UNIX to those who have used Windows or Macintosh OS's their whole life. Although I have been learning UNIX for over a year, and would like to think I know a little bit about it, it tends to be hard to remember how to tell someone else how to "do this" or "that". This book is great for that. This takes a user who knows how to use a mouse and keyboard, and knows how to navigate under a "windowed" operating system into the world of command prompts and even the X-Windows system. Don't expect this to make you a system administrator, it doesn't even touch many of the things a user doesn't need to know, but it does fulfill its purpose. If you would like to learn UNIX so you can install LINUX on your machine at home, this can be a great start. While a UNIX's are different in some way's, Jon tends to stick to common themes, and points out when a command just has a different name. If you would like to "remember" what your users don't know, this is also great for you. It's a great book to recommend for a user to learn on their own.
Rating:
Summary: The way to teach a windows user how to "Think Unix"
Review: This book is a "One Horse" book, that horse being to teach UNIX to those who have used Windows or Macintosh OS's their whole life. Although I have been learning UNIX for over a year, and would like to think I know a little bit about it, it tends to be hard to remember how to tell someone else how to "do this" or "that". This book is great for that. This takes a user who knows how to use a mouse and keyboard, and knows how to navigate under a "windowed" operating system into the world of command prompts and even the X-Windows system. Don't expect this to make you a system administrator, it doesn't even touch many of the things a user doesn't need to know, but it does fulfill its purpose. If you would like to learn UNIX so you can install LINUX on your machine at home, this can be a great start. While a UNIX's are different in some way's, Jon tends to stick to common themes, and points out when a command just has a different name. If you would like to "remember" what your users don't know, this is also great for you. It's a great book to recommend for a user to learn on their own.
Rating: 
Summary: Where was this when I needed it?
Review: This is one of the finest elementary Unix primers ever written. Rather than focusing on specific flavors or specific results, this book teaches Unix at the conceptual level, giving you the skills needed to get at least a little work done on any system (like how to read man pages, how to navigate X windows, and how to use the editor of the gods, vi). Additionally, the material on shell scripting and networking was exceptional. While this book would serve well as a textbook (it is well-indexed and includes review questions), it is also a prime choice for new Linux users of the "I got it installed, now what?" variety. The only things holding back my fifth star are the minor but unfortunately frequent errors (but it is a first printing and, to the author's credit, errata is available online). All in all, a great book, certain to get better with time.
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