Rating: 
Summary: The Only Teaching Book I've Found
Review: Before reading this book, I knew nothing about UNIX. Now that I've finished it, I am able to write code and understand how UNIX actually works. This is a great book for those that are planning to start a new career using UNIX or students that are taking UNIX in school for the first time. The author gives very good sample programs that are easy to understand along with step by step guidelines that shows readers how to use the UNIX utilities. This book is a very good buy!!!
Rating:
Summary: truly unix made easy!
Review: Before reading this book, I knew nothing about UNIX. Now that I've finished it, I am able to write code and understand how UNIX actually works. This is a great book for those that are planning to start a new career using UNIX or students that are taking UNIX in school for the first time. The author gives very good sample programs that are easy to understand along with step by step guidelines that shows readers how to use the UNIX utilities. This book is a very good buy!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Better Books out there for sure!
Review: How this thing can rate 5 stars is really beyond me. This is just not that good. The layout, overall organization and readability are not effective.It might be right for some folks, but for people who like brief, clear and accurate descriptions of what a command does, this isn't the book for them. Other books are. If you like a "folksy read" where the author runs you through a topic for several pages, then says, oops it didn't work because, and then tells you the rest of the story about the command, this is for you. The author has a likeable style if that's what your up for. In that regard it may be a five. If you just like the scoop about a command without the surprise ending, look elsewhere. This book will frustrate you.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for beginners, but that's it.
Review: I agree that this could be a good book for beginners to learn UNIX. But, beginners tend to forget things and need a reference which this book definitely is not. So, if you are beginner and have already bought the book, go through it once, throw it away, and then buy Unix in a Nutshell.
Rating:
Summary: Not recommended at all
Review: I don't understand why many people gave this book five stars. First off, its organization is horrible. Everything is scattered and redundunt. You'll learn some of the features of a command in chapter 1 and read the exactly same stuff in chapter 7. Some other features will not be taught until chapter 18 and so on.. The bigger problem is that the author repetitively explains basic things over and over. He tries to explain every single detail about his examples, which is annoying. Also, much of his explanation is unnecessarily long and tedius. Be sure to read the summary of each chapter because it DOES have additional information that he hasn't explained. Can a summary have new information? This book is relatively thick, but it wasn't for that oddly big font, it wouldn't be such a big book. On the plus side, it's easy to follow and give you a lot of examples and explanation( which I find unnecessary ). If you like a cook-book style, wordy book, then this is it. If you like a concise book with good organization, this is not for you.
Rating:
Summary: A Teacher's Experience
Review: I have been teaching with this book for many years, over 700 students. Class evaluations always rate the book very highly with comments about how clear explanations are. Students learn so much doing the exercises that class discussions are at a much higher level. We use this text in classroom and internet distance learning with great success. The few students over the years who had trouble in the class were trying to avoid doing the work by just looking up answers. That approach isnot effective because the book is built skill upon skill. Students must start at the beginning and actually do the work at the terminal. At first a few students tried to just read it. That approach did not work either. Now I make it very clear that the book is a detailed, hands-on, guide coupled with exact explanations. It must be worked through carefully, at the terminal. When students are willing to put in the effort and do that, they are well rewarded with knowledge and the ability to really do UNIX. I suspect the two reviewers who found the book difficult were not using it properly. My students love it.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Novices
Review: I have come back to this book more times then I can count. Its a great book for building basic Unix skills, and a nice introduction to shell programming. John is also an excellent teacher, and for anyone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, look for Johns "Unix Made Easy" class at the UC Berekely Extension. Two thumbs up! Now if we can just get John to write a book on system administration...
Rating:
Summary: Great book for learning UNIX
Review: I thought this was a great book for learning UNIX for some of the same reasons that other reviewers hated it. I liked his repeating a concept over from several angles at several different sections of the book. I liked his thousands of examples. I liked the fact that he mostly only empasized important features and not every little aspect of a command. I liked how fast I could read the book without getting bogged down in asoteric exercises in semantics of technical command descriptions. True, if you want a technical reference book on UNIX commands, this probably isn't the book for you. But I think this book truely fulfills it's title; it does make UNIX as easy as possible to learn.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I took the course Mr. Muster teaches in which he uses this book. Both the course and the book are excellent. I have bought UNIX books since, but when I'm stuck, I always find the answer in this one.
Rating:
Summary: This should be titled Unix Made Difficult
Review: I used this book for a Unix class in my local community college. This is the worst text book ever written, I got lost many times. It was difficult to find related text and difficult to keep pace throughout the course. I am a seasoned Linux user and Linux certified, but I recieved no help through this book. If you want to learn Linux, I would reccommend any book by Michael Jang. He writes in an easy and detailed manner. John Muster may teach Unix, but he is a terrible author, go back to english prep John or take a lesson from Michael Jang.
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