Name: UNIX in a Nutshell
ISBN: 9780596100292

UNIX in a Nutshell

As an open operating system, Unix can be improved on by anyone and everyone: individuals, companies, universities, and more. As a result, the very nature of Unix has been altered over the years by numerous extensions formulated in an assortment of versions. Today, Unix encompasses everything from Sun's Solaris to Apple's Mac OS X and more varieties of Linux than you can easily name. The latest edition of this bestselling reference brings Unix into the 21st century. It's been reworked to keep current with the broader state of Unix in today's world and highlight the strengths of this operating system in all its various flavors. Detailing all Unix commands and options, the informative guide provides generous descriptions and examples that put those commands in context. Here are some of the new features you'll find in Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition: Solaris 10, the latest version of the SVR4-based operating system, GNU/Linux, and Mac OS X Bash shell (along with the 1988 and 1993 versions of ksh) tsch shell (instead of the original Berkeley csh) Package management programs, used for program installation on popular GNU/Linux systems, Solaris and Mac OS X GNU Emacs Version 21 Introduction to source code management systems Concurrent versions system Subversion version control system GDB debugger As Unix has progressed, certain commands that were once critical have fallen into disuse.

What Hacker News says

throwaway823882Apr 2021

> I've never read a man page from start to finish, and I'm not sure you're meant to.

When I was 16 and just starting to get into Linux, I got a tiny little paperback, "reference to Unix programs" or something. It was literally just a list of every single Unix program and a shortened version of its man page. I read it cover to cover. After that, if I needed to do something on the command line, I knew there was a program to do it and what its capabilities were. After a couple weeks I didn't need the reference anymore.

I can't remember the book anymore, but this is basically what it was like: https://dspinellis.github.io/unix-v4man/v4man.pdf See if you can find a version newer than 1973, though... O'Reilly's Unix In A Nutshell isn't bad.

Read your man pages cover to cover. It's for the same exact reason you learn a bunch of "useless BS" in school: to save you time down the road because you'll know where to go for the solution.

thread

pjungwirAug 2018

um is a brilliant name.

If you don't want to install anything new, you can also write your own man pages with a personal "man section". Just do something like this in your shell:

    export MANPATH="$MANPATH:$HOME/man"
    export MANSECT="1:n:l:8:3:2:3posix:3pm:3perl:5:4:9:6:7:pj"

Here I've added the "pj" section (my initials).

Then I have files like ~/man/manpj/postgres.pj or ~/man/manpj/ssl.pj. I can say `man pj postgres` to see my own notes. My own collection goes back to 2001 or so. I feel lucky that early on I started putting notes into something so portable. It's one of the few things that has always moved with me to new machines. It is here: https://github.com/pjungwir/manpj/

You don't even need to use proper man formatting if you don't want to. I find that a plain text file comes out pretty well. And when you want to start adding sections/etc, there are only a handful of formatting codes to learn (or copy/paste). I got started from a tiny chapter in O'Reilly's Unix in a Nutshell. You're welcome to steal from my own repo above. (I'm sure the formatting is nowhere close to best practice, but it's good enough for personal use.)

thread

walshemjDec 2013

Well I find the unix in a nutshell book to be an invaluable desktop reference if I have senior moment and need to look something up.

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596100292.do

And its probaly easier to use

thread

mrbillSep 2013

I have "UNIX in a Nutshell" and "Essential System Administration" (the better 1st and 2nd Editions, not the 3rd which was ..eh) to thank for my career.

thread

wyuenhoFeb 2013

I haven't really used Make in any big projects (read: 100s of files and dependencies), but that's mainly because I have a habit of breaking components into smaller projects and thus keeping things, including my Makefiles, very simple. For project structures like that, I think your tools and book are overkill, so I'll recommend this reference from Oreilly's UNIX in a nutshell. I found that this is by far the most easily digestible reference for GNU Make I can find that's free. It's fairly to the point and concise as far as reference go, you can read the whole thing and have a fairly good understanding in under an hour. It's a reference that I go to 90% of the time, the other 10% come from Google and trial and error.

http://oreilly.com/linux/excerpts/9780596100292/gnu-make-uti...

thread

mrbillMar 2012

"UNIX in a Nutshell" and "Essential System Administration" helped kick-start my career back in '95-96, and I'll always be grateful for that.

I was in their "O'Reilly Irregulars" group a few years ago, where folks volunteered to go inventory/catalog the ORA books at their local favorite bookstore, in exchange for a free book or two a month. I also ran banner ads for ORA on a couple of my websites. Marsee and the rest of the crew there are wonderful people to deal with.

I go out of my way to buy ebook versions of their titles directly now even though I could pirate them easily for free.

thread