Linux Cookbook by Michael Stutz

Order (or just read more about) Linux Cookbook  from Amazon.com

The concentration is entirely on real-life "how do I do this" tasks. What's especially nice about this is that you don't have to take my word for it: the entire book is available, free, on-line at http://dsl.org/cookbook/

If you are new to Linux, you will definitely get a lot from this book. If you've been using Linux for a while, you probably still will- I found some things I didn't know.

The table of contents is well thought out, and the index is comprehensive. There are actually two indexes: one for programs, and another for concepts. That division is useful.

It's impressive and worthy of note that the author eats his own dog-food: this book was wriiten and produced on a Debian Linux machine.

If there's any downside to this at all, it's only that the focus is Debian Linux; it would be better if it gave at least a nod to the more popular distros. But that's such a minor conplaint that I feel guilty even mentioning it at all and feel like I have to polish up a bunch of superlatives to make up for it: this is wonderful, fantastic, near perfect, etc.

My only other concern is the on-line availability. The problem is that it's too good- in many ways it is better than the physical book because of hyperlinks, intelligent use of color, etc. That's wonderful, but this is an author who deserves to be paid for his contribution, so I really hope you'll consider buying the book in spite of how good the web page is.