My UNIX/Linux ReadingList


  1. Running Linux (3rd Edition)
    by Matt Welsh, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Lar Kaufman

    Product Details
    Paperback: 749 pages
    Publisher: O'Reilly; 3 edition (August 1, 1999)
    ISBN: 156592469X
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156592469X
    This book is an excellent introduction for beginning Linux Users and Admins into the philosophy and way of thinking inside Linux. Be sure to fetch the 3rd ed. instead of the 4th ed. If you come across a Februari 1995 First Edition (ISBN : 1-56592-100-3) make sure to buy it as its used language was not yet edited into "Linux in 24 hours" prose, but reads as if Welsh himself is giving you that first cool Linux ride.

  2. Linux Administration Handbook
    by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein

    Product Details
    Paperback: 890 pages
    Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 1st edition (March 25, 2002)
    ISBN: 0130084662
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0130084662
    This book is more like a cook and reference book on howto conduct administrative task on a Linux system. It covers Redhat, SuSE and Debian.

  3. Unix Shell Programming, Third Edition
    by Stephen Kochan, Patrick Wood

    Product Details
    Paperback: 456 pages
    Publisher: Sams; 3 edition (February 27, 2003)
    ISBN: 0672324903
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672324903
    This is the Best book to learn Shell scripting, and has an excellent good and balanced intro for a programmer and a fairly painless, helpful introduction to UNIX scripting.

  4. The New KornShell Command And Programming Language (2nd Edition)
    by Morris I. Bolsky, David G. Korn

    Paperback: 416 pages
    Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2 edition (April 6, 1995)
    ISBN-10: 0131827006
    ISBN-13: 978-0131827004
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131827006
    THE Korn Shell Reference Book. This is to KSH what the Brian Kernigan and Dennis Ritchie book is to C programing, written by the same Research group at Bell Laboratories. Truly understanding this shell as a powerful scripting language, run against the freely available, open source, extremely tight and well written binaries available from AT&T Labs, for just about every *nix distribution you can think of, puts shell scripting in a whole new perspective. With the help of this book, you can write very advanced shell scripts, with very few external calls, that will leave Perl and Python in the dust for performance and very often rival C programs. Once you understand how co-processes, variable substitutions, bulk variable assignments, functions, internal field separators and variable retention across nested loops and functions work in KSH you'll never want to use AWK, SED and BASH again, and you'll realize how slow these utilities are.

  5. sed & awk (2nd Edition)
    by Dale Dougherty, Arnold Robbins

    Product Details
    Paperback: 429 pages
    Publisher: O'Reilly; 2 edition (March 2, 1997)
    ISBN: 1565922255
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565922255
    This is the best desktop reference on these two tools, which are of course used often inside UNIX scripting. Sed and awk are, as the book adequately puts it, UNIX "powertools". Sed is quite handy and awk is even better. This excellent book presents a breathtaking introduction to both of them.

  6. The C Programming Language
    by Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie

    Product details
    Series: Prentice-Hall software series
    Paperback: 228 pages
    Publisher: Prentice-Hall (February 22, 1978)
    ISBN-10: 0131101633
    ISBN-13: 978-0131101630
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131101633
    Written by the designers of C, the language which became the leading programming environment overnight. A such they became the founding fathers of a computing era. If you already know C, read this book. This first version contains the "CHAPTER O: INTRODUCTION", omitted in the second edition, and outlines how the authors had designed their C system on UNIX ("A compiler for C can be simple and compact") where the definition of C was the reference manual in this book, until "ANSI C" was completed in 1988.

  7. C Programming Language (2nd Edition)
    by Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie

    Product Details
    Paperback: 274 pages
    Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 2 edition (March 22, 1988)
    ISBN: 0131103628
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131103628
    If you need to program in C, you need this book and should Be On Every C Programmer's Bookshelf. Some say its the best programming book they ever bought, but the real deal for me is that this book is concise , to the point and very sharp. The best part is that its only 274 pages in which all you need to know about C is covered. No need to read elsewhere.

  8. The UNIX Programming Environment
    by Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike

    Product Details
    Paperback: 357 pages
    Publisher: Prentice Hall (March 1, 1984)
    ISBN: 013937681X
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/013937681X
    Although this book is dated, it is the best book to learn the much-vaunted Unix "philosophy" in practice, and a perfect book for the beginning Unix programmer by the people who invented UNIX themselves.

  9. A Book on C: Programming in C (4th Edition)
    by Al Kelley, Ira Pohl

    Product details
    Paperback: 726 pages
    Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 4 edition (January 8, 1998)
    ISBN-10: 0201183994
    ISBN-13: 978-0201183993
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201183994
    The best C programming book for learners. Succeeds where Brian Kernighan's "The C Programming Langauge" fails. Concise enough to use as a handy reference for the veteran C programmer, yet robust enough to include examples for most programming constructs. Highest recommendation. Has a introduction into C++.

  10. The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition
    by Bjarne Stroustrup

    Product details
    Paperback: 1376 pages
    Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 4 edition (May 19, 2013)
    ISBN-10: 0321563840
    ISBN-13: 978-0321563842
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321563840
    A significant rework of the 3rd edition by the designer of C++. Contains the C++11 standard which was yet to be completed in most compilers then. A grand effort and still the best reference for C++, however not a beginners book.

  11. Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture (4th Edition)
    by Douglas E. Comer

    Product Details
    Hardcover: 750 pages
    Publisher: Prentice Hall; 4th edition (January 18, 2000)
    ISBN: 0130183806
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0130183806
    This is the Best TCP/IP introduction you can find. Some call it the bible, some say its even better. It explains complex ideas about IP in simple terms and is a book which one reads from cover to cover. It offers the best insight.

  12. Mechanics of User Identification and Authentication:
    Fundamentals of Identity Management
    by Dobromir Todorov

    Product Details
    Hardcover: 760 pages
    Publisher: Auerbach Publications; 1 edition (June 18, 2007)
    ISBN: 1420052195
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1420052195
    If you are a practicing security professional, buy this book! Todorov has spent a lot of time in the lab working through how our authentication technologies work and offers clear descriptions and sage advice on how they actually work and should be used in practice. This is not a rehash of vendor documentation and RFCs but a real look "under the covers" at a core capability our security infrastructure must support. It's probably not a book you'll read from cover to cover as it's too detailed. But I would strongly encourage you to read the indtroductory material and then dip into the chapters dealing with the particular methods you use (or are thinking about using) in your own work. Then place the book on your shelf as a ready reference when you need a well-organized reference to a particular technology.

  13. Unix Network Programming
    by W. Richard Stevens

    Product Details
    Hardcover: 768 pages
    Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 1st edition (January 23, 1990)
    ISBN: 0139498761
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0139498761
    Too bad Stevens has already passed away as his books still stand at a solitary altitude today. Get this version and read it from cover to cover. But why buy it when the author has newer versions out? Because (1) it is more concise and (2) it has info not in the other editions. I recommend you read this one cover-to-cover and buy the others as more detailed reference.

  14. Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (Second Edition)
    by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Albert S. Woodhull

    Product Details
    Hardcover: 939 pages
    Publisher: Prentice Hall; 2nd edition (January 15, 1997)
    ISBN: 0136386776
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0136386776
    This is the definite book on Operating Systems and its design. This is the book which helped and inspired programmers like Linus Torvalds, Steven Tweedie, Fred van Kempen and many others to write their own Operating System or contribute to parts of it. That OS? Linux of course.

  15. Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition
    by Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, Greg Kroah-Hartman

    Product Details
    Paperback: 615 pages
    Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates; 3 edition (February 10, 2005)
    ISBN: 0596005903
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005903
    This is the definite book to use as a device-driver reference for Linux. You need to know your skills though.

  16. Understanding the Linux Kernel (2nd Edition)
    by Daniel P. Bovet, Marco Cesati

    Product Details
    Paperback: 816 pages
    Publisher: O'Reilly; 2 edition (December, 2002)
    ISBN: 0596002130
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596002130
    This book is an Exceptional treatment of the Linux Kernel, Excellent Book on OS Design. And should maybe used as a companion to the Linux Device Drivers Books. This book (or tome in many peoples eyes) is the utter definition of 'internals explained'.

  17. Linux Enterprise Cluster: Build a Highly Available Cluster with Commodity Hardware and Free Software
    by Karl Kopper

    Product Details
    Paperback: 464 pages
    Publisher: No Starch Press; 1 edition (May 15, 2005)
    ISBN: 1593270364
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1593270364
    This is the first book I have seen on Linux clustering that not only provides a theoretical background but also a complete detail on how to actually implement it in the real world. He details setting up the heartbeat, IP failover, NAT, synchronizing and cloning, handling packets, and load balancing. Easily the best book on Linux Enterprise Cluster setup and maintenance that I have seen to date, The Linux Enterprise Cluster is highly recommended.