Linux® Programming Bible
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Spotlight Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 4.25Customer Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent tutorial/reference on many topics
Comment: Is this book out of print? I hope not, because it's a great book. I am an experienced programmer, and it fills in some details about things I knew fairly well, and it helps me learn things I don't know much about.
If I wanted to dig deeper, I could always get a separate book for each topic, but I find that each chapter in this book goes beyond just an introduction. The book is thorough, and I find that I learn a bit more than I need to know to get started on each topic, which is just the right amount.
This book is worth it even for just the chapter on "GNU make" alone. Most brief mentions of "GNU make" in Linux books don't tell you enough. And I don't need to buy a whole book on the subject. The information provided here is more than enough for me to use "make" for my projects.
The writing is excellent. I get the impression that it's actually written by an author, and not by a publisher. In other words, despite the generic-sounding title, it's a book that someone put some real effort into. The fact that there are very few errata reported supports my theory.
The information in this book is by no means out of date. So why not keep publishing such a great tutorial/reference manual? Hey, buy it used. It's cheaper anyway.
Happy programming!
Customer Rating: 4
Summary: Good tutorial and reference. Nothing spectacular.
Comment: Covers many topics, anyone who works and codes on a linux/unix environment will find something useful here --
The shell, bash, regular expressions. Emacs.
C -- gcc (compiler), gdb (debugger), gnu make for managing projects,
memory management, libraries & linking.
Files, processes, signals, terminals.
Semaphores, sockets, inter-process communication,
Perl (3 chapters!!) -- the language, data-munging, cgi programming, database work.
Graphical interfaces.
Collaboration via CVS, security, optimization.
Most topics are at an introductory-to-intermediate level. The topics covered in the different chapters, each deserves a separate book by itself, and the serious programmer will need more complete references for the particular tools s/he is using intensively.
And of course, practically all the material here can be learned from free tutorials and articles on the internet, if you know how and where to look.
The descriptions are adequate but not particularly remarkable, often more bloated than they need to be. The example code snippets are adequate but not inspiring, rather on the insipid side.
However, the book is useful as a compendium of things one needs to know and look up. An intermediate linux/unix user might find it useful to take the time to go through the whole book from
beginning to end, to get exposed to concepts s/he hasn't mastered yet. In addition, it might serve as a general-purpose reference worth keeping handy on your desk.
Positive comments (again :-) --
#. Useful collection of things one needs to know and often look up.
#. Adequate introductory discussions to a large number of topics. Code snippets to illustrate concepts.
Negative/neutral comments --
#. Too verbose. Book size could have been cut to two-thirds.
#. Too bulky to be carried around, see previous comment.
#. Extensive coverage of perl, with little mention of python, ruby, scheme, or other scripting language of similar functionality. Especially important as python gains in popularity every day. Linux really is not about perl.
#. Coverage of emacs, none of vi.
#. Maybe it's good to focus on one tool among several equivalent ones, but then there should be some discussion of alternative tools, maybe in a separate chapter for alternative tools/languages/editors.
#. In the same vein, a chapter discussing in short the various programming and scripting languages out there, their pros & cons & reputations, would be very nice. Linux and open source are, after all, about choice!
#. The example code illustrate basic ideas; they're not examples of real-life problem solving.
Customer Rating: 3
Summary: A good starter book, but by no means a "bible".
Comment: John Goerzen took on a very difficult task in writing this book. The Linux programming environment is extremely complex and each aspect of the environment can't be covered adequately in a single book. This book proves that. Goerzen has taken all of the majorly important topics in the Linux programming model and compressed them into 800 pages. Unfortunately, in doing so, none of the topics are covered in a manner that doesn't leave you with a million questions waiting to be answered. Most of the chapters really should have been an introductory chapter into another book that covers the material more in detail. Most the matter is rushed through. A lot of details are glossed over. And even the editing was done poorly as there were enough typographical errors that made reading it feel like a chore. On the positive side, there weren't many technical errors and Goerzen does give you enough of a taste in most of the topics that should motivate you to actually go out and actually learn some of the technology in depth. All of the material he covers is very much relevant and important to programming in Linux. I would encourage people to buy this book, but by no means regard it as "The Bible" of Linux programming, It should be looked at more as a field guide that will show you where to get started conceptually and where you need to look for more of an explanation. Goerzen made a noble effort, but this material just couldn't be covered properly in 800 pages.