Might be confusing for some who don't realize that various flavours of UNINX and Linux abound but so what! This book is not supposed to teach that kind of thing anyway.

I was looking for a small form linux for dummies. This manual was too technical for me. It may be of use for me down the road.

While this may be an excellent reference for experienced Linux users, it will be of very limited use for beginners or those who use Linux through a graphical interface. It is also specifically directed towards Fedora. It would be helpful if your descriptive blurb on the book revealed these two facts.

I'm relatively new to linux and this is a great book to have handy. Very small and tightly packed with easy to find commands and examples. Great tool and good price.

A pocket sized guide to the essential commands of Linux. While specific to an older version of Fedora, this is still a very handy reference. All the essential commands are covered and explained.

This is a small book with a limited purpose and it acheives its goals. More or less indispensable for the Linux user.

Jerry

This is definitely a great companion for any Linux administrator or hobbyist who is trying to become a level 60 command line warrior. There are plenty of commands to familiarize yourself with, and they are grouped logically (rather than alphabetically), which means that when you look up a command, you can find other similar commands in the same section. This book was written with Fedora Core Linux in mind, so it may not cover some of the commands unique to other Linux distros.

These book includes most used unix commands. One step more explanatory than man pages. With its small size, it's very appropriate for reading while travelling with bus or metro.
But this is not a complete reference book, for advanced users.

This book is exactly the type of excellent work one comes to expect from O'Reilly. Tons on useful information in a handy pocket reference size. I bought it because I had been away from Linux for awhile and was rusty on all of the commands. This filled the bill perfectly.

A good, standard handbook for Fedora and other Linux flavors. A good reference when you already know the OS and need a reference back to refresh your memory on command syntax, etc

This book has helped me to have a better understanding of the Linux commands.

This is the second copy of this book that I have. It is true that in the latest distributions of Linux (Suse 10, Fedora 6 or Ubuntu 6.+) you do not need to enter almost any command via the terminal, but there are two main reasons to learn to use the terminal line:
1. you want to become a power user and customize your linux distro, or
2. as an open source system, you are likely to broke something trying to install the latest applications, as Beryl for example, and you broke the graphical server.
In both cases, this book is a must have.
You can have access the same (or more) information via the 'man' command, but is useful to have some writen examples on how to use some commands. This book is very well organized and the size is really 'pocket'. It is a little outdated (2004) and oriented to Fedora (I'm an Ubuntu user), but useful anyway.

I am a linux newbie, though I have an extensive computer background in other operating systems, and I wanted a comprehensive, yet brief reference book for Linux. This is indespensible! I have other detailed, how-to Linux books, but this is the one I continue to use on a regular basis. THe book is arranged in a very logical way, and the table of contents in conjunction with the index allows me to quickly find the command I need. Essentially all Linux commands are included, and for a given command, the most commonly used options are explained.

If I need more detail, and I infrequently do, I can go to those other books, or most likely I just use Linux available documentation (command help, man pages, etc.)

Alot of information for just a few bucks -- again, indispensible!

It's full of concise little notes that might be useful to a relatively new Linux user or system administrator. On the other hand, I found it depressingly Fedora-centric. I made some use of it in the first couple months after I bought the book, but subsequently haven't opened it. In fact, I just went looking for it to refresh my memory for this review, and couldn't even find it, thanks to my lack of interest in using it now. There are better books to use as Linux references than this.

This book is a great help for people in the early stages of learning Linux since it tackles all sort of Linux CLI commands together with a list of options and syntax.

For people who have already a good idea of Linux, it can serve as a reference for the multitude of Linux commands and flags that exist.

not complete, but how could it be. i use this all the time to look up syntax.

This is the best pocket reference book that you can get. Its been really helpful to me in a lot of occasions when you just know that there is a command to do it but just cannot remember what the command is. Would definitely say a must to anybody starting or already working with Unix/Linux.

If you are new to Linux like me and would like to learn Linux in a week then this book is a must have along with "Linux for Dummies" by LeBlance.

This pocket Guide continuously help me out of a jam every time I need something done on a Linux box that is not available with the graphic user interface. The truth is the more I use this book with the command window, the more comfortable I am with using Linux. So get this book and stop pounding your head against the wall when you can not find the answer with the GUI.

I guess you'll have to invest in O'Reilly's IPTABLES pocket guide too. A pretty handy beginner reference nonetheless.

I can't even count the number of times this book has come in handy. I cuts out the junk and sorts the stuff you need to know. I keep this one by my desk at all times and love it. It is based on Fedora, but should hold up against most distributions. At less than $10 new, you just can't go wrong.

It is never simple to learn any new system and UNIX/Linux aren't exemptions. This book and "UNIX Core and UNIX Essentials" DVD both guided me trough the journey. The most challenging part for me was the transition of what you read to what you eventually can do yourself on computer. I mean not just learn to type this or another command, but to see a horizon, to understand how this particular command should be used within a bigger workflow. Get this book and you will not regret, it helps!

Best $10 I ever spent on linux. If you purchase this in conjunction with "Linux in a Nutshell" you'll have EVERY command you'll ever need at your fingertips. This book is just the super speedy version that you can keep in front of you without "pulling it off your bookshelf." I use this thing daily. Its often even more informantive than info or man pages. Example: command 'rmdir' - man pages say to use some extention "--ignore-fail-on-empty" - this extention does not work you must use "rmdir -rf [dir]" - only the linux pocket guide could provide you with this. This book rocks!

This guide is probably what every Linux user has always waited for. I always keep it in my Laptop bag to serve me when there are times I need to figure out the correct option or command, or when I fail to remember an essential Emacs's productivity keystrokes.

Since it's meant to be a practical "pocket" guide, it doesn't cover every single Linux commands, or discusses advanced system stuff. I'd recommend buying O'Reilly's Linux In a Nutshell for a detailed Linux reference.

The author, Daniel Barrett did a great job of presenting the helpful aspects of Linux in a simple and organized way. You'll not have a hard time on finding an essential command or option. It's the book that every Linux user should have.

Back when I was starting out on Linux I remember when the second edition of Linux in a Nutshell came out. A co-worker had bought a copy, and I drooled over the wealth of information it offered. I had received a copy of an older edition of UNIX in a Nutshell as a birthday present, and while helpful, I found Linux in a Nutshell to be much more applicable (not to mention much more comprehensive). That was before I came to appreciate the wealth of information to be had in the man and info pages, in perldoc, and online documentation in general.

O'Reilly's Linux Pocket Guide could easily be considered a (very) streamlined version of Linux in a Nutshell. It offers a concise command-reference for some of the most common commands you might use in Linux. The commands covered aren't limited to what you would run from a command-line, though. You'll also find (very concise) information about the gimp, mozilla, and xload, and others as well.

Who would want to buy this book? Well, when I was starting out in Linux, I would have loved a book like this. For me as a 'starving' college student, a 'regular' O'Reilly book was usually out of the reach of my budget, so I loved the pocket references beacuse you could get some great information for under $10. For the budget minded, the book packs a lot of information for not a lot of money. Also, for a pocket reference, it's pretty thick at just over 180 pages. As evidence of its usefulness for beginners, I recently loaned my copy of the Pocket Guide to someone I know who is just starting a new job working with Linux. He was looking for something to help him climb the learning curve, and upon returning the Pocket Guide informed me that he was on his way to buy his own copy. The Linux Pocket Guide would make a good stocking stuffer for your geek-to-be, and in a small form-factor, is nice for not having to lug a heavier book with around with you on campus or when on the go.

Most of what you can find in the Linux Pocket Guide can also be found in the man pages on most Linux systems (which don't weigh anything), so from that point of view, you might ask, what's the point of a book like this? For one thing, there is a lot to be said for the dead-tree experience when learning new skills. From another point of view, because the book isn't a thorough reference, it has to focus on only the most relevant and useful options for each command covered, so it's nice to be able to find the info you need without having to wade through pages of obscure information you might only rarely use. The book is also a nice refresher. While I was reading it I had several "oh yeah, I had forgotten about that . . .", and "Wow, cool, I didn't know about that option . . ."-type moments while reading. I've been using Linux since 1998, so my guess is there might be something new for most folks in here. That being said, you'll probably get more bang for your buck with Linux in a Nutshell.

I was a novice Linux administrator as of 4 months ago, having spent 10 years administering NT/2000 only. I needed to get up to speed fast on the command line, and this provided exactly what I needed -- quick and dirty references on what to do when.

There's nothing more frustrating than knowing precisely what you're going to do, and it's simple as all heck, but you just don't know the blasted command in Linux. This got me past this phase so that I no longer had to ask silly questions of my peers. Certainly worth it.

--tgr

If you are a competent computer user and want to switch to Linux but don't really know anything about it, you NEED this book!

Basically, it tells you how to do all the things that everyone assumes you already know how to do: text editing, basic text manipulation, finding files, managing files, changing permissions, using groups, &c&c.

If you have installed Linux but are now wondering, "How do I delete a folder?" go buy this book!

I've always been more of a GUI-type user, and even the old DOS commands never did much for me. But now that I'm moving into the world of Linux, I need to understand the power of the command line. To that end, I got a review copy of the Linux Pocket Guide by Daniel J. Barrett (O'Reilly). I have a feeling this will become a dog-eared favorite on my bookshelf.

Normally I'd list a chapter breakout, but there's just too many "chapters" here to do so. Suffice it to say that if it's a shell command in Linux, it's in here somewhere. The great thing is that you get the command and a list of the useful options, along with the syntax in less than half a page (and the book is small!). So instead of hauling down the large volume and scrolling through multiple pages, you can get right to the command you need with the options you're probably looking for.

For a beginner like me, it will help to make me more comfortable with many of the basics of command line work. For experts, it will be the quick reference for that particular option that you can't remember the capitalization rules for...

Short, concise, easy to understand, and packed with meat... What more could you want in a reference manual? This is a keeper.

It's no secret, there's a lot of books about Linux on the market today. Linux is HOT!! But it's also no secret that a lot of publishers have been jumping on the bandwagon churning out Linux books just to get a piece of the action. This Oreilly pocket guide is everything you would expect from an Oreilly book: thorough, succinct, and worth the money.

The book has a great structure, covering the basics and then going into commands. The commands are organized in functional groups. So if you want to do some user administration, just thumb to that section and all the relevant comands are at your fingertips.

There's enough detail about each command that you can actually use it. The author also often tells you how the command is "usually used," which is helpful. There's even some basics sprinkled in about programming and shell syntax. It's awesome that they actually put useful stuff in a pocket guide!

Whether you're an advanced administrator or a beginner, this book is worth the investment. It has enough info to be a quick reference, but it's clearly written enough to be a primer for beginners. ENJOY!!!

I was often reluctant to buy this kind of books. Often because I think the same info can be found on the Internet.

But in the case of this book, I liked it. The presentation is easy to carry with you, choose a topic and see the commands related to the topic. There is nothing new in the book, but it is a good and quick reference guide to new users in Linux and old users.

In my own case, I have 4 years using Linux and I found some interesting topics inside. It is a nice reference guide to have at hand at any time working on Linux.

Anyone who uses Linux will benefit from this handy pocket guide which lists general Linux commands for various tasks, ranging from directory operations, file commands, locating files, doing backups, controlling various processes, to working on the Internet (web browsing, Usenet news, email, and network connections). There are lots of commands listed here. No, this is not a general reference book by any means (and there are lots of Linux reference books around), but it is just the thing when you need to look up a specific command fast. All commands are listed with their syntax and a brief explanation of what they do.

The book discusses in a little detail about Fedora, Red Hat's "free Linux OS." It also goes into some descriptions about running a shell, logins and logouts, filesystems, and home and system directories. Again this book covers the basics and it assumes the readers already have a decent knowledge of Linux. Since Linux does so many things and it's next to impossible to remember every single command, a book like this is handy to have on your desk when you can't remember a specific command.

This is a well rounded guide that gets right to the point and serves its purpose well. With easily referenced material/subjects (that goes into even more detail when needed), you will likely find everything you'll need using in this one book, without the need for a 'bible' with a lot of discussions that are ultimately irrelevant to the information you seek. A definite for a beginner, and a good reminder or reference on some subjects you may not have touched on over the years for those with experience. And, for the size, this book has a lot and touches on many topics. Well formatted and easy to follow. Recommended.