UNIX for Dummies by Margaret
Levine Young
Unix For Dummies
The title of this book invites comment. Some things werent meant for
dummies and Unix is one of them, you might say. Wrong! Levine and
Young take advantage of the Dummies formats strength with command-
line operating systems. They flatten the learning curve and have even the
greenest beginner doing useful work with Unix in mere hours. Once you
get past a couple of pointless chapters about offering pizza to Unix
experts in exchange for help, youll find conceptual explanations of files,
directories, permissions, and redirection. Command explanations take a
hybrid form; they mix type this verbatim statements with tables showing
switches and parameters. Much of Unix for Dummies is task-oriented.
Youll find a whole chapter on printing, for example, that covers the
commands youll need to know to format and print a document on the right
printer. Other chapters cover file searches, software installation, and X
Windows navigation. The book also provides cursory coverage of four text
editors--ED, vi, Emacs, and pico--but you learn little more than how to
enter and save text in each. Levine and Young include an eminently

useful DOS-to-Unix Rosetta Stone that immediately tells you, for
example, that the approximate Unix equivalent of DOSs copy is cp. DOS
experts who are new transplants to a Unix environment will appreciate this
translation guide. The authors wrap up with a wealth of basic
troubleshooting information and a command reference. This book, along
with its companion, More Unix for Dummies, is the perfect choice for those
who have no knowledge of Unix and need to learn it quickly.
Personal Review: UNIX for Dummies by Margaret Levine Young
First, this is a beginner's book. It does the job, no question. If you already
know the basics of UNIX, skip it ... you won't learn that much. Buy O'Reilly
or Power Tools or whatever you think will help you the most for the
*specific* way you want to use UNIX.
For those of you who want to set up a BSD network, or Linux cluster...
[sigh]...please buy a book on UNIX networks and/or Linux clusters. You
will by no means master MPI or system's level programming in C with this
book. What you will learn is a bit more than the very basics. What a
directory structure is, how to create, delete, re-permission files, configure
some of your user preferences, etc. You will be introduced to the UNIX
paradigms that we all live with, and might or might not learn how to tweak
the specific thing you're interested in (like "nice"-ness of processes, and
the perfect ".alias.all" file, though you'll glimpse their existence). So .... use
this to learn about UNIX, not how to use UNIX to automate your life. If you
need to write a 200 line shell script, you should already know all this and
more. If you want to organize and move some files around, and generally
not be an ignoramus in UNIX, then this is as good a place to start as any.
It will not, however, make you worthy of a black T-shirt and the title of SYS.
ADMIN.
(My UNIX background is extensive, starting around '91, so while I am by
no means a UNIX guru, I use it effectively without letting it become a
hobby. For things I don't know or can't remember, I "man page", just like
everyone else. I taught intro classes at the University level, and I *ONLY
WISH* my students had come to me already knowing 25% of what's in this
book! It is reasonable to learn only what is in this book, and stop forever
unless your job/curriculum demands more. Many users never attain this
level, yet function just fine in their "mostly-MSWindows" environments,
using UNIX only occasionally.) If you need to pick up UNIX from scratch,
don't fear this book. There's *plenty* to learn here. If you're already an
NT/XP ADMIN, you aren't really a Dummy, now are you?
The Sam's 24-Hour book is quite good, costs nearly double, and I
*GUARANTEE* it covers material you could care less about. PERL
programming, for instance, would be a waste in my case. That is not
UNIX, much like PHP is not "Internet For Dummies" material. Yes, it can
be very useful, but it's a "related topic", at best. Since I have no skin in the
game, pick whichever you like (or go with the cheaper option, would be my
recomendation), and absorb as much as you can. Then go to work on

your system. Nothing trumps usage to find out where and how you'll need
to grow your skills.
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