Originally Posted by majid
Believe it or not, the "UNIX for Dummies" book is actually pretty good. The UNIX book I wish I had when I was starting out is "The UNIX Programming Environment" by Kernighan & Pike.
x2 on the UNIX for Dummies. It's the only tech book that I didn't want to put down. It's incredibly funny. It's a good intro. It's what I started with. It's a decent reference for the basic stuff, and the first place I look for answers. Unfortunately, I don't always find the answer in it. My other Unix books are at work, so I don't know off the top of my head which ones I have. I think I have a O'Reily Nutshell book, but I could be wrong. The other books I have, you need to know what you're looking for to find it, which is not great for me since I'm only an occasional user of Unix.
Originally Posted by GAD
I learned UNIX by getting Linux, a "linux bible" and trying to make it work. At the time there was an O'Reilly book called Learning Red Hat Linux that helped a lot too.
Google "linux how-to" and you'll find articles on how to do damn-near everything on linux.
GAD
The first time I encountered Unix was in the early 80s. The next time, I tried the method suggested by GAD. At the time, Borders had 3 Linux books. I picked a SAMMS book if I recall correctly. I think the author or editor used Word to write the book, or at least some word processor that had auto correct turned on. If a command started a sentence, it was capitalized.
as well as things like misspelled commands being added to the dictionary. I spent a very frustrating 2 weeks trying to get it to work. I got the basic command line up pretty quick, but X was pretty bad.
It should be a lot easier now.
It would be a lot easier for me now since I work with a lot of Unix geeks. Then, I was the senior Unix geek with all of 4 months experience on workstations doing word processing with nroff.