[techtalk] Re: Computer Books

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Tue, Dec 26, 2000 at 09:35:18AM -0700 or thereabouts, mc wrote:
> I have to disagree on the home network part.  Sharing resources at home,
> especially when more than one person wants the internet connection is
> becoming "the thing to do."  The list of how to's available on the web is

Yes. I know several households of students who do this, complete with
ethernet tucked under the carpet :) Also, almost anyone who works in
IT in any technical capacity and who has a family seems to end up 
networking the computers together.

> I would like to see some security books at the library.  Now that is
> something more people need to read up on.

That's a _good_ idea.

I have a few books, some of which date back to original LDP publications
and have "Trust this and die!" written on the top of every page of
certain chapters, so my experience is not huge. And I can't comment on 
programming or networks (or quite a few others). For what it's worth,
though, things on my shelf which I reach for again and again and again: 

	o Linux in a Nutshell: NB -- I think this is only useful once 
    you know enough to know what command you are looking for in the 
    first place. It's not useful for "is there a way to xyz?" 
	o HTML: The Definitive Guide: Look, I can write valid HTML 4.0! :) 
	o DocBook: The Definitive Guide: I think this may be a slightly
    specialised interest :) Also, it's not a good _introduction_. It 
    only becomes useful once you have found out the basics yourself. 
    Then it becomes absolutely invaluable. 
	o Mastering Regular Expressions: ..with chapters about how they 
    differ between different shells and programs. I like this, and one 
    day I shall finish it :) 
	o Learning the bash shell: I have books on learning both perl and
    python, but I actually prefer this one: I think if you want to learn 
    how to automate things, it works out better than perl and python books 
    because you discover things you can use all the time at the prompt, too!


All O'Reilly, which is a bit one-sided, because there do exist other 
publishers out there which do good stuff too, and O'Reilly have also 
released some really bad books from time to time.

One I keep _meaning_ to get off the shelf and read properly is the Free 
Software Foundation emacs guide. One day I really should try to understand 
it. It's written in a very clear manner, but there is something in 
emacs-think that baffles my brain: I know I am missing something 
fundamental and I can't work out what it is. (Answers about 'vi' are 
not helpful here, thank you :))

Ones on my list to get: 

Months ago, O'Reilly were advertising a users' guide to X (not to 
desktops, to X) in their "upcoming" bumf. I really wanted that, but 
where it went, I do not know. It's no longer on their list. Boo-hoo.

There's a book about CVS with large parts on the web. Even though 
the bits on the web are useful, I want it on paper. A miracle: it's
also not an O'Reilly one. It might be Coriolis. 

"A decent book about networking" which would help me understand the
difference between TCP and UDP and why I should care, and how all
this stuff relates to my husband's firewall rules. ("Why can't I get
the time though that network time thingy?" "Because the firewall won't 
let you" is no help :)) Recommendations on such decent books are
welcomed. 

I have some things I would definitely -not- recommend, but I don't
know whether that's very useful: especially since we all differ in
what approaches we like. Although the 1000-page book on Debian with
three useless pages on apt might well piss more than just me off, as
might the book on installing RH which is full of "if the auto-detect
fails, you can set this up later" remarks for things and which has
no later description of how to do it yourself. Grr!

Telsa