Copyright © 2000 Eric S. Raymond
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| Revision 3.0 | 2004-02-04 | esr |
| Major update. Removed out-of-date books, added a new one. | ||
| Revision 2.1 | 2003-10-28 | esr |
| Added TAOUP. | ||
| Revision 2.0 | 2003-07-31 | esr |
| Major revision, cleaned out obsolete stuff. | ||
| Revision 1.21 | 2003-02-22 | esr |
| LDP site has moved. | ||
| Revision 1.20 | 2001-06-14 | esr |
| Removed "Practical Unix Security"; it's five years old and the material is now covered better by other books. | ||
| Revision 1.19 | 2001-06-14 | esr |
| Added Ross Anderson's "Security Engineering". Corrected ISBNs. | ||
Abstract
This document lists the books I think are most valuable to a person trying to learn Unix (especially Linux) top to bottom.
Table of Contents
This document lists what I consider to be the essential book-length references for learning Unix (especially Linux) and how to program under it.
New versions of the Linux Reading List HOWTO will be periodically posted to comp.os.linux.answers. They will also be uploaded to various Linux WWW and FTP sites, including the LDP home page.
You can also view the latest version of this on the World Wide Web via the URL http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Reading-List-HOWTO.html.
If you have questions or comments about this document (or just
want to suggest a book that you think should be on it), please feel
free to mail Eric S. Raymond, at <esr@thyrsus.com>. I welcome any
suggestions or criticisms.
For on-line HOWTOs, magazines, and other non-book material, see the Linux Documentation Project home page.
Some years ago I wrote a less Linux-focused Unix bibliography that may still be of some interest and retains a certain amusement value. You can find the Loginataka here.
SAGE, the System Administrator's Guild, maintains an excellent list of relevant books.
Comments not in quotes below are either mine, or I have seen no reason to change them from those of Jim Haynes (previous maintainer of this document). Comments sent in by others are in quotes, and have the name of the commentator before them (JH is Jim Haynes).
"See" URLs attached to publishing information point directly into the publisher's web catalog and typically take you to a page containing a cover shot, blurbs, and ordering information. Books that don't have these lack them because the publisher is using frames and the catalog pages can't be bookmarked.
Topic listings go roughly from the outside in (culture to user-land programming to kernel programming to hardware). Within sections I have tried to list the most useful books first insofar as I am familiar with them. It's just an embarrassing coincidence that this lists one of my books first, honest! (Suggestions for a better organization cheerfully accepted.)
The New Hacker's Dictionary. Third Edition. Eric S. Raymond. Copyright © 1996. ISBN 0-262-68092-0. MIT Press. 547pp..
Programming Perl. Third Edition. Copyright © 2000. ISBN 0-596-00027-8. O'Reilly & Associates. 1104pp..
Unix Network Programming, volume 1 -- Networking APIs: Sockets and XTI. Copyright © 1998. ISBN 0-13-490012-X. Prentice-Hall.
This document is copyright 1999 by Eric S. Raymond. You may use, disseminate, and reproduce it freely, provided you:
Do not omit or alter this copyright notice.
Do not omit or alter or omit the version number and date.
Do not omit or alter the document's pointer to the current WWW version.
Clearly mark any condensed, altered or versions as such.
These restrictions are intended to protect potential readers from stale or mangled versions. If you think you have a good case for an exception, ask me.