[CLUE-Talk] Intro to Unix book.

[David Willson]

Here's what really worked well for me.
Give 'em two books:
1- a TY (teach yourself) style book on whatever is their AOF (area of
fascination).  Mine were IMAP, Samba, and StarOffice.  That 'led' topic,
which is already interesting to them, will keep them 'in'.
2- a nice reference book for Unix, so that when they encounter the
inevitable situation of not knowing how to perform a standard system
administration task, they can look it up.  That will keep them moving, and
relatively frustration-free.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Anselmi" <anselmi at americanisp.net>
To: "clue talk list" <clue-talk at clue.denver.co.us>
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 11:17 AM
Subject: [CLUE-Talk] Intro to Unix book.


> Can anyone recommend a good book to introduce people to Unix?  I have
> several friends and family who would like to learn, but aren't technical
> (some can handle a command line, some are just point and click).
>
> Books that have been valuable to me are "The UNIX Programming
> Environment" by Kernighan and Pike, "Essential System Administration"
> from O'Reilly, and "UNIX System Administration Handbook" by Evi Nemeth,
> et. al.
>
> The K & P book is really about shell programming but covers enough about
> the system to get by.  But it's a programmer's book, and some beginners
> just don't get that.
>
> The Nemeth book is too advanced for beginners.  I found the O'Reilly
> admin book to be a great intro to what was going on, but I haven't tried
> it on any beginners.  For them I think it's a little long, and although
> the material is very interesting and pertinent (to me), I suspect they
> will be wondering "so how does this get my email read?"
>
> Generally, I despise "for dummies" books, and the "record time" or "in
> 21 days" books that turn out to be full of screen shots of pointing and
> clicking (isn't the gui supposed to make it obvious where to point and
> click?  The thing you need out of the books that they lack is details of
> how all the dialog box fields affect what actually happens.)
>
> But I don't know.  I'm an engineer, so simple books annoy me.  But I
> want to teach non-engineers, so I ask your advice.
>
> Dave
>
>
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