|
Recent
Articles |
Dell & Ubuntu: All About The Drivers
So Dell has given some more details on its plan to fulfill one of the top 10 wishes of the people who submitted ideas to its Digg-style IdeaStorm site: It's going to...
Configuring NTP On Your Linux Server
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) defines a set of algorithms for the dissemination of time across the Internet. The NTP protocol can be used to...
Linux Server Based Computing & Terminal...
Being an IT consultant I get to visit lots of companies and can't help but notice any trends that are happening. One of these trends is more and more Linux...
Linux Tops Dell Idea Storm
Linux, Open Office, and no extra software are the top three customer proposed ideas at Dell Idea Storm. What is interesting is that besides the general whining...
Novell Is Not Losing Linux
The Free Software Foundation is displeased over the SuSE Linux distribution deal Novell inked with Microsoft, but supposed threats to pull Novell's "Linux license"...
Free Software - Should It Be Free?
By now, you've probably heard about or read Mark Shuttleworth's view on keeping free software free. Matt Asay has a take on Mark's post here. I don't think...
Giving In To Temptation
This analysis was conceived when the coauthors discovered we'd each been independently seriously tempted to buy a Mac Mini, and realized what...
|
|
|
05.15.07
The Linux Programmer's Toolbox
 By
A.P. Lawrence
Wow. Regular readers here know I don't say "wow" lightly. I may like a book, I may even think it's useful or even something you really should have, but very few really make my jaw drop.
This is one that gets a "wow". It may be the holy grail of Linux programming books just because of its amazing depth of coverage, but it also gets high marks from me for clarity of writing and for being whatever polar opposite of "dull" you'd prefer.
First, the detail and depth here is surprising. It's roughly 600 pages, but given the ground covered, you'd think it was twice that or more. It takes great skill to pack lots of information into a small space while remaining readable and interesting, and I really admire authors who can do that. Any programmer coming from any other OS platform should pick this up first thing: it will save them a lot of time and trouble.
Please note that I do not think this book is exclusively useful to programmers. In fact, it's probably more useful to "semi-programmers"; that is, those of us who *can* write code at some level but usually don't. We're more likely to "make" someone else's code and perhaps hack up a script or two around it; we may understand more about kernel internals than your average Joe but we aren't likely to do any kernel hacking.. your typical senior admin usually matches that profile pretty closely, and is quite likely to find this very useful.
For example, in Chapter 2 ("Building from source") there's a twenty page section devoted to "Understanding Errors and Warnings". That's easily the best treatment I've ever encountered of "Things that go wrong after you type 'make'". Most of us know the frustration when something we really need or at least would really like to have blows up during the compile.
Chapter 5 is "What every developer should know about the kernel". Well, yeah, but most of it is things every admin/support person should know too, and again it is very well written and quite illuminating.
Oh, there's more. A lot more. Finding help, editing, revision control, debugging, even tuning: it's all here, and it's all very well done. Sorry to babble on about how impressed I am, but there it is: I'm awestruck.
You are going to learn things here. I think that's a fairly safe bet. For me, this is one of those books that I read through hurriedly because I was enjoying it so much, but then returned to page one for a more leisurely and thorough read.
Highly recommended. Good stuff!
*Originally published at APLawrence.com
About the Author:
A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com
|
