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The Linux Bible: The GNU Testament
Book by Welsh, Matt
1886 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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December 31, 2023
Where to begin with The Linux Bible: The GNU Testament? A foundational collection of free how-to's and open-source documentation from 1996, complete with a bundled CD-ROM containing the book's (nearly 2,000 pages of) content in digital form. Oh and two different bundled Linux distributions, including Slackware 2.3.0, just because. Why not?
It's important to understand that while the internet was growing rapidly when this book was published, setting up Linux networking 20 years ago was no laughing matter. While today we can google any Linux tutorial in seconds and we're blessed with a backup networked computer in the forn of our smartphone, in 1996 THERE WAS LITERALLY NO GOOGLE YET. Finding these documents and reading them was difficult if you were teaching yourself C and Linux and just needed to read a manual. Hence, the need for this book: nothing less than a compendium of all sacred scrolls required to bring a Linux box to life.
This book was 33% of my introduction to Linux, the balance being 1/3 Æleen Frisch's excellent Essential System Administration and 1/3 focused osmosis in the University of Michigan's internal server and network admin group. I mention this because I remember vividly both the value of this book and its immense weight. It must be said, this book is dense. It is 1,886 pages long. Despite being printed on woefully thin onion skin paper to save weight, it still hefts like a sack of wet firewood. Dropping this book on your foot will have you limping. It covers EVERYTHING related to the Linux of 20 years ago, from Danish language support to ham radio interfaces to Token Ring networking.
Five stars.
It's important to understand that while the internet was growing rapidly when this book was published, setting up Linux networking 20 years ago was no laughing matter. While today we can google any Linux tutorial in seconds and we're blessed with a backup networked computer in the forn of our smartphone, in 1996 THERE WAS LITERALLY NO GOOGLE YET. Finding these documents and reading them was difficult if you were teaching yourself C and Linux and just needed to read a manual. Hence, the need for this book: nothing less than a compendium of all sacred scrolls required to bring a Linux box to life.
This book was 33% of my introduction to Linux, the balance being 1/3 Æleen Frisch's excellent Essential System Administration and 1/3 focused osmosis in the University of Michigan's internal server and network admin group. I mention this because I remember vividly both the value of this book and its immense weight. It must be said, this book is dense. It is 1,886 pages long. Despite being printed on woefully thin onion skin paper to save weight, it still hefts like a sack of wet firewood. Dropping this book on your foot will have you limping. It covers EVERYTHING related to the Linux of 20 years ago, from Danish language support to ham radio interfaces to Token Ring networking.
Five stars.
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