(Part 2) Top products from r/linux

While being a self taught sys admin is great, learning the internals of how things work can really extend your knowledge beyond what you may have considered possible. This starts to get more into the CS portion of things, but who cares. It's still great stuff to know, and if you know this you will really be set apart. Im not sure if it will help you directly as a sys admin, but may quench your thirst. Im both a programmer and unix admin, so I tend to like both. I own or have owned most of these and enjoy them greatly. You may also consider renting them or just downloading them. I can say that knowing how thing operate internally is great, it fills in a lot of holes.

OS Internals

While you obviously are successful at the running and maintaining of unix like systems. How much do you know about their internal functions? While reading source code is the best method, some great books will save you many hours of time and will be a bit more enjoyable. These books are Amazing
The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System

Linux Kernel Development
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

Networking

Learning the actual function of networking at the code level is really interesting. Theres a whole other world below implementation. You likely know a lot of this.
Computer Networks

TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1: The Protocols

Unix Network Programming, Volume 1: The Sockets Networking API

Compilers/Low Level computer Function

Knowing how a computer actually works, from electricity, to EE principles , through assembly to compilers may also interest you.
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

I've been using GNU/Linux off and on for about 8 years now (I'm 18, give me a break!). It seemed like, in the early days, I couldn't get the things I did most often to work, and I only ever used my Linux partition for programming. I was very windows-centric, and I tried to do things that I did in windows in linux the "windows way".

After some time, as both Linux and myself matured, I decided to eliminate windows from my system and to do everything using Linux. It was frustrating until I let go of my prior Windows expertise and decided to learn things the "Linux way". Instead of wondering how to do something that I did in windows, I chose instead to think of how to accomplish a task instead. I read books and online tutorials, and discovering the power of the terminal was exhilarating. Now, I don't ever use Windows. I feel over 9000 times more efficient in Linux, because I spent a substantial amount of time learning how to do things properly and not relying on the accumulated expertise I had gained in Windows.

Linux is NOT Windows. The two are very different players, and that's a good thing. If the developers of Linux focused solely on creating a Windows clone, the OS would be very different.

I've done some distro hopping lately, just to play around with different distros. I'm currently using Fedora, but I have a server running Debian and I'd love to try out Linux Mint 12 once that comes out.

The best advice I can give is to let go of the old way of thinking. Be open minded, and never dismiss something different as inferior. Stick with Linux, even when it requires forcing yourself to learn something new. You'll appreciate it in the long run.

P.S. Learn the terminal! This book was extremely helpful for me

P.P.S. Man pages are your friend.

>Why does Linux limit itself to this file name size?

What should it be? Posix requires it to be capped at NAME_MAX. That could be anything, but on my Linux distro happens to be 255. You could increase that and recompile your libs and apps if you wanted, but the Posix folks happened to choose to put a compile-time constant length on things back when. They probably did that because it makes handling some things more convenient. I imagine that somewhere, there's code that statically-allocates stuff of NAME_MAX + 1 length, so jacking up NAME_MAX to, say, 1MB would probably cause some programs to use a lot of memory...so that hasn't been done.

As to why Linux uses 256 instead of NAME_MAX + 1 in the header, go look at your system headers. On my system, /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/bits/dirent.h has the following:

char d_name[256]; / We must not include limits.h! /

I imagine that 256 is used rather than NAME_MAX + 1 because they don't want to have the kernel header depend on that other header; maybe it creates a dependency loop, where limits.h depends on dirent.h and visa versa to find various constants. I'm not sure which standard "owns" NAME_MAX, but perhaps it's something that the kernel provides and libc is responsible for setting based on the kernel. It does seem a bit odd that there isn't a constant defined in the kernel headers (that libc defines NAME_MAX to on Linux) that is also used here and anywhere else a filename might show up, but I expect that the kernel folks had a reason for that.

EDIT: note also that the Windows API has a similar such restriction:

>>What is the maximum length of a file name?
>
>Windows usually limits file names to 260 characters. But the file name must actually be shorter than that, since the complete path (such as C:\Program Files\filename.txt) is included in this character count. This is why you might occasionally encounter an error when copying a file with a very long file name to a location that has a longer path than its current location.

Huh...I thought that they had a maximum path length of 1024 characters (or bytes; don't recall) but then I haven't done Windows programming for a while now...seems that 260 is correct, though.

>As a side note: any links to really good resources or articles for Unix/Linux systems programming in C would be much appreciated.

Seems like a pretty broad range of material, if you just want articles. I mean...you might want to narrow down what you're looking for a bit. I think that Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment is probably a worthwhile book to go through, if you just want a "C on Unix" book.

I disagree.. you should definitely learn red hat/fedora/centos in terms of network configuration files, other config files etc etc if you want to have a good knowledge of server level/enterprise level linux. Red-hat based distros are MUCH more widely used for server implementations than debian or slackware.. But that said definitely learn the debian way too. Linux in a Nutshell is a good back, or this book is also quite good: http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Commands-Editors-Programming/dp/0131478230/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250956616&sr=8-16 -- Another good one is the Linux Quick-Fix Notebook- excellent excellent book

You might have some better luck if you go top down. Start out with an abstracted view of reality as provided by the computer, and then peel off the layers of complexity like an onion.

I would recommend a "bare metal" approach to programming to start, so C is a logical choice. I would recommend Zed Shaw's intro to C: http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/

I would proceed to learning about programming languages, to see how a compiler transforms code to machine instructions. For that, the classical text is the dragon book: http://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Tools-Edition/dp/0321486811

After that, you can proceed to operating systems, to see how many programs and pieces of hardware are managed on a single computer. For that, the classical text is the dinosaur book: http://www.amazon.com/Operating-System-Concepts-Abraham-Silberschatz/dp/1118063333 Alternatively, Tannenbaum has a good one as well, which uses its own operating system (Minix) as a learning tool: http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Operating-Systems-Andrew-Tanenbaum/dp/0136006639/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377402221&sr=1-1

Beyond this, you get to go straight to the implementation details of architecture. Hennessy has one of the best books in this area: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Fifth-Quantitative-Approach/dp/012383872X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377402371&sr=1-1

Edit: Got the wrong Hennessy/Patterson book...

1.) We always post open positions on http://jobs.redhat.com/job-search-results/ but if your in the market send me a pm and we can discuss this further.

2.) You don't need to be certified however it is a requirement that before you start supporting customers that you have your RHCE. We have some great instructors here and the one who taught me is Chris Negus author of the Linux Bible

3.) Didn't eat breakfast but the new cafeteria is amazing!!

I much appreciate your answer. I will take into account ir. I started using Linux about a year and a half ago, coming from windows. I just thinked that I could find a good alternative for Windows, and I moved to Ubuntu MATE. I was fascinated by its velocity, security and how it's packages worked. At the first time, I was dual-booting, but then I removed windows and started to just use Linux. I've been using Linux casually for a lot of time, and now I'm going serious. I want to learn bash scripting and python. I have got a fantastic Spanish Python book, (I'm learning a lot because of it), and now I'm looking for some bash and Linux books by O'Reilly and I've found this book https://www.amazon.es/gp/aw/d/0596009658/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%C3%85Z%C3%95%C3%91&qid=1520884449&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=O%27Reilly+bash&dpPl=1&dpID=513EprgSOcL&ref=plSrch and this other one https://www.amazon.es/gp/aw/d/1491927577/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?__mk_es_ES=%C3%85M%C3%85Z%C3%95%C3%91&qid=1520884734&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=O%27Reilly+Linux&dpPl=1&dpID=51AbKrNDvaL&ref=plSrch
Would you recommend me this books to learn?
I'm Spanish, so the prizes should be different

I started with no linux knowledge on this book the unix bible. It's got enough information to help you understand how your linux system actually works. From there it's easy to find information on your own by knowing better what to look for and having a better understanding of the information you find. The Orelly bash book is the only other one I've picked up, and it helped me a lot with scripting and has come in handy several times for reference. After that, you'll pretty much know enough to google and find the information you need pretty quickly.

Glances is a very nice example of a good python code base and project structure. An excellent demonstration of the a "proper" way to package a standalone python application. https://github.com/nicolargo/glances

It does, as the name suggest, only provide a "glance" into how the system is doing. For a deeper dive in monitoring check out Brendan Gregg's posts and guides,
http://www.brendangregg.com/index.html .

He also has a book which I consider one of the most up to date and best on the topic of monitoring: https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Enterprise-Brendan-Gregg/dp/0133390098

Well this reddit is mostly about Linux news not help. The forums and irc are where that belongs.

As for books I would suggest getting one that deals heavily in the command line. Much quicker and easier than a gui and it changes slower.

This http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Commands-Editors-Programming/dp/0131367366/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311976268&sr=8-1 got good reviews on amazon but really for bash any book on Linux or unix shell scripting will do fine. (I for example used a unix book from the late 80's to learn how to use bash)

As for one on the guy I would just take whatever one They have at your local barnes and noble, just make sure it's recent

This has been one of my favorite books: http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Bible-Christopher-Negus/dp/111821854X/

And I read through this entire book: http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Linux-System-Administration-Handbook/dp/0131480057/

They are both great!

Edit: I can't type much because my internet is going out regularly at the moment, otherwise I'd love to elaborate further.

I can't recommend this enough. It's about as comprehensive a guide to Linux as you could hope for, and accessible for beginners.

As far as distros go, I'd go with Mint. It's a great community-driven distro that's very user friendly.

I listened to an audiobook while driving a year ago, Master's Of Doom. An amazing story and incredibly entertaining to listen to the story of my childhood heroes. Memorable quote:
> The computer. It contained worlds.

In college I took a class that used this book as the text book. I loved that class and my knowlege and love of linux/unix definately benefited.
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/0321525949/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334773536&sr=8-1

• CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
  
  A ground up approach to understanding digital processing and transmission in a broad sense. I only recommend this book if you are looking for an intrinsic understanding of computing rather than merely a handle on using a particular programming language or operating system. By the end of the book you should have a handle on actually building your own computer, however it's actually an excellent "first book" for anyone interested in computing.

You'll need a good book and a good community (university? Linux User Group in your area?).

Don't try to learn from crappy outdated tutorials. Don't try to learn it all on your own. Choose a distribution carefully and be loyal to it for a while -- no novelty-seeking, optimistic "This distro will be so much better" distro-switching. Don't get obsessed with it -- it's a set of tools, not a way of life (hopefully).

I highly recommended: www.amazon.co.uk/Linux-Bible-Christopher-Negus/dp/111821854X/

If you're looking for a good book to get you started, I can't recommend this one enough: A Practical Guide to Linux: Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming. Here's my description of it from another l4n post:

It's a great book for a beginner who doesn't want to get a Dummies book that is mostly concerned with the GUI and doing all the same things that you would on Windows or Mac OS, but instead wants to learn about what you can do without a GUI. It's a great reference book as well, containing the man pages for many commonly used and built-in commands, as well as teaching BASH shell scripting, how to completely use vim and emacs, and more about the inner workings of the OS.

Also, I (shamefully) have not done this completely, but if you want to learn about how the core of most any Linux system works, install Arch using their fabulously laid out Beginners Guide

I consider Classic Shell Scripting by Robbins and Beebe to be the greatest book on the topic. It is so extensive yet readable that it is really worth getting a copy. I owe it to this book that I first really got into Unix as a whole. The authors speak from positions of vast experience and go out of their way to teach you the POSIX way, which is not only handy on exotic Unixes as opposed to Linux, but also on Debian and its derivatives now thanks to dash. Keeping scripts POSIX-compliant pay off a lot cause dash is (in my experience) 1.5 - 2 times faster in trivial looping applications.

A lot of Kernighan’s (co‐authored) books age surprisingly well. It’s a real testament to his writing style that they are still relevant today despite examples tending to be in PL/I or Fortran.

• The Elements of Programming Style
  
• Software Tools
  
• The Practice of Programming
  
• The Unix Programming Environment
  
  And, of course…
  
  
• The C Programming Language

Just subscribe to his blog and then buy this. Probably the best book out there on system performance in recent years.

This is the exact one I use. I believe it's a realtek chipset which is super common (especially with rPi unofficially adopting that as a WiFi module of choice).

> It was designed for researchers and enterprise.

"Linux" wasn't designed for anything. People use it for research and enterprise goals, but it's just a byproduct of its flexibility.

Check out Rebel Code for all of your answers and some good history. Just for Fun is decent too.

you may like this one

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ubuntu-Linux-Toolbox-Commands-Debian/dp/0470082933

I don't recommend either of those books, try these instead:

High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, and Replication by Baron Schwartz, http://amzn.com/1449314287

A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming (3rd Edition) by Mark G. Sobell, http://amzn.com/013308504X

Yeah, really. Start with this book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812972155

Every game that made use of Carmack's engines (Quake and derivatives) ran natively on NeXTSTEP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

The first series of hardware engines, including the first Voodoo graphics drivers were heavily influenced by Carmack's work. Almost all the games that targeted those engines were binary compatible with various flavors of UNIX and later Linux. The commercial versions weren't released, but there were builds, because porting everything from NeXTSTEP and variants and back would have bankrupted the industry.

Then there's Android, which got an incredible head start on gaming because of the thousands of Linux codebases and open source utilities available for it day one. Had Google been required to start from scratch, Android would have drowned in six months.

This concludes the free lectures. If you want more information, you know where to look.

> Make a document on how to properly document code.

They've existed for a long time. Rob Pike's Notes on Programming in C is an excellent quick start. His book (with Brian Kernighan) The Practice of Programming gives a lot more detail. (And goes beyond just commenting/style.)

It really does run on everything!

These are $10 and the work right out of the box.

I found this book useful:
www.amazon.com/Classic-Shell-Scripting-Arnold-Robbins/dp/0596005954

So basically read the O'Reilly books: Learning the Unix... and Unix Power Tools.

http://www.amazon.com/Learning-UNIX-Operating-System-Fifth/dp/0596002610/ref=pd_sim_b_2

I noticed it was online, is there a place where I can get a tangible copy?

Is this the one?

The Cathedral & the Bazaar

http://www.amazon.com/Harley-Hahns-Guide-Unix-Linux/dp/0073133612

If you really wanna be knowledgeable, get this book and read all of it.

Harley Hahn's Guide to Unix and Linux
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0073133612/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_G963BbXVV8A0B

I am really confused what you are on about. The car metaphor is apt, and not every restoration is gonna race. Computers can be a tool or a means in and of themselves, doing for the sake of doing. Perhaps you like to install linux on dead animals or collect books, or both http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1894953479/ref=aw_d_iv_books?is=l


Whatever makes it fun for you. I certainly don't find windows fun in any way, but Linux has been a blast for 10 years now for me.

"The art of Unix Programming" by Eric S. Raymond. Not as intimidating or outdated as you might think - This book goes over the history and philosophical concepts behind not only Unix (and Linux), but also the Open Source initiative behind Linux. ESR's other work is "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" which is also worth a look, but I would argue is dated now, as much of what was suggested in this book has already come to pass with too many real world examples to mention.

These books specifically:

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/

https://www.amazon.com.au/Operating-Systems-Concepts-Abraham-Silberschatz/dp/1118063333/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1551058787&sr=8-1&keywords=Operating+System+Concepts

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http://man7.org/tlpi/index.html

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And most importantly a wasted youth reading far too many online newsgroups, rfc's and troubleshooting technical issues.

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They also want to make the device available to developing countries, so it's not that unlikely that ethernet won't be available.

also, you might not want ethernet if you've got one of these lying around