I'm really proud to announce that my 3rd book is now out & available for purchase: Linux Phrasebook. My first book - Don't Click on the Blue E!: Switching to Firefox - was for general readers (really!) who wanted to learn how to move to and use the fantastic Firefox web browser. I included a lot of great information for more technical users as well, but the focus was your average Joe. My second book - Hacking Knoppix - was for the more advanced user who wanted to take advantage of Knoppix, a version of Linux that runs entirely off of a CD. You don't need to be super-technical to use and enjoy Hacking Knoppix, but the more technical you are, the more you'll enjoy the book. Linux Phrasebook is all about the Linux command line, and it's perfect for both Linux newbies and experienced users. In fact, when I was asked to write the book, I responded, "Write it? I can't wait to buy it!"

The idea behind Linux Phrasebook is to give practical examples of Linux commands and their myriad options, with examples for everything. Too often a Linux user will look up a command in order to discover how it works, and while the command and its many options will be detailed, something vitally important will be left out: examples. That's where Linux Phrasebook comes in. I cover a huge number of different commands and their options, and for every single one, I give an example of usage and results that makes it clear how to use it.

Here's the table of contents; in parentheses I've included some (just some) of the commands I cover in each chapter:

1. Things to Know About Your Command Line
2. The Basics (ls, cd, mkdir, cp, mv, rm)
3. Learning About Commands (man, info, whereis, apropos)
4. Building Blocks (;, &&, |, >, >>)
5. Viewing Files (cat, less, head, tail)
6. Printing and Managing Print Jobs (lpr, lpq, lprm)
7. Ownerships and Permissions (chgrp, chown, chmod)
8. Archiving and Compression (zip, gzip, bzip2, tar)
9. Finding Stuff: Easy (grep, locate)
10. The find command (find)
11. Your Shell (history, alias, set)
12. Monitoring System Resources (ps, lsof, free, df, du)
13. Installing software (rpm, dkpg, apt-get, yum)
14. Connectivity (ping, traceroute, route, ifconfig, iwconfig)
15. Working on the Network (ssh, sftp, scp, rsync, wget)
16. Windows Networking (nmblookup, smbclient, smbmount)

I'm really proud of the whole book, but the chapter on the super-powerful and useful find command is a standout, along with the material on ssh and its descendants sftp and scp. But really, the whole book is great, and I will definitely be keeping a copy on my desk as a reference. If you want to know more about the Linux command line and how to use it, then I know you'll enjoy and learn from Linux Phrasebook.

You can read about and buy the book at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672328380/) for $10.19. If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact me at scott at granneman dot com, or check out my web site for more info.

If you don't use the bash shell, just skip this post. If you do use the bash shell, tho, then you'll want to check out "Bash Shell Shortcuts", which contains all the ctrl-, alt-, & tab-based keyboard shortcuts you'll ever really need to know to get maximum efficiency out of bash. This is one to print out & keep, folks. It's that good.

(Check out all of our posts on bash & the command line.)

If you live on the command line like I do, and you find that you're constantly SSHing into machines all over God's green earth, then you really must stop whatever it is you're doin' & go read this little piece on screen. Here's the link - The Antidesktop - but you'll need to scroll down a tiny lil' bit to find the section titled "screen". Basically, screen allows you to have virtual terminal sessions inside one terminal session. Don't know what I'm talkin' about? Read the little article!

(Check out all of our posts on SSH, bash, & the command line.)

I'm writing a book right now about the Linux command line (Linux Phrasebook), so I'm knee-deep in shell goodness. I just today read about this page, How To Look Like A UNIX Guru, and I first thought it was going to tell me to grow a big beard, wear t-shirts all the time, & eat a lot of pizza or Chinese food. Happily, it's actually a loooooong page listing essential *nix commands and how to use them. This would be a great page to read over to test yourself, and it would also be a good candidate for printing or saving in case you need a quick reference. Check it out ... it's very useful, and that's a good thing. Now I'm off to comb my beard and clean the pizza stains off my t-shirt!

(Check out all of our posts on command line.)