AWS Computing Basics for Linux

AWS Computing Basics for Linux

A small but excellent guide for AWS...
If you have ever thought about hosting your Linux-based application in the cloud, this guide is a good place to start. It walks you through the process of deploying a sample application and all the necessary infrastructure for running and monitoring it. The guide also includes a discussion of pricing so you can compare the cost of cloud computing to that of managing your own infrastructure.

User Review

"When I switched jobs from an all Microsoft technology setting to a Linux shop, this book was a great help. It is not in-depth, but it provides lots and lots of 'getting started' usage for many standard Linux commands. I'm very glad I got this book" Jay from Redmond

A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming

A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming (3rd Edition)

Editorial Reviews

“The book has more than lived up to my expectations from the many reviews I read, even though it targets FC2. I have found something very rare with your book: It doesn’t read like the standard technical text, it reads more like a story. It’s a pleasure to read and hard to put down. Did I say that?! :-)”
–David Hopkins, Business Process Architect

“Since I’m in an educational environment, I found the content of Sobell’s book to be right on target and very helpful for anyone managing Linux in the enterprise. His style of writing is very clear. He builds up to the chapter exercises, which I find to be relevant to real-world scenarios a user or admin would encounter. An IT/IS student would find this book a valuable complement to their education. The vast amount of information is extremely well balanced and Sobell manages to present the content without complicated asides and meandering prose. This is a ‘must have’ for anyone managing Linux systems in a networked environment or anyone running a Linux server. I would also highly recommend it to an experienced computer user who is moving to the Linux platform.”
–Mary Norbury, IT Director, Barbara Davis Center, University of Colorado at Denver, from a review posted on slashdot.org


“I had the chance to use your UNIX books when I when was in college years ago at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA. I have to say that your books are among the best! They’re quality books that teach the theoretical aspects and applications of the operating system.”

–Benton Chan, IS Engineer

New Chapters on Python and MySQL–Covers Perl, too!

• Learn from hundreds of realistic, high-quality examples, and become a true Linux command-line guru! 
• NEW! Covers busybox, Midnight Commander, screen, and sshfs/curlftpf 
• Covers the Mac OS X command line and its unique tools 
• 295-page reference covers 98 utilities, including Mac OS X commands! 

Best Linux Distros 2014

Best Linux Distros 2014

If you're looking for the best Linux distros around, on this page you'll find a collection of every Linux distribution that should suit your needs.

Most Beautiful Linux Distro: Bodhi Linux

This is an easy choice: Bodhi Linux. Bodhi Linux uses the Enlightenment window manager, which has always occupied a unique niche. Enlightenment is beautiful, lightweight, and extremely customizable. Its flexibility has worked against it in the past, because when you install the stock Enlightenment it takes a fair bit of work to set it up as it's more of a framework than a finished desktop environment. The Bodhi team have done a great job of taming Enlightenment and giving users a beautiful, ready-to-use implementation.

Best Enterprise Linux Distro: SUSE and Red Hat

This is a tie: SUSE and Red Hat. I can't pick one over the other because they're both rock-solid, they're excellent community members, and they have similar product lines.

SUSE has always been a top enterprise Linux distro, but it is not so well-known in North America. They hold a number of bragging rights: first mainframe Linux and most popular mainframe Linux with 80% market share, half of the world's largest supercomputers run SUSE, most widely-used commercial enterprise Linux distribution in China (more than China's Red Flag Linux), and it dominates in retail--even Walmart uses SUSE Linux Enterprise Point-of-Service.

SUSE and Red Hat both have formed large networks of key partnerships with enterprise vendors like IBM, HP, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Fujitu, and SAP. These are essential to penetrating the enterprise and staying there, and we also enjoy a trickle-down benefit of features, hardware support, and wider acceptance of Linux at all levels. Most Linux enterprise growth has come at the expense of proprietary Unix, and not so much from Microsoft Windows. But Linux has exercised considerable influence in the datacenter by being open and supporting open standards, and providing interoperability even when proprietary competitors were actively trying to foil it. Now we see vendors who used to be hostile to Linux are now open to it, and have become contributors, and Red Hat and SUSE both deserve credit for helping to make this happen.

Most Important for the Future of Linux Distro: DouDou

Where do Linux gurus come from? From baby newbies. How do baby newbies become gurus? From using DouDou Linux. DouDou is an excellent, safe platform for children to explore and learn skills the fun way. It comes with the superior Gcompris and Childsplay suite of educational software, multimedia production software, and challenging brain games. DouDou is simplified and locked-down, and includes Dan's Guardian for some protection against Internet badness. DouDou is also an good platform for adult beginners.

Best Laptop Linux Distro: Lubuntu

Again I must go with a member of the Ubuntu family. Lubuntu flies on older, less-powerful laptops. Lubuntu is Ubuntu-ized LXDE, which is one of the lightest-weight graphical environments you can use without sacrificing a lot of functionality. You'll get longer battery life, and have more system resources available for more demanding applications such as audio recording or graphics editing.

Best Desktop Linux Distro: Xubuntu

People seem to forget that Ubuntu is much larger than the Unity desktop, and judge all of Ubuntu by that alone. I don't much care for Unity, but I do like the whole *buntu ecosystem. You can reliably upgrade to new releases, which is not true of a lot of desktop-oriented Linuxes. It's engineering brilliance to support multiple distros like Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Server, and all the rest from a common core and common repos, and the only distro with bigger repos is Debian, so you can almost always find what you want. If you can't then you have the giant thundering herd of Ubuntu PPAs (Personal Package Archives) to get software from.