Linux Resources

This is a collection of resources that you may or may not find useful. I have tried to organize them according to their usefulness to particular types of users.

General Linux Resources

A fundamental one is the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) at http://www.linuxdoc.org/. Here, you will find many links to documents that explain pretty much everything there is to know about Linux. This is where I start when looking for Linux-specific documentation.
A set of various guides can be found on the LDP site at http://www.linuxdoc.org/guides.html.

Resources For Beginners (a.k.a.~Newbies) and General Users

For beginners, there are a couple of guides that may be useful:

The Rute Users Tutorial and Exposition. I have not used this or looked it over, so I can't say how good it is.
Learning the UNIX Operating System, 4th Edition
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lunix4/index.html

Resources For General Users

The Linux User's Guide. I haven't looked at this either.
UNIX Power Tools, 2nd Edition
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/upt2/
This is a reference about UNIX system programs.

Resources For Systems-Level Programmers

For people who will be programming using system calls.

The Linux Programmer's Guide explains how to do systems-level programming under linux. It can be obtained in various formats.

Resources For General Users

Resources Pertaining to Text Editors

Text Editors are used to write ASCII text files. These editors are generally useful, and can thus be used to write source code for programs, HTML documents, LaTeX document sources, whatever. In other words, they are not part of some larger application such as the built-in editors for things like Visual C++.

vi is a full-screen text editor found on almost every UNIX-based system. This book covers how to use it:
Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/vi6/
Here is a short, small reference on vi:
vi Editor Pocket Reference
by Arnold Robbins
O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.
emacs is a much more powerful editor with a different feel. Most people like vi or emacs, not both. I use them both, depending on the type of editing I'm doing. This book covers emacs:
Learning GNU Emacs, 2nd Edition http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/gnu2/
Here is a short, small reference on emacs:
GNU Emacs Pocket Reference
by Debra Cameron
O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.

A Note on Hardcopy Resources

There are a large number of books available concerning Linux. As a general rule, third-party books are either out-of-date or simply rehash the online documentation. This is not always the case, but you should probably look at the resources that are available on-line before spending a lot of money on hardcopy books. There are very few "secrets" in the Linux world, as almost everything is freely available somewhere as source code.

Most, if not all, of the books I have listed here are published by O'Reilly and Associates (www.ora.com), which has a history of printing some very good references. I'm not saying that any of these are particularly good as beginning texts (I haven't read many of them), and I'm not saying that you should run out and buy any of these, but they probably aren't bad and may be a good investment as references.

I'm sure that there are other perfectly good books out there by other perfectly good publishers, so don't pass a good book by because it wasn't published by O'Reilly. I'm just saying that I have usually been satisfied with the O'Reilly books that I have read.

As for the out-of-date comment, Linux is a continually evolving operating system constructed of many continually-evolving parts. These parts are not necessarily Linux-specific, and many have their own histories. Many are also maintained by people with their own agendas. Because of this, and the fact that it takes time to prepare and publish a book, many of the hardcopy books available don't apply to the current version of Linux or its parts. This is a good reason to start by looking at the on-line documentation first.