Life with UNIX: A Guide for Everyone
The difference between Unix system administrators and Unix  gurus is that the gurus understand the system, while the  administrators merely know how to use it.Life with Unix: A Guide  for Everyoneis a joy to read, and it will help you recognize Unix  as more of a living entity and less of a mere operating system.First, the book relates information about Unix's origins at Bell Labs  and its subsequent free distribution among academic sites. The text  provides an overview of the various vendors that shaped Unix (at  least, those vendors that were a big deal in the late 1980s) and a  guide to Unix documentation (mainly in the form of books and  journals). Then, the authors approach Unix from three points of view:  those of the user, the programmer, and the administrator. For each  point of view, the authors point out useful commands and write  extensively on the best ways to use them.This book shows its  age--it was written in 1989--in its chapters about Unix's  "present" status and about networking. The information about  Usenet is dated, and there's no mention of Solaris or the relative  merits of Unix and Windows NT. Still, these shortcomings don't  overshadow the book's strengths, which makeLife with Unix: A Guide  for Everyonea good side dish for any strong Unix  reference.--David Wall