How to Use This Book

When You Know Exactly What You Need

For the advanced users who know exactly what command they are after and are looking only for examples or command line options, the book has two command indexes:

all commands are indexed in the back of the book, as are term definitions, procedures, and the rest of the content.

there is a second index in the front for executable programs only.

When You Know What You Need But Not What It's Called

Did you ever find yourself digging around looking for a command that you know must exist, only you don't have any idea what it might be called? Back when I was in school I clearly remember fumbling around for an hour trying to figure out what command I'd use to lower the priority of a running process. There was nothing in the man pages under "priority" or "process," but I knew it had to be out there somewhere.

This book is arranged by concept. If you want to find out how to do something with filesystems, flip to the chapter on filesystems. In each chapter, there's a brief discussion of relevant terms and concepts, followed by a one-line summary of all the relevant commands, a list of related files, and finally a complete listing of the commands with options and examples.

When You're Just Getting Started

This book explains all of the basic concepts you need to understand to use your Linux system. If you're not familiar with particular terms, they are defined in the text and indexed in the back. There's also a glossary. For every command, there is at least one example. For the more popular or confusing commands, there are frequently two or more. Where I thought it would be helpful, I included diagrams and sample output.