Slackware Linux Unleashed

A complete Linux guide touches on everything from installation through advanced programming and networking and includes coverage of PPP and guidance on setting up and administering an Internet site. Original. (Advanced).

This Brobdignagian tome has all the usual information on what Slackware Linux is and how to install it, but it also has good tutorials on bash, pdksh, tcsh, vi, emacs, joe, groff, TeX, shell programming, and a bunch of other utilities. In terms of graphical interfaces, Parker and his associates cover XFree86, Motif, OPEN LOOK, and OpenWindows.

Programmers will love this book, as it pays adequate attention to C, C++, Perl, tcl/tk, and a score of other languages. Granted, this section of the book won't teach you how to write C programs, but it will help you figure out what's unique about C and other languages under Slackware Linux. Another section of the book covers advanced programming topics, such as writing network applications under Linux. Online services (including mail, news, FTP, WAIS, Gopher, and the Web) are well documented, and security is discussed, though that's not this book's strongest suit.

Slackware Linux Unleashed wraps up with capsule documentation of many utilities, productivity applications, and games. The companion CD-ROM includes Slackware Linux 3.1 (not the latest release), XFree86 3.2, some compilers, the complete GNU archive, and a book about CGI programming that is in HTML.