This small book is pleasant to handle and browse. It is part of a collection of similar books generally dealing with programming languages (JavaScript, Ruby, Java, Python). But in the case of Linux, this reduces what can be explained to what can be done without any graphic interface, in the way we used Unix on a teletype or a Flexowriter in the 1980s. We did many things indeed, and many of the current complicated graphic applications are simply wrappers for single commands with many options. Consider for example ffmpeg with its more than 50 options, and the poor graphic interfaces trying to make it usable.

But you cannot do everything only by typing long piped commands and never using your mouse, and readers should be warned that they need to read other books in order to know enough about Linux.

Admittedly, readers of this book are supposed to already know a little about Linux, and only need to be refreshed about the most arcane intricacies. I have used Unix and Linux for more than 30 years, and this book taught me a lot. But assuming that all readers know what a shell is or what it means to source a file is maybe a little too much.

This is a second edition, and clearly the author felt constrained by the maximum size asked for by the publisher. Thus, he removed some parts between editions, and redirects readers to his personal website for the missing material. Similarly, when explaining something that would need too much space, he refers to the corresponding Wikipedia page, which is rather disappointing.

The author probably composed the book using a simple text editor, without cross-reference capabilities and without tools for managing the book structure and its changes. Using LaTeX would have been much better for referring readers to page numbers instead of long titles, for example.

Another poor choice is the width of the pages, and especially the embedded examples, which are only 8 centimeters (cm) wide. The result is that more than one half of the lines are too long and must be folded, increasing in fact the length of the examples. With examples one cm wider, the book could have been shorter, or more complete in the same number of pages.

Organizing the succession of 16 chapters is a challenge, and the author failed to manage an order that prevents using a concept before it is covered. On the contrary, this problem occurs very frequently, and it is made more acute by the lack of references leading to a page number.

The general style is pleasant, with frequent jokes and a little petty chatter in many cases. Many examples are taken from unexpected areas, like jazz music, 17th century British literature, or H. P. Lovecraft books.

The number of mistakes is rather annoying in a reference book. Using Linux as the first name of Torvalds is maybe a joke, but others are more serious. I counted at least a dozen of them.

This does not prevent me from recommending this book to anybody wanting to use one’s keyboard more than one’s mouse or touchpad.

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