Reddit reviews A Practical Guide to Linux

I've got about 17 years' worth of experience as a Linux systems admin. A lot of the newer distros are pretty end-user friendly, but if you want to get a good reference to what's under the hood, grab Sobell's book, A Practical Guide to Linux Yes, that book was published in 1997, but its foundation is still rock-solid.

There's no "easy" way to learn Linux. The fun part is being able to fix what's broken. Or break what works... Get your hands dirty and go for it. Try "live CDs" and play around.

I cut my teeth on Debian Slink, on a computer I had cut grass and performed yard work in exchange for. I remember fighting, trying to get X to work on the monitor that I had got with it, which did not have any sort of documentation for it. I think twm was the default window manager at that time (and I didn't know of other window managers), so when I kind of got X running, it was pretty ugly.

I had a pretty crappy dialup connection, so I ordered my CDs from Linux Central along with Sobel's A Practical Guide to Linux. I think I still have the CDs, as a souvenir, if you will.

For cash-in-pocket noobs who like to have a book in hand I'd recommend any of these books by Mark G. Sobell.

A Practical Guide to Linux
Old (1997) but takes you from the basics to intermediate.

A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, 4th. Ed.
Also covers the basics but it's more focused on those subjects included in the title.

A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux, 4th. Ed
I have no experience with this book but I'm including it for completeness.

A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 7th. Ed.
Same. No experience.