Linux Programmer's Reference: Amazon.co.uk: Richard Petersen: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

Linux Programmer's Reference, Second Edition is a difficult book type to carry off successfully. If complete, it will run to thousands of pages. If it isn't complete, what information should be included?

For this relatively small book (400 pages in a small format), author Richard Peterson has pruned his topic ruthlessly. The first three chapters cover shell programming in Bash, TCSH and Z. (These could have done with a little more pruning: there's too much repetition, and Bash would have been enough). Chapter four covers the gcc compiler, libraries, debuggers and packagers--all in 50 pages. It's assumed you're already competent in C and C++. In effect, you get an overview of the built-in programming tools of Gnu/Linux. Chapter five introduces higher-level programming utilities including make and the revision control system. Chapter six provides an overview of Gnome programming with GTK+, Glib and GDK so naturally chapter seven does the same for KDE and Qt. The appendices cover Perl, TCl/Tk and TeX/LaTeX. (Why not Python? The selection here seems somewhat arbitrary.)

Linux Programmer's Reference, Second Edition is aimed at programmers who need a quick reminder or pointer to areas outside their normal work. On balance, despite good, accurate information, this book is overly ambitious. For example, although the publisher claims on the cover that readers will "Master the features of kernel 2.2", the word "kernel" doesn't appear in the index. While it may be useful to have around, Linux Programmer's Reference, Second Edition isn't a kernel programmer's reference.--Steve Patient

Product Description

The new Linux kernel 2.2 became available earlier this year. The two main distributors of Linux: Red Hat and Caldera Open Systems released their updated distributions of Linux, based on the 2.2 Kernel this Spring. We have a logical opportunity to update this existing Programmer's Reference based on the new kernel 2.2 and maximize sales opportunities
-- Everyone is aware of how popular Linux has become in the past year. There were 12 million Linux users in 1998, 7.5 million users in 1997, and it is estimated that there will be more than 15 million users by the end of 1999. With the increase in popularity, more programmers will need a quick reference where they can look up information based on the latest version of the Linux kernel.
-- We have sold 10,000 units of the first edition of the book since it published in June 1998. Other books in the series such as SQL, HTML, VB6, and C++ have sold an average of 20,000 units each. We are adding over 100 pages to this edition and raising the series price to $19.99. We are launching three revisions for the January/February timeframe: Java, Linux, and SQL.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

A Good user guide, but not a programmer's reference 6 Nov 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I was very disappointed with this book. It seemed to be documenting the user interface to a Linux system rather than providing reference information on designing or writing programs for Linux. It concerns itself more with the tools, and even there only provides an introduction to each tool rather then a reference.

Maybe my expectations were wrong, but the programmer's references I own for DOS contain details of the DOS & BIOS API calls, those for OS/2 contain details of the OS/2 API etc. They assume that you already know how to program, and provide information on the specifics of writing programs for that particular operating system. I was expecting that Linux Programmer's Reference would do the same for Linux.

On a more positive note, it provides a good reference on shell commands. Even there, I did not find it as good as Linux in a Nutshell.

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essentail reference guide for those who use Linux 13 May 2000

This is a handy book for those who are new to the Linux OS. It lists essential keywords, commands and functions needed for application use or development. For those who wish to design and compile their own Linux kernel or applications the insight to the development tools is concise and non-complex. There is also a reference to those who are familiar with Perl, LateX and Tcl/Tk.

Superb reference for the experienced developer 14 Nov 1999

This is a great text for those who are already experienced developers, but who need a desktop reference for stuff like shell scripting, RCS management, RPM, make and autoconf as well as gcc options. Great reference material, but certainly not useful for the beginner or casual user.