Handbook

I am a handbook man. I find it easy to remember technical details I've seen on paper in writing. That's how I learnt LaTeX, HTML and Gnuplot among others. Is there anything out there for Linux on the PI? Of course those will be third party and cost money, I have not problem with that.

But all those new gadgets that come without a paper handbook that you can underline, stick markers on and write notes on, with those I do have problems.

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Reply to
Axel Berger
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What subjects are you looking for coverage of, e.g. Linux, command shells, programming languages?

I'm the same: I much prefer books to screens for reference.

My choices for a knowledgeable Linux programmer's library boil down to:

- Kernighan & Richie "The C Programming Language" edition backed up by "Systems Programming for UNIX SVR4" - the first is the most readable book about a programming language that I know, yet is still a good reference book. The latter gives excellent coverage of the library functions needed for accessing files, TCPIB, date&time, interprocess comms, async i/o etc etc. Its ages old: I got my copy in 1999, and yet is still the go-to book for discovering which library functions to use for an unfamiliar task and how best to use them.

Add Kernighan & Pike's "The Practise of Programming" if you're new to the art and want to know how to write programs that are well structured as well as easy to maintain and debug.

I still haven't found anything nearly as good for Java or any other programming language, except "A very Informal Introduction to Algol 68", which is the only manual that has made me laugh out loud.

- for a professional or serious amateur Sedgewick's "Algorithms" belongs in your library too. All its code examples are in Pascal, but that's generally easy to translate on the fly into C, Java or any other block-structured language: if you need to know things like how to write a sort or to implement any of the common tree structures then this can save you a huge amount of time an messing about,

- almost anything else that I've found useful has been published by O'Reilly: - the 'Camel' book "Programming Perl" for Perl programming and general reference - 'Sed & Awk' for learning to use these useful scripting tools, especially awk.

- 'Unix in a nutshell' or 'Linux in a nutshell" is concise and really useful if you know another OS well and want to get up to speed on Linux, but not recommended if you don't know any other OS, when you'd probabably be better off with "Linux for Dummies" (not an O'Reilly title).

Sitting alongside these I think you really need to bookmark these:

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And finally, located right on your RPi, you really should find out how to use the following tools:

- 'man' - the manpage reader)

- 'apropos' - get lists of utility programs and standard library procedures that are installed on your system and relevant for what you're trying to do.

- 'updatedb' - refreshes the catalogue that 'apropos' searches.

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Reply to
Kiwi User

In article (Dans l'article) ,

"The Ultimate Raspberry Pi Handbook"

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Jean-Pierre Kuypers

Languages are a separate topic and usually well supplied for. But I know next to nothing about the basics. What I have heard is that all setup tend to reside in ASCII files. I expect those to be well commented. What I do not know is what setup files there are, where they reside, and what each is responsible for.

Next I heard that Linux uses a standardized directory structure, parts of which I'm free to abuse and parts I should leave well alone. I have no idea what they are and which is which.

Standard shell is of course important too. I'm accustomed to 4DOS and will need to learn new vocabulary and grammar. (At least that will be much easier than then the Hebrew I'm struggling with in vain.)

And of course on top of vanilla Linux everything PI specific especially hardware interfaces with drivers and APIs.

Danke Axel

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Reply to
Axel Berger

True: all are ASCII files. Global settings are in /etc if the programs are supplied in one the distro's standard packages and/or packages from a recognised 3rd party library and *should* be in /usr/local/etc if you've downloaded source or developed the code yourself.

Most documentation for packaged programs ends up in /usr/share/docs and can be quite extensive.

Some is, some isn't.

This should be described in the manpage for the program or library function. If the configuration files are complex, there's often a manpage documenting it as well.

Really complex utilities (Apache webserver, Postfix MTA, the named DNS server are examples) have books written about them, often published by O'Reilly.

Correct. Go and look at a copy of 'Linux for Dummies' and/or sysadmin books in a good bookstore and pick the one you're happiest with. Despite the title, the "...for Dummies" series seem to be quite well regarded, but you need to decide for yourself because some of the so-called 'System Administration' books for UNIX/Linux I've run into have been diabolically bad.

The de-facto standard these days is the 'bash' shell, but there are a bunch of them. 'sh' and 'csh' were among the first, with 'ksh' following on from it, so check out the 'bash' books as well.

Much of that is well enough wrapped in standardised system code that you don't need to bother too much about it. I expect almost that anything I write on my laptop or house server (Lenovo laptop and AMD Athlon PC, both running RedHat Fedora Linux) and run there in user space will compile and run on my RPi without any errors or source changed being needed.

Of course, if you're adding hardware expansion cards or using I2C serial links to other devices, then the above assumption may not be correct because there may be no standard libraries for supporting them on anything except a Raspberry, Arduino board or similar hardware.

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Reply to
Kiwi User

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some basic info but the whole thing does feel like an afterthought. Probably a useful introduction for (Linux) newbies.

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but published in Sep 2016 so doesn't cover new Raspbian based on Debian Stretch with its systemd "don't think just surrender" approach to system administration. Still useful in other areas but not exactly written as an academic text.

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from 2009 but still great as a basic reference.

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online not paper (I guess you can print them, the 2nd one has compiled versions from their index page) but essential references for Bash work.

Reply to
A. Dumas

Yes, great book, but no need to pay those crazy prices on Amazon. It is available as a free pdf :

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Reply to
Bob Martin

He did say he wanted a paper book! Ok, I also linked other digital publications of which I said they could be printed ...

Reply to
A. Dumas

Oh, more importantly, that doesn't seem like a legitimately free download (I guess the .br domain was a clue). Pay for work you value.

Reply to
A. Dumas

depends on which linux distribution you're running on your raspi. if you've chosen raspbian, I can recommend the Debian Administrator's Handbook:

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gregor

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Reply to
gregor herrmann

What isn't free about it?

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Reply to
rickman

The heavy burden on your conscience of the authors dying from starvation because you stole the food from their plate.

Reply to
A. Dumas

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