Solved [Solved] New FreeBSD book is coming

Re: New FreeBSD book is coming

fred974 said:
I just came across this book on Amazon: "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Impl...e=UTF8&qid=1406829953&sr=8-1&keywords=freebsd
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Yes, it was mentioned in another very recent thread here.

fred974 said:
I was just wondering if anyone has heard of it and knows if it will be any good for newbies. From what I read on the Amazon description it looks to be aimed at the more experienced user.
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As the title suggests, it describes the inner workings of FreeBSD: facilities, techniques, algorithms, that sort of thing. It's not so much aimed at end users, or even administrators who just need to keep their systems running. It's more for developers and other people who understand (or wish to learn) what goes on inside an operating system: memory management, resource allocation, CPU scheduling, device drivers, the networking stack etc.

I'll go out on a limb and say that it's a darn good read for its target audience, but will probably be very frustrating if you're not part of that audience.
 
Re: New FreeBSD book is coming

Hi @fonz,

Sorry for duplicating the post and thank you very much for the extra info. I don't think it will really be for me then. I need a beginner's version :)
 
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Re: New FreeBSD book is coming

fred974 said:
I need a beginner's version :)
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If you're looking for a good book for users and beginning administrators, you might want to check out The Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey. Parts of it are somewhat dated (it was written way back in the 3.X days, possibly predating the Handbook, but I'm not entirely sure), but it's very well-written and it's available (legally!) for free download: http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/CFBSD/
 
Re: New FreeBSD book is coming

I have the first edition [of the book mentioned by the OP -- mod.]. The system operation is just a chapter starting at page 591. That's the first bit good for a beginner admin as it deals with how the system boots, starts services, and gets a login prompt up. Even then there's a bunch of technical stuff intermingled. If you want to learn about OS design it's a great book. It's not like there's an equivalent design and implementation of the Linux operating system book out there in which you can read about top to bottom design of an OS.
 
For a newbie to (Free)BSD, either The Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey, a bit dated, or Absolute BSD by Michael Lucas, a new version should be out soon, if not already. Another book I found interesting when I started is BSD Hacks by Dru Lavigne.
 
bsdkeith said:
Another book I found interesting when I started is BSD Hacks by Dru Lavigne.
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I have that one and I concur. It's not really a tutorial or manual, essentially it's just a big bag of tips and tricks. Definitely recommended for beginners and even more experienced users/admins are likely to find something interesting in there.
 
@@bsdkeith -- Those books are not meant to be free: the site you linked to is a site for pirated e-books.

Those books (and a number of other books about FreeBSD and OpenBSD) are available from No Starch Press: http://www.nostarch.com/catalog/linuxbsdunix

Please consider supporting the authors that write books about BSD so they'll continue to do so.
 
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@@@jackp If they are pirated, then inform NoStarch; I already have bought the books myself.
 
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Another really good resource for newbies is the 'FreeBSD Basics' article site at http://www.onlamp.com/pub/ct/15. Over 100+ articles written by Dru Lavigne, who also curated the BSD Hacks book mentioned earlier. The articles were originally written between 2000 and 2006 so some will be slightly out of date (MS-DOS, floppy drives etc) but the majority are excellent and well worth taking the time to read.
 
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