review by
Jerry Singleton, October 2004

This is the thickest Pocket Guide I've seen yet, with some 180 pages of content. Yet, it is still not complete - it is billed as Essential Commands. Also, it specifically covers Fedora Linux, although I don't see that as a particular problem, as Fedora has a lot of commonality with other Linux distributions.

The books starts with a guided tour for beginners. There are 40 chapters of only a few pages each, grouping commands by function, so information is easy to find for the more experienced Linux user. At the beginning of each chapter is a short list and description of each command covered - if you want to look directly for a specific command, you'll need to use the index. Each command has both details and examples.

I have a rather large, thick book of man pages, which this little gem is now replacing. I am sure I will get much more use out of the Pocket Guide.