For anyone just starting I highly recommend: "Linux Pocket Guide" and if moving forward adopting linux as a daily driver "Efficient Linux At The Command Line". Both books by Daniel J. Barnett.
Even if you're a seasoned Linux user you will learn a lot from those books.
QQ: even when I use Linux as a daily driver I don’t use the cli much. I heard that getting a cheap vps, set up some popular services, and then exposing it to the Internet actually teaches a lot about sysadmin. Does this make sense?
One big issue for me is that when I use Linux I only use it for a specific purpose, e.g. hacking kernels, and the cli commands are extremely limited. I have been using a Linux box for a year and haven’t learned much TBH.
Absolutely! In my opinion, the only way to learn anything in any meaningful way is to actually do the thing. In the example you described, you'll quickly start jumping into "Wait, how do I configure a firewall?" and discovering ufw et. al.
"The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts is pretty good book for new and experienced command line users. He has also written the supplemental book "Adventures with the Linux Command Line". The author has also generously provided them for free download at https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php.
The pocket is perfect for beginners. It has a nice introduction in chapter 1 that explains all essential concepts to understand and operate the console. Then it is basically a sort of reference of a moderate list of most useful commands for performing different tasks.
The "Efficient" book is an in depth walkthrough of the shell and how to reason and combine important commands to perform not trivial tasks. It is certainly a book to be re-read from time to time because it has plenty of good tricks and explanations.
I can think of a better analogy than littering for pirating an item at more than 1 place. When you litter, you add to the trash. If everyone littered, it would be awful. But if everyone pirated the same content on a different site/platform/protocol, it would still be 1 pirated item.
The better, IMO, analogy, is if you have an ad glued somewhere, say at a bus stop. Another person comes with their ad and wants to glue it. They glue it over the previous ad. The amount of ads visible remains the same. There's a negligible disadvantage for the city - they have to haul away twice as many paper. But most importantly, the amount of visual clutter hasn't been increased if the second ad is glued over the first one.
That analogy works if you're against piracy and ads on public places, of course.
Adobe fixes PDF zero-day security bug that hackers have exploited for months
https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/14/adobe-fixes-pdf-zero-day-security-bug-that-hackers-have-exploited-for-months/
Why is this marked (2019)? Besides the book PDF, everything seems to have been created in a commit 3 weeks ago. The way some things are phrased smells of LLM style as well.
For anyone just starting I highly recommend: "Linux Pocket Guide" and if moving forward adopting linux as a daily driver "Efficient Linux At The Command Line". Both books by Daniel J. Barnett.
Even if you're a seasoned Linux user you will learn a lot from those books.
QQ: even when I use Linux as a daily driver I don’t use the cli much. I heard that getting a cheap vps, set up some popular services, and then exposing it to the Internet actually teaches a lot about sysadmin. Does this make sense?
One big issue for me is that when I use Linux I only use it for a specific purpose, e.g. hacking kernels, and the cli commands are extremely limited. I have been using a Linux box for a year and haven’t learned much TBH.
Absolutely! In my opinion, the only way to learn anything in any meaningful way is to actually do the thing. In the example you described, you'll quickly start jumping into "Wait, how do I configure a firewall?" and discovering ufw et. al.
Love both books by Daniel J. Barrett.
"The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts is pretty good book for new and experienced command line users. He has also written the supplemental book "Adventures with the Linux Command Line". The author has also generously provided them for free download at https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php.
Just a nitpick: Barrett, not Barnett. It's nice to see a new edition of Linux Pocket Guide come out just 2 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Barrett
Thanks for pointing it out! I visually checked the books on the shelf but my eyes tricked me and confused "rr" by "rn".
Thank you for both of these recommendations.
Thank you for the recommendation. Both books seem to about the command line. How are the books different?
The pocket is perfect for beginners. It has a nice introduction in chapter 1 that explains all essential concepts to understand and operate the console. Then it is basically a sort of reference of a moderate list of most useful commands for performing different tasks.
The "Efficient" book is an in depth walkthrough of the shell and how to reason and combine important commands to perform not trivial tasks. It is certainly a book to be re-read from time to time because it has plenty of good tricks and explanations.
You should really remove the entire PDF of the book that you've shared on a public repo. No Starch Press is a gem and worth protecting.
That's the first edition (2019), not the second (2025). But both are in annas archive, anyway
"Someone else has pirated this, so it's OK for me to do it as well" isn't a good argument.
If you see litter on the ground already, that doesn't make it OK to litter more.
I can think of a better analogy than littering for pirating an item at more than 1 place. When you litter, you add to the trash. If everyone littered, it would be awful. But if everyone pirated the same content on a different site/platform/protocol, it would still be 1 pirated item.
The better, IMO, analogy, is if you have an ad glued somewhere, say at a bus stop. Another person comes with their ad and wants to glue it. They glue it over the previous ad. The amount of ads visible remains the same. There's a negligible disadvantage for the city - they have to haul away twice as many paper. But most importantly, the amount of visual clutter hasn't been increased if the second ad is glued over the first one.
That analogy works if you're against piracy and ads on public places, of course.
It's also freely available from https://kea.nu/files/textbooks/humblesec/linuxbasicsforhacke... and plenty other places with a quick search.
first edition is also available on Internet Archive in multiple formats
Not to mention
Why is that relevant? Are you saying that this PDF is infected?
On top of that, who uses Adobe software to read most PDFs?
Here is the Publisher link for the official just released 2nd edition.
https://nostarch.com/linux-basics-hackers-2nd-edition
90s Solaris dude here .. Unix Power Tools was the book that had the most borrow rate in our office ..
I’m fairly sure I downloaded a copy way back when, probably from some BBS, from the other end of the world where I used to live
That, and the Anarchist Cookbook..
Looks like someone just pointed an LLM at the PDF and asked it to write a Markdown version. Very poor show.
I would say knowing linux basics should probably come _before_ identifying as a "hacker"
Why is this marked (2019)? Besides the book PDF, everything seems to have been created in a commit 3 weeks ago. The way some things are phrased smells of LLM style as well.
What has this to do with "hackers"? And can you share your experience in your personal study with "ifconfig" as described in Module 3?
Based on the nearly decade old first edition of the book (2018). I was wondering about the retro vibes.
the kind of post I internet for. A+. thank you
pure rage bait
my comment was genuine it was a helpful post
Just had a quick look, Damn this looks good man!