Thank you for checking in. Your points make perfect sense. I guess as an owner of both already (for historical reasons), there are some points of coverage that are more complete and more detailed in the USAH versus the LAH which is where I was coming from. Both texts (as I mentioned) are excellent independent resources.

All the best,
CMS

I’d like to address Christopher’s comments regarding the duplication of content between Linux Administration Handbook and our other book, UNIX System Administration Handbook. Just to be clear, LAH IS a Linux-specific edition of USAH. That’s the explicit intention, and I’m sorry if anyone has been led to believe otherwise. The page count of the book has only a modest influence on the sticker price, so I hope that readers won’t begrudge any cross-coverage on that basis.

Our goal was to make each of these books as complete as possible, so that the majority of readers need buy only one edition or the other. The alternative would be to force readers to buy two books just to get the coverage that’s currently included in LAH alone. (Besides, if LAH were not a stand-alone book, how would you know which parts of USAH to rely on and which to ignore? Every line of LAH has been fact-checked against current Linux systems–even the parts that LAH shares with USAH.)

Rather than maintaining two overlapping books, we’d prefer to be producing a single book for the universal world of UNIX and Linux. Unfortunately, the ever-broadening divergence among the variants of UNIX and Linux has rendered that approach impractical.

I had always mentioned and known the series of this book as red, yellow, purple, green book. I am glad to know the new color.

I am eager to get my copy and I am sure this will be the best of the series so far, like every new edition all these years.

See also http://www.admin.com

I am trying to setup my computer and my niece’s computer with an O/S program that will be capable of music, video, game and graphics download. I am a mechanical engineering student and my niece is a dental hygenist and both are looking for something that would meet our requirements. Particularly myself since I would be looking something that will support my engineering designs and projects to include video clips among other things. Your explanation of the book makes it sound promising, but I am still in the beginner stage of Linux. Please advise. Thanks.