From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Oct 15 3:41:29 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from palrel3.hp.com (palrel3.hp.com [156.153.255.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 89475151B9 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 03:41:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from steveroo@mothra.bri.hp.com) Received: from mothra.bri.hp.com (steveroo@mothra.bri.hp.com [15.144.1.185]) by palrel3.hp.com (8.8.6 (PHNE_17135)/8.8.5tis) with ESMTP id DAA12872; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 03:41:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (steveroo@localhost) by mothra.bri.hp.com with ESMTP (8.8.6 (PHNE_17135)/8.7.1) id LAA14119; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:39:54 +0100 (BST) Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:39:54 +0100 (BST) From: Stephen Roome To: Greg Lehey Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Orielly book In-Reply-To: <19991015150724.07602@mojave.lemis.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Firstly, I must say that none of this was because I would personally like an O'Reilly (or anyone else) book on FreeBSD. I don't think I currently need one, although an up to date book about how the kernel works (that I can easily obtain in the UK) would be nice. [I'd probably buy any book anyway - just for bookshelf usage.] (Secondly, sorry for the length of this email, I'm better with C than english - and that's not saying much.) On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Greg Lehey wrote: > > AFAIK the orielly books are fairly technical generally, maybe for Linux they > > can afford to produce a couple of simple "here's a getting started guide" type > > books, but probably not for FreeBSD. > > Well, I'm an O'Reilly author ("Porting UNIX Software"), and I > disagree. I'd say that, for example, Addison-Wesley are more > technical. Okay, from the point of view of being a student at university, most of the books I remember reading (as mandatory course books) were Addison Wesley or Prentice Hall (I think that's right for the second one - but these could have been for Physics or math modules). However the only books I can honestly say I've bought since University were some of the O'Reilly X11 books and I almost bought the perl book, until I realised that the binary docs were good enough. Personally I prefer online documentation, but O'Reilly seem to have more of a reputation for technical books in the (perhaps small) circles I move. Which is why I mentioned O'Reilly (and because of the article/letter on the web from Tim O.) I think the focus on O'Reilly follows the "O'Reilly book on Internet Porn" joke picture that someone sent me. They do, whether accurate or not, have a reputation amongst some people (me included) for being those folks who write (all?) the computer books. > The real problem with O'Reilly is that they had a disaster with the > 4.4BSD manuals, and it took a long time for them to realise that this > wasn't BSD's fault. I suppose to any publisher this counts as a new genre, and large companies (and therefore any serious publishing house) rarely break new ground. [IVMHO it's mainly the small companies that do this.] > > Bearing in mind they'll want to make some money on it, it's probably > > fair, however it would be in FreeBSD's interests to probably put > > this high priority. > > OK, for the sake of discussion, which publisher do you people prefer? > Addison Wesley or O'Reilly? I'm also discussing a book with AW, and I > could do with some input. So, personally I'd prefer O'Reilly, because in my little world they seem to carry more weight. Admittedly and Addison Wesley book might be better, but I can't think of anyone who'd collect all Addison Wesley books, whereas there are people/companies who might consider buying an entire set of O'Reilly books for a computing library. This would be good/better for FreeBSD, and that was my intent. Steve To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message