From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Wed May 2 15:01:39 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F23CD16A400 for ; Wed, 2 May 2007 15:01:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Received: from ezekiel.daleco.biz (southernuniform.com [66.76.92.18]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A59313C447 for ; Wed, 2 May 2007 15:01:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Received: from archangel.daleco.biz ([69.27.149.254]) by ezekiel.daleco.biz (8.13.8/8.13.1) with ESMTP id l42F1atU035188; Wed, 2 May 2007 10:01:37 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Message-ID: <4638A7C8.5050304@daleco.biz> Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 10:01:28 -0500 From: Kevin Kinsey User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070418 SeaMonkey/1.1.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jim Stapleton References: <80f4f2b20705011157t7ea3ff86yc7fd5dd76625a928@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <80f4f2b20705011157t7ea3ff86yc7fd5dd76625a928@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: thinking of freebsd public literature X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 15:01:40 -0000 Jim Stapleton wrote: > I notice a dearth of FreeBSD books by various publishers. It might > help to have a nice book out by a big publisher. Any interested in > and/or knowledgeable enough to write a book for O'Reilly Press (or > some other big company, but they seem to be top dog for a lot of tech > books). I could help to an extent, but I'm not heavily knowledgeable > enough about security, and really have only been using the OS for > about a year. > > -Jim Stapleton Hmm, "Grog" (Greg) Lehey has "The Complete FreeBSD". The original version is very old, but he updates it and has had several updated editions published. He recently released the sources and compiled formats via an F/OSS license (CCL?); I can't exactly remember his reasons (anniversary of original publication, I think?) for doing so, but it's a fine book and a canonical reference. Michael Lucas has been a prolific author --- Absolute (pre)BSD, with versions of "Open" and others[?] for (pre). (And the original, IIRC, was simply "Absolute BSD" but I don't remember which Projects he concentrated on). I believe these are published by O'Reilly. Note that FreeBSD (like most projects of its nature) is quite the moving target, and many readers seem to prefer a short "how-to" (which varies somewhat from release to release) as opposed to a larger more in-depth text. This could, perhaps, explain the situation to some extent? The BSD Certification Group (bsdcertification.org) has a BSD Associate's Courseware DVD which contains Project docs, Lehey's book, and more. A collaborative effort to write a book/study guide has been online at bsdwiki.reedmedia.net. I don't believe we met our deadlines, but I assume that it's still a valid WIP. Finally, check out the thread "Is FreeBSD simple enough for Novices, Will FreeBSD accept Office 98 + Publisher" currently ending on questions@. Ted Mittelstaedt (author of "The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide", published by Addison-Wesley) gives an analysis that might also help to explain the "dearth of FreeBSD books by various publishers" in the last post. HTH, Kevin Kinsey -- Surprise due today. Also the rent.