Hardcore system admin people may find that there is too much padding introduction to what they are after (although almost half of the book is devoted to basic system admin, network admin, and administrative services), but for most users of Unix, this is a guide that is very good. Mastering Unix targeted at people using one of three renditions of the most popular Unix (Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux everywhere), and it is a real strength of the book that Linux and open source properly explained and contextualised. Unix history briefly but completely run through, and then the book describes the structure of the OS and how to use the files and directories. Although the size of the book, the text never feel complete, and although this may not be a Unix only book to consider having on your desk, would be among them. Very useful CD-ROM contains the Gnome and KDE desktop environments and a number of Unix servers and utilities, including Samba, Apache, Sendmail, GNU Emacs, Perl, and NEdit.