This book delivers what the title states: It describes the 101 most important UNIX and Linux commands and system calls. The book bridges the gap between on-line tutorials and manual pages on one hand, and books of 1,000 pages or more that explore the nuances of many shell commands in exhaustive detail. While most of these sources provide excellent information, they do not really solve the plight of the novice user, nor do they fully answer the questions that more experienced, and even expert, users often have. Much of the complexity of UNIX and Linux, and much of the difficulty faced by users is caused by the extremely large and rich set of shell commands, many of which have a very large set of allowable options that, while useful in certain circumstances, often provide more frustration than help because of their complexity. Many UNIX and Linux system calls are also complex, and have interactions that can be rather difficult for many programmers.
About the Author: I recently retired from being a professor of computer science at Howard University for over 25 years, with 9 as a department chair. (I was a math professor for 16 years before that.) While I was department chair, we sent more students to work at Microsoft in the 2004-5 academic year than any other college or university in the United States. We also established a graduate certificate program in computer security, which became the largest certificate program at the university. I had major responsibility for working with technical personnel to keep our department's hundreds of computers functional and virus-free, while providing email service to several hundred users. We had to withstand constant hacker attacks and we learned how to reduce the vulnerability of our computer systems. As a scholar/researcher, I studied complex computer systems and their behavior when attacked or faced with heavy, unexpected loads. I wrote five books on computing, from particular programming languages, to the internal structure of sophisticated operating systems, to the development and efficient creation of highly complex applications. My long-term experience with computers has helped me understand the nature of many of the computer attacks by potential identity thieves and, I hope, be able to explain them and how to defend against them, to a general audience of non-specialists. More than 3,500 people have attended my lectures on identity theft; many others have seen them on closed-circuit television. I have written more than twenty books, and more than 120 technical articles. I was the editor or co-editor of the Maryland Genealogical Society Journal for many years. Books by Ronald J. Leach Using C in Software Design Using C in Software Design, Second Edition Advanced Topics in UNIX Advanced Topics in UNIX, Second Edition The 101 Most Important UNIX and Linux Commands Software Reuse: Methods, Models, Costs Software Reuse: Methods, Models, Costs, Second Edition Fastest Paths to a Job in the Computer Industry Object-Oriented Design and Programming in C++ Introduction to Software Engineering Data Recovery Identity Theft in the Cyber Age Twelve and a Half Steps to Avoid Identity Theft Introduction to Software Engineering Introduction to Software Engineering, Second Edition (2016) The Bible as a Manual for Identity Theft Recovering from Identity Theft Relative Genealogy Genealogy for the Information Age Why 2K? Eat Kids At School Secrets of Pricing Your eBook