Mark G. Sobell's freshly revised reference work on Ubuntu Linux may be the most impressive computer book I've seen in the last 10 years. If you are currently stranded with a pile of abandoned computers on a desert isle, I'm telling you, this is the book.
When my review copy arrived, I met the postman at the door, and immediately wondered who might have sent me a box full of lead fishing weights. Or perhaps it was shotgun shells, I guessed, hefting the package. Opening it, I found instead 1,200+ large-format pages, on high-quality paper, all obsessively cross-referenced and indexed to a "T".
All the other Ubuntu books (well, both of them) that have crossed my desk have been quickly shuffled off to newby friends whose commitment to acquiring deep Unix knowledge I frankly doubted. I originally planned to do the same with this one. However, I don't think that's going to work out. I'm going to have to keep this one around. In times like these, you never know when you might find yourself stranded on a desert isle, surrounded by piles of abandoned PCs.
