It’s a very straightforward book.  The introduction opens with a promise not to waste space showing how to compile OpenSSH in text.  Chapter 2 ends with the sentence, “Now that you understand how SSH encryption works, leave the encryption settings alone.”  This stripping-down of the usual tech-book explanations gives it the immediacy of extended documentation on the Internet.  Not the multipage how-to articles used as vehicles for advertising, but an in-depth presentation from someone who used OpenSSH to do a number of things, and paid attention while doing it.

It’s a fun read, and there’s a good chance it covers an aspect of SSH that you didn’t know.  In my case, it’s the ability to attach a command to a public key used for login.  It even covers complex-but-oh-so-useful VPN setups via SSH.

If you’re looking for philosophical reasons to buy it, how about the lack of DRM?

The physical version is not available yet, but the electronic version is available at Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), or from Smashwords (every other format ever, including .txt).  The Smashwords variety of formats means that you’ll be able to read it on your phone, one way or another; I’d like to see more books that way in the future.

• I’ve linked to this site before, but not this specific feature: History of UNIX manpages.   Part of the formatting that makes up man pages dates back to 1964!  ‘roff’ comes from RUNOFF, the original markup!  This is the perfect mix of history, nerditry, and language for me.
• Hubert Feyrer says there should be BSD Certification training material.  I agree.
• That’s the spiffiest TWM I’ve ever seen, and it’s on DragonFly.  Found at the same place: Bash.
• Hey, Michael Lucas is planning for his next book!
• Developer error HTTP status codes.  (via)  What’s the geekiest joke I can still find funny?
• I like it when computers look like serious computers.  (via luxh on #dragonflybsd)

Your totally unrelated video link of the week: The Necronomicon.  Pitch perfect.

I was talking to a relative today who works at a large financial company, which is standardizing on Red Hat Enterprise.  I find it strange that Red Hat, which has a lot of money behind it, still ships a years-old and arguably broken version of perl.   By using pkgsrc, you’re getting more up-to-date software than people that actually shell out money for the privilege of compiling software.

http://avalon.dragonflybsd.org/iso-images/

I read it despite my knee-jerk reaction, and I didn’t need to reject it so suddenly.  Almost all of the book will apply to any Unix-like system.

My first real experience with something that wasn’t Windows or a Mac was at a summer job during college, sitting in front of a SparcStation 5 editing files and processing data for real estate.  Much of my muscle memory about vi and file manipulation dates from then.  This book, even though it’s technically for a different operating system, would have been just what I needed.  There’s no system administration in the book, just making your way around a filesystem and the tools you need to get results.  It’s the kind of skills I think people lose out on when they boot to a graphical interface in Ubuntu, for example, and then never experience these tools.

Negatives: a few areas won’t be of use to most BSD users, like the section on packaging, or the bash-centric instructions in the shell programming area.  There’s the occasional off comment, like that OpenSSH originates from “the BSD project”.  There’s surprisingly little of this however, and I had to think a bit to write this negative paragraph.

Positives:  The book puts the proper focus on some complex but rewarding aspects of command line use, like using vi (alright, vim) and understanding regular expressions.  Much of what it covers is the same material I’ve learned to use over time, and explained to others.

There’s clearly two areas to the book; the first half is about using the command line to accomplish work, and the second is about shell programming.  Making it at least through the first half will result in being able to work at a prompt with little issue, with the shell programming a nice bonus.  It’s not the normal mix of admin tasks and introductory text; it’s about working at the command line.  I imagine giving it to new software testers in a lab, or to a Windows user that has to deal with the occasional unfamiliar environment.  There isn’t an equivalent BSD-centric book like this, so it wouldn’t hurt a BSD user, either.

It’s available now at the No Starch website.

(David Shao, where are you?  If you’re reading this, hop into #dragonflybsd and tell us how things are going with your GEM/KMS work)

• Here’s some interesting ideas on improving the standard terminal window.  (via)
• Hey, a Windows Phone application that aggregates BSD news!  Including this one, I think.  No way to test it because Windows Phones are rarer than hen’s teeth.
• This article about Bruce Perens has some good quotes in it – especially the Mark Shuttleworth one.  (via)
• I think these computers all predate the integrated circuit.  (via)
• How Google Code Search Worked.  (via)
• The Rise and Fall of Personal Computing.  (via)  I don’t think the numbers used are accurate, but the trend is correct: a lot more people are computing through devices that are “walled gardens”, where they can’t install what they want.
• The App Store Guide – Take Two.  It boils down to: Curated information on what programs to run is very useful.  Someone could do this with pkgsrc or ports, easily.  pkgsrc.se is sorta there, but not really with any sort of authorial voice.
• Variable typing can be surprisingly funny.  (via)  The final punchline is great but may not make sense unless you’ve seen where it comes from.
• Network jokes are the bestest jokes.  (via)

Your unrelated comics link for the week: Tom Neely‘s Doppelganger.  Page 11 is my favoritest.

Another unrelated thing: David Shao, are you out there?  Can you get on IRC (EFNet #dragonflybsd) and help some people out with GEM/KMS questions?  Nobody’s been able to find you.