Paul Love et al. Beginning Unix (2005)

     Paul Love et al. Beginning Unix (2005) A nicely laid out and easy to follow introduction to the OS that will perhaps eventually displace Windows. Surprising fun, too. I can’t judge the accuracy etc, but it seems authoritative to me. Three years is a long time in computing, so some of the information is already out of date: Linux is maturing rapidly, with several easy-to-install and easy-to-use distributions, so that the kind of hands-on familiarity with Unix taught in this text is no longer necessary. Recommended. *** (2008)
     Update 2013: Unix has not displaced Windows, in fact, in many places Windows Server has replaced *nix servers. Linux has slowly gained in overall  numbers, but has hardly moved in market share. Android a derivative of Linux, operates over half the cellphones in the world.
     Update 2016: Not much change. Ubuntu and Mint  have both been made to look'n'feel like the de facto standard Windows/Mac GUI, and have gained some ground. But the OS wars are pretty well over. Most people have no idea what an OS is, and have a hard time caring enough to find out. Computers have become "devices", people have come to expect them to just work. Many people now own two or more devices, and wireless connections (with or without a network) is taken for granted. Security and privacy-protection skills are now more important than understanding an OS. The pace of technical innovation and change has accelerated: this book is now a museum piece.