This document lists what I consider to be the essential book-length references for learning Unix (especially Linux) and how to program under it.

New versions of the Linux Reading List HOWTO will be periodically posted to comp.os.linux.answers. They will also be uploaded to various Linux WWW and FTP sites, including the LDP home page.

You can also view the latest version of this on the World Wide Web via the URL http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Reading-List-HOWTO.html.

If you have questions or comments about this document (or just want to suggest a book that you think should be on it), please feel free to mail Eric S. Raymond, at <esr@thyrsus.com>. I welcome any suggestions or criticisms.

For on-line HOWTOs, magazines, and other non-book material, see the Linux Documentation Project home page.

Some years ago I wrote a less Linux-focused Unix bibliography that may still be of some interest and retains a certain amusement value. You can find the Loginataka here.

SAGE, the System Administrator's Guild, maintains an excellent list of relevant books.

Comments not in quotes below are either mine, or I have seen no reason to change them from those of Jim Haynes (previous maintainer of this document). Comments sent in by others are in quotes, and have the name of the commentator before them (JH is Jim Haynes).

"See" URLs attached to publishing information point directly into the publisher's web catalog and typically take you to a page containing a cover shot, blurbs, and ordering information. Books that don't have these lack them because the publisher is using frames and the catalog pages can't be bookmarked.

Topic listings go roughly from the outside in (culture to user-land programming to kernel programming to hardware). Within sections I have tried to list the most useful books first insofar as I am familiar with them. It's just an embarrassing coincidence that this lists one of my books first, honest! (Suggestions for a better organization cheerfully accepted.)