Linux book for beginners?

[Underwater Mike]

I have a partition on my kids' computer on which I'm thinking of installing Linux. I'm interested in any recommendations for books on Linux for absolute beginners -- I know zilch about anything that ends in "nix."

I've seen a few on Amazon (Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Linux by Peter Norton, Arthur Griffith; Sams Teach Yourself Linux in 10 Minutes by John Ray, Paco Underhill; Sams Teach Yourself Mandrake Linux in 24 Hours by Craig Witherspoon, Coletta Witherspoon; Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux by Manuel Alberto Ricart), but they all seem to get mixed reviews. Anyone have a favorite among these or any other?

Also, the newest of those four was written in '99. Is there any reason to look for something newer?

Thanks.

[orangehat]

How about http://www.mandrakeuser.org to get you started. the Doc section is pretty good. I've never read any of those books so I don't feel I'm qualified to recommend any one of them.

[ctmagnus]

This may be slightly over your head ("I know zilch about anything that ends in "nix.") but I find Running Linux (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/runux4/) from O'Reilly to be very useful and not to overwhelming. But then, I've been raised using a nice (read: Microsoft-supplied) GUI also.

[Janak Parekh]

Just to add my 2 cents: in my experience, the web is a pretty rich source of documentation, and that's how I learned Linux years ago. The Linux Documentation Project (www.tldp.org) is a site worth checking out.

However, you'll need your machines side-by-side for this to work.

--janak

[orangehat]

Sorry that you were raised in an MS only environment. But there is
still hope for you since you also read O'Reilly books. They publish (with a few minor exceptions) excellent books.