Interesting, this might be perfect for me depending on how the book is written/who the target audience is. $60 for an ebook or $80 for the hard copy is extremely hard to swallow though. I absolutely think a book of that purported length means an author probably put a lot of effort and time into it, and should get compensated. But I'm not familiar with the author at all so you're really buying sight unseen. Has he written anything else? I couldn't find anything with a quick google search.
Tangentially related, I was hoping to skim at least the first chapter via the Safari Books Online subscription which afaik had all of the No-Starch books on there (including early access I thought?). But no luck, maybe it'll be added there closer to publication date.
Regarding the cost, just a quick note, when you buy the hard copy directly from No Starch Press you get perpetual access to the ebook as well. That's maybe cooler than it sounds: at any given time you've got access to the newest (or close to it) printing of the book via ebook, and it's nice to get the little updates and errata that accumulate over the years in a big book like for example, The Linux Programming Interface.
(at least that's the way they used to do business - I'm pretty sure they still do)
I am both convinced the author is quite smart and hope that the topic/audience of the book is very different from the paper because I would not survive 1000 pages of that.
just ordered it. Not sure (judging from the ToC) if there is much of a difference to more classic literature such as Stevens' "Advanced Programming in the UNIX environment"
I could see there being space for a book which covers new(er) kernel mechanisms and features, but as you said TLPI is the Word and if your book covers the same content it doesn’t add a lot of value.
APUE is a National Treasure, but I think LPI has long surpassed it as what you should keep within from your desk chair. LPI is a goldmine and the gift that keeps on giving, but this book looks like a nice easing into it. Instabuy!
looked at the toc,so similar to tlpi the bible book, and did not have chapters to cover what's new,e.g. cgroups,io_uring,namespaces,ebpf,etc. honestly i lost my interest immediately
There are applications where ncurses is still a great approach for a controlled, structured UI, e.g., certain security appliances with complex configurations where web UIs, e.g., are not, by default, permissible.
(I spend a lot of time in ncurses on our appliances. We are looking at a web interface, but it will have to be homegrown and SELinux aware. It's a ways out yet....)
Serious price for a serious book, presumably. It's not at all uncommon to pay this sort of price (and sometimes more) for high-quality software development books. Most of the books in my software development library are in this price range (if not significantly more).
No Starch Press books tends to be all meat no bone. I don’t think I’ve picked up a NSP book and regretted it… unlike other publishers who just phone it in