The Linux Programming Interface by Kerrisk is probably the best book of its kind. Even better than Stevens' Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, although obviously linux specific. https://www.nostarch.com/tlpi
Yes, it's wonderful. But personally I'd recommend getting the paper version.
I have both. It's worth mentioning that, unlike a lot of technical ebooks from other publishers, the No Starch ePub version seems to be well-formatted and totally usable on a e-ink reading device (Kobo Aura One in my case).
For instance, if a book has an embedded jpeg, you can tap it and enlarge it to fill the screen. But if it is SVG art (as we often use for line art like charts and maps), it will not scale. Why not? I don't know. There is no support for MathML, or for scripting of any kind. Support for embedded video is poor. Page lists are suppressed in favor of Amazon's own proprietary system. Note that epub readers like Calibre and…
> These behaviors may be inconsistent across devices. The image handling inconsistencies are very annoying. Here is what I've seen with several books. 1. When read on an eInk Kindle, images are small. (I can tap them to bring up the option to zoom, and zooming does work, but it is kind of ugly). For example, I've seen chess books where the diagrams are about twice postage stamp size, whereas in the physical book they…
Image sizing is a tricky issue. When ebooks started to become a more mainstream thing, image size in the file was limited by the vendors, and also we sometimes had third-party licensing restrictions. Over time, of course, devices got more memory and higher-resolution screen, so larger file sizes are allowed, or even desirable. However, consistent behavior is still elusive. And that's even assuming optimal coding on the part of the publisher or whoever is doing their conversions; they may be using files that are not adequate for the higer-res screens.
The biggest issue I have with publisher websites is the lack of a strong review ecosystem. I've started looking at Amazon or industry blogs for reviews and recommendations, but that gets frustrating and is slow. Just wonder if the publisher could arrange to get rights to it's books' reviews across seller sites and aggregate the results. The truth is, apart from occasional sales like this, the publisher sites are rare…
I used to worry about that, then I realized that I've book 3 copies of some physical books I like - I read them enough times that I wore 2 copies out. Now I realize that it doesn't actually matter that I can loan paper books as I rarely do.
Cheap paperbacks wear out quick, I wish hardcover was available after books come on paperback because the books I like in paperback I go back to look for hardcover but by then hardcover is out of print. Though often I can find a library edition which is starting to become my default for paper books.
Packet Publishing has 50% off as well: https://www.packtpub.com/
The few books I've dug into from them on python are good and recommended by the 6.00 series of MIT MOOC on python. Also, free book of theirs is offered everyday on their website. I'm not sure how long that is going to keep happening cause I can't imagine them having enough books to keep doing that with forever.
I think you misunderestimate the spam cannon that is Packt Publishing. They'll publish pretty much anything, and seek out authors that don't necessarily know anything about the topic. They've currently got enough titles to do a free book per day for something like 10 years, without taking into account new releases.
Some of their books in specific topic areas are actually good, but in general, beware.
For technical books, I can't replicate the experience of writing notes in the margins (with a pencil of course) of a paper book versus anything ebook readers offer. Yes, I can't grep or query a paper book but the learning process seems more fluid as the book becomes my own reference source.
Do you think an iPad Pro would work for you? I just bought one and the ability to mark-up PDFs has turned out to work great. It does a good job of recognizing my handwriting and so when I search for some term, it also finds matches in my handwriting. There are a bunch of different apps for this and none of them are expensive.
Thank you. Is there a particular PDF app that you use?
Do you think an iPad Pro would work for you? I just bought one and the ability to mark-up PDFs has turned out to work great. It does a good job of recognizing my handwriting and so when I search for some term, it also finds matches in my handwriting. There are a bunch of different apps for this and none of them are expensive.
Thank you. Is there a particular PDF app that you use?
Notability and GoodNotes are both very good. GoodNotes fits my brain a little better, so that's what I've been using. Both are around $10.
Am I dense? When does this "day" start? Browsing with Safari 10.1.1 I see a standard website with standard pricing. I would think that if this were something being promoted there would be a very prominent statement. But I don't see anything? I tried adding a few books to my cart, but they also seem to have regular pricing. The only thing that says "half-price" is the HN title???
The coupon code was buried in the comments, but it is still working: RIGHT2READ
It's sad that O'Reilly books are no longer available without DRM or subscription.
O'Reilly had the serious flaw that you could just claim you own a book by adding its IBAN to your account's library and thus being able to "upgrade" it and obtain the ebook version for $5. I wonder why that worked as long as it did.
I think they discontinued the upgrade program already.