Technical Books: Unix Programming

The Design of the UNIX Operating System; Maurice J. Bach; Hardcover.

"If you've ever wondered precisely how a Unix kernel works, this book will explain it beautifully. Essential reading for kernel hackers."

Unix Internals: The New Frontiers; Uresh Vahalia; Hardcover.

"It's a wonderful book, although the title might mislead a reader into thinking that it's a heavy tome."

"... knowing how to deal with pipes, backgrounding, job control, tty handling, etc., is nontrivial. I had to read the Vahalia book to understand what to do, and I just got distracted (it's just such a great book)."

Internetworking with TCP/IP, volume 1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture; Douglas E. Comer; Hardcover.

POSIX Programmer's Guide; Donald A. Lewine; Paperback.

Beginning Linux Programming; Neil Matthew & Richard Stones; Paperback.

"It covers bash, C (about 400 of the 700 pages), a little Tcl/Tk and HTML. Since so much of Python is based on C, the book has been invaluable."

Practical Unix Programming; Kay A. Robbins, Steven Robbins; Hardcover.

Unix Network Programming; W. Richard Stevens; Hardcover.

Covers all the details of how to use sockets in C code on Unix systems; Python's socket interface follows the C interface fairly closely. This book will be extremely useful if you're trying to write network servers or clients in Python.

Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment; W. Richard Stevens; Hardcover.