Mastering Linux (3rd Edition)

Mastering Linux (3rd Edition) is the latest Chinese edition of Brian Ward's classic Linux systems book, part of the "Turing Programming Series." The author has worked with Linux since 1993 and has long taught and consulted, with a gift for explaining operating system internals as a trail you can follow step by step. Rather than listing knowledge points like a command dictionary, the book broadly follows the order in which a system boots: from hardware and memory, the kernel's process and memory management, device drivers and system calls, to user-space initialization, users and permissions, then disk partitions and filesystems, device files, and mounting. It then moves into the kernel boot process, user-space startup, logging and system time, batch jobs and user management, and goes deeper into processes and resource usage, networking principles and configuration, common network services, and shell scripting, network file transfer and sharing, user environments, and an overview of desktops. The final chapters target developers, covering compilers and development tools, building software from C source, and virtualization. The 3rd edition updates and expands on the previous one, adding topics such as the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and virtualization, with adjustments to page count and length. Overall, the book emphasizes "why it is designed this way and how the parts work together," suiting readers who already use Linux but want to understand its underlying logic, rather than complete beginners seeking a command reference.