- "Linux in a Nutshell" by Ellen Siever, Jessica P. Hackman, Stephen Spainhour, Stephen Figgins, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 0596000251
- "Running Linux" by Matt Welsh, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Lar Kaufman, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 156592469X
- "Linux Unleashed" by Tim Parker, Bill Ball, David Pitts, Sams, ISBN 0672316889
- "When You Can't Find Your System Administrator" by Linda Mui, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 1565921046
- When you actually buy a distribution, it will contain a very decent user manual.
- "Learning the Vi Editor" by Linda Lamb and Arnold Robbins, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 1565924266
- "GNU Emacs Manual" by Richard M.Stallman, iUniverse.Com Inc., ISBN 0595100333
- "Learning GNU Emacs" by Debra Cameron, Bill Rosenblatt and Eric Raymond, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 1565921526
- "Perl Cookbook" by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 1565922433
- "Unix Shell Programming" by Stephen G.Kochan and Patrick H.Wood, Sams Publishing, ISBN 067248448X
- "Learning the Bash Shell" by Cameron Newham and Bill Rosenblatt, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 1565923472
- "The Complete Linux Shell Programming Training Course" by Ellie Quigley and Scott Hawkins, Prentice Hall PTR, ISBN 0130406767
- "Linux and Unix Shell Programming" by David Tansley, Addison Wesley Publishing Company, ISBN 0201674726
- "Unix C Shell Field Guide" by Gail and Paul Anderson, Prentice Hall, ISBN 013937468X
- "Gnome User's Guide" by the Gnome Community, iUniverse.Com Inc., ISBN 0595132251
- "KDE Bible" by Dave Nash, Hungry Minds Inc., ISBN 0764546929
- "The Concise Guide to XFree86 for Linux" by Aron HSiao, Que, ISBN 0789721821
- "The New XFree86" by Bill Ball, Prima Publishing, ISBN 0761531521
- "Beginning GTK+ and Gnome" by Peter Wright, Wrox Press, ISBN 1861003811
- "KDE 2.0 Development" by David Sweet and Matthias Ettrich, Sams Publishing, ISBN 0672318911
- "GTK+/Gnome Application Development" by Havoc Pennington, New Riders Publishing, ISBN 0735700788
- "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume I: The Protocols" by W. Richard Stevens, Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series, ISBN 0-201-63346-9
- "DNS and BIND" by Paul Albitz, Cricket Liu, Mike Loukides and Deborah Russell, O'Reilly & Associates, ISBN 0596001584
- "The Concise Guide to DNS and BIND" by Nicolai Langfeldt, Que, ISBN 0789722739
- "Implementing LDAP" by Mark Wilcox, Wrox Press, ISBN 1861002211
- "Understanding and deploying LDAP directory services" by Tim Howes and co., Sams, ISBN 0672323168
- "Sendmail" by Brian Costales and Eric Allman, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 1565922220
- "Removing the Spam : Email Processing and Filtering" by Geoff Mulligan, Addison Wesley Publishing Company, ISBN 0201379570
- "Managing IMAP" by Dianna & Kevin Mullet, O'Reilly UK, ISBN 059600012X
