I'm a documentation freak; it's gotta be on paper for me, I'm very good at reading and comprehending what I read. That being said, I DON'T believe that spending money on books for Linux is particularly neccisary (GOD I HATE THAT WORD; I can NEVER remember how to spell it!) There's a HUGE amount of documentation available on the internet; the biggest thing is being able to determine what information you're looking for- that's not particularly easy, given the unstructured form of the 'net. As I've said before, the best information gathering source available to Linux users (and people who want to be Linux users) is Google. If an individual is willing to exchange some time for information, almost anything they're looking for can be found using Google, so the situation boils down to deciding if you want to spend your cash for a book that may or may not have the specific information you're looking for, or spend some time with Google, and find exactly the information you want. Given the increasingly rapid development of Linux, a hard-copy book may be out of date shortly after it's printed, whereas information on the internet (both archived articles and at forums like this one) might have been writen or posted within days of the introduction of some new application for Linux, and allow a user to add a new application o his (or her) system that might not have hard copy documentation available for several months.
BTW: I see you're from the Syracuse area; looks like the'cuse is becoming a hotbed of penguin activity, given Dosman and myself.
