David Both - The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins: And Everyone Who Wants to Be One

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book's product page, located at www.apress.com/9781484237298 . For more detailed information, please visit http://www.apress.com/source-code .

Writing a book is not a solitary activity and The Linux Philosophy for System Administrators is no exception. It takes a team to produce a book as well as some personal cheerleaders. The most important person in this effort has been my awesome wife, Alice, who has been my head cheerleader throughout this process. I could not have done this without the support of you gave me, my best friend, my sweetheart.

Many times the hardest part of publishing a book of any kind is selling it to a publisher. I already had about 20,000 words written when I went to All Things Open (ATO) in Raleigh, North Carolina, in October of 2017 with the intent of picking people's brains for publishers that they would recommend. I had already asked the smart and talented Rikki Endsley, community manager and editor at Opensource.com for whom I write frequent articles, if she could help me out. Rikki gave me a short list of people she knew from her years in technical publishing and two of the publishers on the list were at ATO. I owe many thanks to Rikki for her support over the time I have been writing for Opensource.com, for pointing me to Apress, and for being an understanding friend. Thanks also for being a fantastic cheerleader, not just for me, but also for many of the authors who write for Opensource.com.

On the first day of ATO in 2017, I was browsing through the vendors' exhibits and ran across one of the names on the list that Rikki had given me, Louise Corrigan, a senior editor for open source at Apress. She was staffing the Apress both and when I picked up her card I said to her, "I have a book for you." She expressed immediate interest and as I told her of my vision for this book, she became quite enthusiastic about it. It was her enthusiasm and the fact that she liked my vision without suggesting any changes to it that sold me on Apress. Thank you, Louise, for believing in me and my vision.

To Nancy Chen and James Markham, the editors at Apress who shepherded the creation of this book from beginning to end, have provided guidance, answered my questions, and just been there for me. Thanks to both of you for helping me through the process of writing my first book.

Despite the fact that this is a book about a philosophy, it is also a very technical book. Ben Cotton has done a fantastic job as my technical reviewer. He has ensured the technical accuracy of the experiments and other technical sections of this book. Ben also made some excellent suggestions about the content where it needed further clarification and when I had simply forgotten or missed covering some salient points. This book is much better for your contributions, Ben. Thank you very much for your splendid work.

I want to thank all the editors at Opensource.com for the work they do on the articles I submit there and also for the gentle way they helped me learn about the editorial process. They also helped me earn my chops as a writer. Thanks to you all, Jason Hibbits, Rikki Endsley, Jen Wike Huger, Jason Baker, Bryan Behrenshausen, and Alex Sanchez.

I also need to thank all the volunteer community moderators who contribute so much to Opensource.com. One of the highlights of my year is always at ATO when as many of us as possible manage to get together from all over the world. I am honored to be a member of such a community of brilliant people and I always learn so much from you.