file systems

The book is well written in unemotional and descriptive style so there's no confusion.
A good thing about this book is that it is very patient;the author assumes that you have absolutely NO experience in computers. He is pretty elaborate even covering on how to enter a command in UNIX. He says it like this: Press the characters on the keyboard in a sequence that matches the name of the command you want to use and press ENTER button. NO ambiguity there.
But the only thing I don't really like about it is the chapter on system administration. It doesn't quite cover advanced topics such as setting up NFS, WWW servers, etc.. BUT the purpose of the book wasn't to tell you EVERYTHING. Rather, it is designed to get you comfortable with UNIX so you can advance if you want. But this book already has plenty of information to start doing some productive work in UNIX.
Overall, I recommend it if you have absolutely NO experience with UNIX and you just want an easy, no -frills guide.

I was transferred to a remote location and, because help was at least a day away, I became the de facto system manager for a UNIX workstation, with zero UNIX experience. The book saved my life through all kinds of minor and major crises, including three reinstalls of the OS. As soon as the second edition came out, I bought it. I plan to buy the third edition, also, even though I now work in a location where we have good support.
As the other reviewers have said, the book nurses you along in the beginning, and continues to be useful as you learn.

I agree with many of the reviewers (esp rpclark), in saying that this is a wonderful introductory book. I can further add that I have owned this book for 5+ years and it is still the reference I refer to most often. I believe, a particular strength of Sobell's book is that it was useful to a newbie and is still useful at the sys admin level.