# Humble Book Bundle



## xavi (Nov 1, 2019)

In case anybody missed it, No Starch Press are running their Humble Book Bundle: Linux & BSD Bookshelf sale again. It includes a couple of FreeBSD books, including the latest copy of Absolute FreeBSD by Michael Lucas. Enjoy!


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## Crivens (Nov 1, 2019)

My book case is already stuffed to the brim and squeaking. It will hate you.


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## xavi (Nov 1, 2019)

Haha, my bookcase hates me too. But the bookcases in my local bookshop love me.


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## SKull (Nov 1, 2019)

I usually don't like to read books on a screen. But 15$ for that many books is a steal!


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## SirDice (Nov 1, 2019)

Had to clear out my book cabinet, the frigging floorboards started to sag due to its weight


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## Crivens (Nov 1, 2019)

SirDice Good on you.
OT: drat, I don't do paypal and don't use a credit card. Don't they do normal banking? Would love to shoot some bucks their way.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Nov 2, 2019)

ebook, pdf,  zip, ... not physical books btw


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## tommiie (Nov 3, 2019)

jb_fvwm2 said:


> ebook, pdf,  zip, ... not physical books btw


You can't sell that many physical books for that little money. Unless perhaps they are second-hand.


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## tommiie (Nov 3, 2019)

SKull said:


> I usually don't like to read books on a screen. But 15$ for that many books is a steal!


Same. I really don't like reading books on-screen which is the biggest reason why I did not buy in on this nice deal. That and I already have the most interesting books on that list physically.


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## ronaldlees (Dec 1, 2019)

My wife and I like to frequent the local and county library sales and other similar events where you go inside with a large empty basket and then can barely carry it outside to the car.  Years of this sort of thing means I can't find books that I _absolutely know that I have_.  LOL.  I guess I need to dedicate a FreeBSD machine with a PostgreSQL database as a card catalog.  But thanks for the link - maybe that's the way to organize: all ebook..


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## Nicola Mingotti (Dec 2, 2019)

tommiie said:


> You can't sell that many physical books for that little money. Unless perhaps they are second-hand.



I would not be so sure. Storage is a cost. If you must get rid of something that you consider hard to sell you can go as low as thinkable with the price. The hard limit is the cost of trashing.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 2, 2019)

Books in .pdf format are the absolute worst for reading IMO. 

I read Kevin Mitnik's book "The Art of Deception" in .pdf form because that interested me enough to go through the trouble, but much prefer reading online from a browser than ebook or physical book.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Dec 2, 2019)

Trihexagonal said:


> Books in .pdf format are the absolute worst for reading IMO.



Oh Trihexagonal , my view is really the opposite, nowadays I have a copy of all my book in pdf, so i can bring them with me all the time. And take notes! I bought a big iPad with pen, it was the best investment of last year. 

Recently there is this new trend of making the doc only in HTML which I find extremely detestable (eg Apple, but also Apache Solr). How am i supposed to take notes on HTML? 

The only thing HTML text is good for is politics, so they can manipulate the past with zero time/effort


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## tommiie (Dec 2, 2019)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> nowadays I have a copy of all my book in pdf, so i can bring them with me all the time. And take notes! I bought a big iPad with pen, it was the best investment of last year


I used to have an iPad 2 (way back when) on which I read PDF or epub documents and I could take notes, underline, mark, just like a real book! But the more notes I took in such a virtual book, the longer it took to load it once closed. So I stopped doing that.

Also I don't like how the pictures are displayed all small and you have to click to open the image and zoom in. That's really annoying. Plus you can't easily flip through the book to search something so I still prefer a real book for studying.

That said I do try to keep the PDF versions so I can quickly <Ctrl+F> something when I need to look something up.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Dec 2, 2019)

tommiie said:


> But the more notes I took in such a virtual book, the longer it took to load it once closed. So I stopped doing that. ...
> 
> Also I don't like how the pictures are displayed all small and you have to click to open the image and zoom in. That's really annoying. Plus you can't easily flip through the book to search something so I still prefer a real book for studying.
> 
> That said I do try to keep the PDF versions so I can quickly <Ctrl+F> something when I need to look something up.



You should try the new big iPad, it is quite far from a $300 iPad mini of a few years ago. The pen is really something. I have only one complaint, after hours and hours the eyes hurt. My iPad is A4, there is not such a thing as a little image I can also add pages to the book to put my notes and schemes.

I agree, real paper book is the absolute best for true study. But, when you have done the study and it is time for reference, the PDF is better.  (I store them in Dropbox, so I have editing history, I can access from the macOS and FreeBSD, I am really happy )

One case in which the pdf sucks is when you have a 80MB book which is just a set of images. I have a few books like that, it is a pain.


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## tommiie (Dec 2, 2019)

I A4-sized iPad is extremely expensive. My brother has one and uses it for his studies and note taking as well as really loves it, but he is an Apple fanboy and I think the price is too much. But perhaps I will eventually buy one...


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## Nicola Mingotti (Dec 2, 2019)

highly reccomended ! I considered it for 2 months, then i decided, i spend a huge amount of time reading and taking notes. For me this is a tool. As the car or my laptop. Having it makes a difference. I tried alternatives before buying:Samsung and Surface. not comprable, for reading, annotating and sketching this thing is damn good. if you read a lot,you mark text and annotate  then save a bit and buy it. you will not regret


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## tingo (Dec 2, 2019)

If you are looking for an ebook format that is smaller than PDF, try epub. And we have deskutils/calibre in ports.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 2, 2019)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> I agree, real paper book is the absolute best for true study. But, when you have done the study and it is time for reference, the PDF is better.



When online, I'm listening to music though headphones, may have the TV on in the background and can read from reference material while writing when working on Demonica for hours on end.

When I read reference material from a book I need complete silence and concentrate to take it in. It was easier to teach myself to use Solaris than read the Solaris Bible and except for referencing a few pages is what I did.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Dec 2, 2019)

For me, it is silence or nothing, I can't think without silence. I am completely uni-tasking.


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