Describe your latest project.
My most recent book is A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux. Aside from my first Linux book, which was generic, this is my first Linux book that has ventured away from Red Hat and was a very educational project. Although Linux is Linux, different distributions do things in different ways. Debian, the distribution Ubuntu is based on, has a different view of life than Fedora/Red Hat. Ubuntu uses a different software packaging system than Red Hat (dpkg vs. rpm) and has a different software distribution system (Apt vs. yum). When you install a server under Ubuntu, Apt configures it and starts it running (if it can). Not so under Red Hat. Each distribution has its pluses and minuses and each has good reasons for doing things the way they do. Looking at the differences gave me greater insight into the myriad choices that face the people who package distributions.

Right now I am working on revising A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux — the new edition should be on the shelves in December. Revisiting these distributions, I find that some things never change (the Bourne Again Shell [bash]) while others change radically (installation and the GUI).

Please visit my Website (www.sobell.com) for more information on my books, including Tables of Contents and sample chapters.

What inspires you to sit down and write?
Sometimes it is inspiration and sometimes it is panic. When I start a project I spend time using and learning about the software that is new to me. For software I am familiar with I spend time learning about what has changed since the last time I used and wrote about it. Playing with and learning about new and changed software is fun. At the moment I am working on a chapter on Perl for my next book — it reminds me of a grown-up awk. The learning is its own reward. I guess the inspiration is built in.

I do all the production work on my books. My publisher, Prentice Hall, gives me great latitude in the design and style of each book. I have always liked typesetting. I built a troff macro system for my early UNIX books. Early on, I wrote a proportionally-spaced printer driver for a daisy wheel printer (before the advent of laser printers). I have always liked the process of making my words real — putting them on a page and then putting the pages together.

What do you enjoy most about writing technical books?
I enjoy writing precisely. I enjoy getting critical reviews from the pre-publication review team and from readers. These comments show me where I have failed to communicate clearly or where I am just plain wrong. A lot of what I have learned about writing has come from these reviews.

I strive to make my communication simple, even for complex subjects. Simplifying a concept or task requires first that you understand it completely. Once you understand something, you can break it into its component parts. I find it fulfilling to describe a complex task simply.

I strive to avoid ambiguity at all costs. Sometime the cost is having a less graceful sentence. Frequently my copyeditor suggests that I change a word so that I do not use it too many times in a sentence or paragraph. But dong so can lead a reader to wonder if you are talking about the same thing, so I resist these suggestions. Ideally, a sentence is both artful and unambiguous.

What is your favorite review?
Two come to mind. I was thrilled to have Linus Torvalds write an introduction to my first Linux book (A Practical Guide to Linux). It turns out Linus used my book A Practical Guide to UNIX in school while studying UNIX — before he wrote the Linux kernel. And recently A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux received a 10/10 rating in a very nice review written by Ray Lodato on Slashdot.

Describe your favorite childhood teacher and how that teacher influenced you.
Mrs. Demas, high school biology. I remember one paper I wrote for her where I skipped a whole section by putting in a cross reference. I figured, "Why duplicate the information?" She suggested that the perspective of the second section was not the same as the first and, more importantly, it would make it easier for the reader if I repeated the information. Hmmm... interesting thought. Now I spend my life making it easier for the reader.

Have you ever taken the Geek Test? How did you rate?
Oh, yes. It was a disaster. Depending on how you look at it — being involved in technology to the extent I am, I would have assumed I would rate as pretty geeky. I did not score very high on the geek scale. Whatever geekiness I possess, I have learned from my kids. At one point they forced me to get a new cell phone because they were embarrassed to see me with my four- or five-year-old model. I do not have an MP3 player. (I am waiting for a good Ogg Vorbis model to see daylight; at least, that is my excuse.) I do build the computers I use — I guess that tilts the scale somewhat toward geekiness. I prefer to repair old machines rather than acquire new gadgets.

What was your favorite book as a kid?
Mostly I read catalogs. I would pick a project (some electronic device), go through the catalogs, and make up parts lists for the projects. Allied Radio had the best catalog. And Lafayette Radio had a store a few blocks from my apartment in NYC. Needless to say, I did not build all the projects I planned. I did build some projects from scratch, although I also built my share of Heathkits. Wikipedia has great stories on these companies.

What was your best subject in high school? Your worst?
The worst is easy: languages. Somehow, foreign languages always mystified me. I could not hear the difference between how the teacher said a word and how I said it. Best? I guess math and physics. They made sense. Eventually.

Describe the best museum of science and/or industry you've ever visited and what made it great.
The question here is the name of the museum: The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

I have not been there in many, many years, but I just checked, and it still exists. It was one of the first hands-on museums. They had a coal mine that you rode down in an elevator to explore. Every exhibit had buttons and things to do. I did not grow up in Chicago, but the few times I visited as a kid I had to go there. Today hands-on exhibits are common place because they present information in a way that makes it easy to assimilate.

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Mark G. Sobell is President of Sobell Associates Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in UNIX/Linux training, support, and custom software development. He has more than twenty-five years of experience working with UNIX and Linux systems and is the author of many best-selling books, including A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux, Third Edition; A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming; and A Practical Guide to UNIX for Mac OS X Users (coauthored with Peter Seebach), all from Prentice Hall, and A Practical Guide to the UNIX System from Addison-Wesley.