Best CentOS books in 2021
My first ever published book was The Definitive Guide to CentOS back in 2010 and people are still recommending it even today. Back then CentOS was rarely treated as a first class citizen with books primarily being for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with a little note saying "also covers CentOS". I made the pitch to Apress that CentOS was deserving of its own book and happily they agreed. I got great support from the CentOS community with a number of the core CentOS team lending a hand in crafting the book.
Of course CentOS is no longer what it once was which is a real shame in my opinion. It was the perfect way for people to get into the Red Hat ecosystem given that CentOS was almost a perfect clone of RHEL. If you built your business on CentOS and now needed commercial support, you certainly weren't going to go to Canonical or SuSE - you'd go straight to Red Hat. Back then in days of lore there were even packages you could install to "convert" a CentOS install directly to a RHEL install.
Whilst the Definitive Guide to CentOS was based on CentOS 5, CentOS 8 is the last of the traditional CentOS releases. Much has changed between the two versions, but the core ideas and concepts remain the same. I had always hoped to do an updated version of the book, but alas, that's never going to happen now.
Here's the link I came across on LinkedIn in case you're interested in seeing more:
Peter Membrey is a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Chartered IT Professional and a Chartered Engineer. He has a doctorate in engineering and a masters degree in IT specialising in Information Security. He's co-authored over a dozen books and a number of research papers on a variety of topics. These days he is focusing his efforts on creating a more private Internet, raising awareness of STEM and helping people to reach their potential in the field.